Blog Post #16

C4Ta #4

In Dean Shareski's blog post Encouraging Ownership, he talks about his evaluations done by the students. He says that about 80% of the time it is positive feedback, 10% are indifferent, and 10% it is negative feedback. He admits that sometimes this is his fault but sometimes it is just the student not taking ownership of his own learning. He uses the example of buying a house. When something breaks, the owner must take action to fix it or find someone who can fix it. He say that the house is just like your learning. You are responsible for your own learning. You can't just sit there and absorb the material, you have to be involved and ask question. So take ownership of your learning.

Blog Post #14 and #15

             My strengths                                           My Weaknesses
         I am very creative.                           I am very bad with time management.
         I make lessons fun for my students.     I am not super organized.
         I have years of experience with kids.

I am very excited about using project based learning in my future classroom! It is a fun way to keep students interested in what they are learning. It also helps the students learn more because they actually have to do something instead of just listening to the teacher talk.

In the video How to Make an Audio QR Code, we learn how to create a QR code. A QR code is very similar to a bar code. You can take your smartphone and scan the QR code box and it will lead you to whatever information is embedded in the code. In the video, she is creating an audio QR code to send to her students' parents.

In iPad Reading Center, we see the iPads being used in the classroom. She uses the iPad as a reading center. She has the student record himself reading and then listen to it to see if he made any mistakes. These could be a great phonemic awareness tool.

In Poplet with Ginger Tuck, Ms. Tuck shares an app, Poplet, with us. Poplet allows her kindergartners to make webs. She mostly uses the app to help students create information webs after they read a book. This would be a great tool for helping with comprehension.

In AVL and Kindergarten Students, we see how to use Alabama Virtual Library on the iPad in a center. Ms. Tuck will give a word to thee students and the student will then search it in Alabama Virtual Library. They then listen to the examples that the search gave them and draw a picture and write a sentence of what they have searched.

In the video, Tuck iMovie Trailer For Kids, Ms. Tuck shows us what she has learned on iMovie and how she aplies it in her classroom. I love the book trailer idea and will use it in my future classroom.

In Tammy Shirley Discovery Education Board Builder Moon Project, Ms. Shirley show us one of her students boards on Discovery Education. The boards are useful to display what the student is learning on one big page. They can add pictures, videos, anything they want to help them.

We can see two examples of the boards mentioned above, in Mrs. Tassin’s 2nd Grade Class. Example 1    Example 2

In the interview, Using iMovie and Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Bennett discuss using iMovie and Alabama Virtual Library in their classrooms. Mrs. Bennett loves that her kindergarten students enjoy using iMovie. Mrs. Davis talks about how Alabama Virtual Library improves the use of iMovie.

In the interview, Twitter For Educators, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Bennett discuss how twitter has helped them with keeping up with new things in education. It also has linked them to people from all over the world using one little hash tag.

In Dr. Strange's Talk with Teachers We All Become Learners, the discuss that fact that teachers have to be learners as well. One example that Mrs. Bennett gives is that her student had to show her how to take a picture on the iPad. As educators, sometimes are students are going to know more about technology than us because it is what they grew up with. We just need to accept the fact that that we can learn from our students.

C4Tp #4

For my last C4Tp I commented on Building Good C.U.L.T.U.R.E by LangWitches. Silvia Tolisano talks about collaborating with other educators and creating the acronym CULTURE which stands for Collaborate, Understand, Love, Trust, Unite, Respect, Empower. I think that all of these things are important in a classroom. It takes these to build up your students and help them learn.

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In her post The Blog Kraken: How to Keep Up with All Your Students’ Blogs?, she talks about ways to keep up with your students blogs. She says that reading every students post, giving feedback, etc. can go south very quickly. She uses Feedly to keep up with everything. You put the students blog URLs in the website, and poof, everyone's blog is at your fingertips. You can view if the student is posting and what they are posting without leaving the one webpage. I will have to use this in my classroom.

Blog Post #13

Although we did quickly cover special education in a past blog post, I think it is something that was left out. Even though most people in the class are not special education majors, I think that is important for all teachers to understand the work and struggles that go along with special education. I also think that it is important because as a teacher, you may be put in an inclusion class (where special needs children are mixed in with the regular classroom) and you will need to know how to handle it.

Blog Post
Browse through A Special Sparkle (a collaborative blog from multiple special education teachers). Find 2 post that you find interesting and write a brief summary of what you learned. Try to think of ways to apply what they say to your classroom.
Some interesting blog post you may enjoy and learn a lot from are:
Adapting Books For Special Needs
10 Tips for Music, Art, and Library with Students with Special Needs
Teaching Kids with Dyslexia
IEP Tips and Tricks
Finding the Positives
Using Scripts to Encourage Language and Interaction

Project #12 Part B

Blog Post #12

“iPad Usage For the Blind” and “Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child is Learning On the iPad” are both videos that discuss that an iPad has different features that allow sight impaired people to use them just as anyone else would. One can swipe their finger across the homescreen and an automated voice would read aloud the names of the apps and what one should do to use and access them. For example, in iBooks, the automated voice will read aloud the book chosen, as well as tell you the chapter you are reading, and also read aloud the different functions in iBooks that are available on each page of the book such as “Library button” or “Table of Contents”. For our future students that may have sight disabilities we can provide headphones so that those students can have the automated voices speak to them during class without disrupting other students. We would want our disabled students to enjoy school and get the most out of our classes, just as any other student would.

The first three sources that we were given for this blog post were Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Children, Apple Assistive Technologies  and The Mountbatten. These three sources give us different technologies that can be used in the classroom to help vision and hearing impaired students. The Assistive Technologies video talks about how there are so many children that are vision or hearing impaired. The video seems to be a motivation video to make a difference and be able to have these students do what the other students are doing and to not let them be completely limited. The Apple Assistive Technology source was a website that showed different accessories that you can get for an iPad that students can use in the classroom to help them. The Mountbatten video is about the Mountbatten Braille Writer that helps blind students be able to respond in the classroom. When the student brailles, the student announces what the machine is typing in Braille. This machine is able to save files and also send files to a computer. This machine can be helpful in the classroom, especially if a teacher does not know braille. It will help the teacher know what the student is typing because it says it out loud. Both assistive technologies sources will be great to have handy in the classroom because it will help students be able to not have any limitations in the classroom.

In Teaching Math to The Blind a professor at the University of San Francisco talks about a device that he created to help blind students solve simple and advanced math problems. The device is a grid that holds small square pieces. The square pieces has a number written on one side and on the other side the same number is written in braille. With this device teachers are able to teach math to blind students at a younger age. I think that this device would be very useful to me in my classroom. The device will help the blind students model and solve math problems just as a sighted student would.

In the 50 Must See Blogs for Special Education Teachers, there are tons of blogs that could be helpful to any teacher, not just special education. Teaching All Students was a great resource to look at. It had many blog post added weekly that contained different tools that teachers may need. In Dyslexia My Life, Girard Sagmiller shares about his struggle with dyslexia and gives teachers advice on how to teach children with dyslexia. Special Education and Disability Rights Bog is an important blog to review because it explains different legal issues you may face as a special education teacher. My Special Needs Network could be a very helpful blog for teachers. It is a group of blogs from teachers AND parents that could greatly help you understand how to help a child because you don’t only have a teachers view but also a parent view!