Lesson Eight

I have really grown up with computers for the most part. I can remember getting my first email address in middle school and the subsequent email addresses that followed. I’m sure I’m like most people and have multiple email addresses. I have one for work, school, personal, and junk mail, as well as having a facebook page, ETSY account, and online store. I have a hard time imagining life without the internet, as sad as that may sound.

The benefits to these communication tools are fabulous. I am able to stay in touch with my relatives in seven different states through a multitude of mediums that let me send messages, cards, talk using Skype (just started!) or look at pictures.  I am also to able to keep in touch with friends from college or high school as we all move on to different careers, states, and countries.

Relationships form over the internet. My roommate met her boyfriend using an online dating service, and she is hardly alone. A person in Kentucky can talk to a person in Japan while simultaneously ordering dinner, sending a birthday card to his sister and contacting someone on Craigslist about a used couch. Technology is making our world smaller, and our communities larger.

What amazes me though, is that I have a friend in the Czech Republic, but I don’t know my next-door neighbor’s name. This is my concern. I feel that in our quest to reach the far stretches of the world through the internet, we sometimes forget the town in which we live, the names of people we meet, and the importance of thinking globally, acting locally, to borrow the Habitat for Humanity slogan.

As far as computer security I have experienced goes, much of it involves passwords. I have more passwords than I know what to do with. Most of them involve similar subjects or phrases I am likely to remember. The computer lab I used at ETSU made students change passwords every semester. I became very creative in ways to change the passwords without altering them so much that I forgot them altogether. Sometimes blogs or websites have you type what you see appearing in a strange font. This is as much to prevent spam as anything, but I think it must work because I am seeing more and more of this. Where I donate plasma, my personal file is brought up by scanning my fingerprint. This is the ultimate protection against identity theft, but it won’t help in most situations.

The best way I know to prevent spyware to begin with is to have a program like MacAfee or Firewall, and to not open emails that have a link and no personal message.  

Lesson Seven

A software program I know I will use is one called "Easy IEP". I first heard about this program while doing an observation in a Special Education class. The teacher graciously showed me the components and shared how much easier it made her life since she began using it.

According to the website marketing this program, Easy IEP cuts down on the time spent my educators on paperwork by 25-40%. This is a tremendous decrease, allowing that much more time for teachers to spend on planning for and assisting their students.

I am not currently teaching, but want to teach Reading Resource for students with learning disabiliies. Each of my students will have an IEP, or possibly a 504 plan, that will take up valuable classroom time to create, edit and evaluate. Some of the features that are particularly beneficial are the 24/7 monitoring (allowing me to work from home), state of the art reporting with graphics and data analysis, and the abilitity to convert paper documents into electronic files.

The Tennessee Education System  (the state in which I live and work) uses this in every county, making it easy to access students records as they change school systems back and forth. I definantly plan to use this program to help keep track of my student's records and become more familiar with IEPs as I begin my teaching career.

As far as instructional objectives, and goals, this program is better equiped to meet legal mandates, but is good to help to establish the objectives and goals for each individuals progress. This is a tremendously wonderful program.

Lesson six

I had so much fun this week creating a webquest! I was daunted at first and overwhelmed because I had trouble invisioning what to put in it. Many of the webquests online were disconnected, and if I could find one to work it seemed too complex for the ages of children I would be working with.

One dilemma I faced was in choosing an age to focus on. I am studying Special Education, which means I could be working with children anywhere from 3 years to 23 years. I decided to focus on creating a webquest for middle school children with learning disabilities, although children without disabilities could use this webquest too. The material is congruent with regular education studies of Ancient Egypt. The reading may be somewhat difficult, but when students are paired together is not so much of a challenge.

The tasks I chose are challenging, but are achieveable. When completed over a series of days or weeks, the lessons can be adapted to include slower readers, as well as students with short attention spans. Each lesson has reading and writing imbedded in the activity, as well as a "challenge" section that serves as a rewarding game. The children learn about Ancient Egypt while improving their technology, reading and writing skills.

I want to make more of these! I'm hopeing to learn how to imbed voice-overs into the text to let students who struggle severely with reading, or beginning readers be able to participate more easily. I think high-school students would really benefit from learning to make these. I found that I was doing a great deal of research on my topic just to make the webquest. Imagine how students would benefit from creating webquests on a specific time in history, or scientific principle or novel. Below is the link to the webquest I created.

http://questgarden.com/132/49/4/111002102906/index.htm

Lesson 5

Before this week I wasn't sure what online communication tools were available for classrooms, and so had never knowingly used them. In some of my Undergrad classes I participated in blackboard discussions and email, much like I do for this class. Outside of class I used instant messaging and email, but I have never used these tools while in the position of a teacher.

I remember in one of my observations in a Kindergarten classroom a teacher mentioning that her students spoke on a camera to children in Japan. I wasn't sure then what tools she was using to do this, but now I know it was probably Skype, or a system similar to it.

Now that I've done more research on this I am convinced I want to use Skype in my classroom. Even very young children can learn about differences in time zone, opposite seasons, foreign languages, and tolerance. The following site I found really interesting to list different ways skype can be used in the classroom.
http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/30/50-awesome-ways-to-use-skype-in-the-classroom/

I would love to use Skype as a collaboration tool between students in different countries. To prepare my students I would show my students where their country/state was located on a map. I would shine a lamp on a globe to give a visual representation of the change in day and night, and how countries could be in different time zones. I would help them learn simple words in that language, such as hello, goodbye, and friend. With older children I would help to show them how to operate Skype on their own, so that they could contact me for questions about homework, or maybe even a friend from a different country met through our online Skype! I am fascinated by this technology and am eager to sign myself up to talk with my cousins.

