Helping those with special needs

After reading though this weeks readings, some of these reading hit home for me. Although I am not a special Education teacher, I have a lot of students with disabilities, both learning and physical. I teach a lot of lower level classes and most times I have special education students in them. I have never had a year like this year though. I teach at the High School for half the day, and I have a unique mix. I teach a student who can’t speak English, a student who has trouble seeing, and a student who is hearing impaired. Yes even though I have kidded that I have the “hear no evil, see no evil and say no evil” set of students, I have wondered what can I do to help educate these students better.

For the student who has trouble seeing, we have ordered books with bigger print for him, he, of course, sits in the front of my class, and I try to write bigger on the overhead. These are a move towards helping with his disability, but I feel I can do more. I am not sure what the other classes do to help, but I hope we have better plans for him in his High School career other than just buying books with bigger print. I know anything he does on the computer he can easily make the font bigger so that would also help with him.

As far as our Spanish-speaking student who could speak no English on the first day of school, I have mixed feelings on how we should approach her. I know we have learned to use MS Word to translate any tests and worksheets we make to Spanish, but I am not 100 percent behind that. I think it is great to start her off with some of this, but if she is going to live in America, it is our responsibility to teach her how to speak English. At first her dad served as her translator, and we felt he was doing most of her work. We have cut his time in half with her, and she has started picking up some English. Lately she has asked me questions in English when her dad is not there, and she is starting to be able to read some of our assignments in English. I think if I had kept her on the translation of worksheets and test to Spanish, she would not have picked up as much of our language. I am very happy with her progress.

Last is our hearing impaired girl. I know when we talk about using technology to help, most people think of computers to help learn. She has a piece of technology that is very helpful for her. She wears a hearing aid that is a wireless transmitter from a microphone that I wear. This works great for her. She travels from class to class with the microphone, and the teachers clip it on and only she can hear what is said through it. It is a very simple and easy way to help with her disability. There are a few drawbacks with this though. First is when she forgets to charge the batteries for the microphone. If she forgets to charge the batteries I have to speak a little louder and I try to stand more in front of her. Next (and the one I have to be aware of) is I need to remember to take the microphone off or turn it off at lunch. I have my class split around lunch hour. If I forget to take it off, she can hear everything I say over lunch hour.

All in all, we have more than these three special needs students, but these three have come in with different needs than I have ever dealt with before. I think we have made a step in dealing with their disabilities, but I hope we can do more in the future.

Are we reaching our technology goals?

In the first couple weeks of this class we were asked to write a blog on Important Skills for Educators. I chimed in on what I felt was the most important things that a good educator should be able to use. I even went as far to add my own little addition to the list. But this week the question is whether we as educators or students are reaching these standards. There is so much out there to learn, and be taught, it will be hard to judge what is the important details, and how we will assesses what is learned.

In the Bruce and Levin article he references R.P. Taylor (1980) stating there are three main categories of learning. The first role is the tutor role, which is the computer used as a substitute teacher. The second role is the computer as a tool that will carry out tasks given by the student. And third (and what I like the most) is the tutee, where the student learns by teaching the computer. This is where the student will treat the computer like their individual student who needs to be taught every step of every procedure. This models so closely with the old fashion teaching style having students help other students. The theory behind that is the students learn more when they are teaching someone else. This is basically the same idea, just the students are teaching a “fake” student in the computer.

My main concern with this is the fact of how will we as educators assess our students. Harlen brings up that point saying there needs to be a formative assessment to find out skills the students have so we can decide what is needed in the students progress. He continues to say that observing and asking questions is probably the best way to find out a student’s thinking process. I know in theory this sounds great, but how much time does a teacher have to observe and set up a question and answer session with 150 students?

I really feel many of us educators are trying to integrate the technology, and need direction in what is the best way to not only integrate the technology but to also assess the students progress. We just need to be realistic in what can and can’t be done in a 48 minute period.

