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