Lesson Four

I created a Power Point to be used with preschoolers, kindergarteners, and other students gaining knowledge of beginning consonant sounds. This can be used as a group discussion, in small groups, or individually. The Power Point has an introduction page, and then 21 pages after this, with the last page congratulating the student for finishing. It is not designed to be completed in one setting, but rather over the course of several days as a review (or pretest) of knowledge of beginning consonant sounds.

Each page has one letter at the top and three pictures of various items, one of which begins with the consonant on the page. The student decides which picture begins with this sound and then clicks the mouse to have the correct image circled. An example is for the letter “T”. On the slide there are pictures of a tent, a ring, and a cat. The student says the name of each picture aloud and then decides that “tent” begins with a /t/ sound. To check his answer, the student clicks the mouse to see the correct solution circled.

I like this presentation because it can be used by the student in a constructive way. The student must examine each picture, say the name aloud, listen for the beginning sounds, and decide which matches the sound of the letter at the top.

If I did this presentation again I would break it apart so that only a few letters were presented at a time. For example, a presentation that had slide for the letters: S, T, B and M. I would also like to find a way to have each picture make a sound when clicked on so that the child could try numerous options before being given the answer. Also I would like for the letter to say a sound when clicked on so that if a student could not remember what sound an “f” made, he could click on the letter and hear the sound spoken aloud.

I have not presented this Power Point, but I believe that students will be excited to use the computer and practice their consonant sounds.

Lesson Three

I’ve really enjoyed this week’s lessons and videos. I used to believe that technology belonged in higher education and should be avoided or at least limited in early childhood classrooms. I couldn’t have been farther from what I now believe. I did not realize how many resources there are for young children to use technology. There are so many tools to make planning and assessing easier for teachers, but also to make lessons more appealing for the students.

The video we watched concerning tablet computers particularly appealed to me. I was fascinated at how the teacher was able to teach everything he would ordinarily teach through tablet computers, a tool that was significantly less than a desktop computer. I would really like to experiment with some of these tools and gain better skills at developing lessons that use computers, cameras, tablets, and Smart Boards.

While I am not currently teaching, I have some ideas of what I would like to send home to parents. Having worked in Head Start for the past two years I recognize that there are many parents who have difficulty reading large amounts of text, if they are able to read at all. Something I find helps many parents is to highlight or bold face the critically important areas. Microsoft word, along with other publishing programs, has a feature that allows you to change the colors of text as well as highlight and boldface the print.

I am an advocate for parental involvement in schools, whether it is through participation in the classroom, or simply knowing what their child is learning in schools. Therefore weekly letters sharing what we’re discussing are very important to help parents feel connected to their child’s education. I plan to also send out individual weekly contact sheets telling something positive that each individual child has achieved. I plan to work with children who have special needs and learning disabilities. For many parents the only contact they hear from the school is negative. Every child can succeed at something weekly, and parents need to know that.

The document below is an example of a parent letter using the highligher technique to draw attention to key important information.

Lesson Two

This week I've been spending a lot of time researching spreadsheets and databases and how they can be used in a classroom. Before I started looking, I had a very limited idea of what spreadsheets could be used for. In my past experience I had only used them to budget spending on a mock restaurant for an Economics class in High School, and to keep track of spelling scores while student teaching. My experience on what I thought was involved in a spreadsheet was limited. What I discovered is that I use spreadsheets far more often than I realized, it is only that I usually make them with pen and paper, instead of computer programs like Excell.

I spent the better part of this weekend looking at sites online of how to use spreadsheets in the classroom, in particular the elementary classroom. Dr. Alice Christie, of Arizona State University, has a site that I have found particularly inspiring in ways spreadsheets can be used. Her site is: http://www.alicechristie.org/edtech/ss/.  It has links to various websites to record data to make graphs. Some create them on the computer, while others require the user to print off a recording sheet. Some links give ideas of graphing activities to be used by teachers, but many can be used directly by the students to gather and record data.

One link from this site that I was very excited to find was the "global grocery list". This had a section to record what various grocery items, gas and housing prices are in your region of the world. Olders students could record this information and then make a spreadsheet of how prices varied from city to city, state to state, or nation to nation from 1995 to the present. This could even be used for special education students as part of real-world experience in finding the costs of specific items in a paper and making a list online. I was surprised that one website link could be adapted to meet so many academic levels and needs.

Though I am not currently a teacher (except to infants and toddlers), and have had limited experience in applying spreadsheets and databases I plan to use them often in my teaching career. I want to work with students who have learning disabilities and spreadsheets are a wonderful tool in to help both the students construct their own learning, and me, as their teacher, to keep records of progress.

The video we watched titled: Authentic Learning, embraced my core beliefs as an educator. This video focuses on Constructivist principles of education, namely that the students need choice in their learning. As a former participant in the special education department of Public Schools I recognize a need for higher level expectations for students within the Special Education spectrum, especially those with learning disabilities. Electronic graphic organizers give students power to analyze and categorize information in their own words so that they are no longer dependant on rote memorization, but instead to process information in a way that makes sense to them.