Copyright

The readings this week really opened my eyes the laws of copyright. I still thought that the little circled “c” was still the international use of copyrighted material. I guess before 1976, your work was protected for 28 years, but then Congress passed a Copyright Act of 1976. This put protection on all material that is published or unpublished and opened up from the 28 years to life-based system granting the protection for the life of the author plus another 50 years after his/her death.

Since this was all instated the Internet has really changed the scheme of how copyright is looked upon. I think many teachers are very naive on the copyright laws. It seems like many teachers never hesitate to print something off the Internet or a workbook and copy it off. What are these teachers thinking? I know we would “probably” not be fined the $150,000 in damages, but what are we teaching our students? A student sees a copied book or article in class, and reads it. The student then assumes it is legal to copy off articles, and books to share. As teachers are we failing to educate our students on this? It is this aspect that we need to teach our students better.

Digital Storytelling

As I have gone through this Graduate program I have learned many things about integrating technology into the classroom. Some of these ideas I have liked, and others I have not got to excited about, but this digital storytelling is one that can be VERY useful in the schools. My original thought was to save lessons on Moviemaker and have it accessible for students to download at home in case they missed a lesson (this would be great for science and history). We have a teacher or two who use PowerPoint to teach lessons, but they seem so time-consuming. Movie Maker is so easy to use and user friendly that this would be simple for teachers to integrate pictures and audio. It would almost be like a DVD for the students to have from a lesson. At least that was my original thought.

After watching some of the stories on DigiTales, I can see how these would also be great projects for students to use for reports. After watching “Tears of Change” by the student who was affected by Hurricane Katrina it became evident that this is a great way for a student to make a presentation. This could be a great way for the student to do a report on their summer vacation for their English class, or any other type of report. We have the students do a PowerPoint on a math/science project we do, but I feel these types of Movies with the narration already involved might be better. I am going to talk it over with the other teachers involved and think about changing up the format a little for next year.

Digital Immigrants

This article from Pensky truly hit home for me as I relate not only to my classroom students, but also with my own children at home. I guess I had never considered myself as a “Digital Immigrant” but I sure am. As my children have grown up, I have always joked that since the age of 4 my son could program a VCR fast (and more effectively) than either of his parents. This is because of the fact he has always been around a VCR throughout his life, where I have not. The same sort of logic holds true the fact of our students and children who can quickly navigate around the Internet, or fix easy problems on a computer faster than the adult. The younger generation has grown up around this technology and feels very comfortable using it, therefore they have no fear, where the older generation is trying to figure out why something works the way it does, or is afraid of messing something up.

The second article in our readings was by Roblyer and Bennett about visual literacy. It is apparent that the visual appeal to the student is what will keep their focus. The use of PowerPoint’s to teach is a Visual help that many students need to keep their focus. Students need that visual aid to help. In math I use different colored markers to help grab the students attention and keep their interest. Students’ minds start to wonder if there is not something to keep them interested. Think of watching a PowerPoint in which the background is so hideous that you lose complete interest since you cannot read the screen.

The role of Media in Learning

The role of the media is becoming more and more prevalent in the classroom. It seems like it was just a few years ago when we as teachers thought we were using technology by showing a National Geographic video in class, now we explore hundreds of sites to incorporate into our lessons.

The first place I would like to discuss is the scrapblog. Scrapblog.com looks to be a really neat idea that allows students to build an online scrapbook by just dragging and dropping photos, video, text and audio into the page. Students will be able to create their own page from their own pictures and even save it to DVD. I would think this would be especially helpful in a history class where a student could create a scrapbook about a country or city and add in their own audio to their page. They could make an entire presentation that the teacher could watch and grade.

The other site I found interesting was the Wiki spaces. Wikispaces.com creates a group website for classrooms, organizations and even families. Classmates could share ideas, photos and reports on this site. I am actually thinking of purchasing one of these sites for my Cross Country team so we can post information on our team and schedule to keep parents informed. We also could share pictures between parents and school so some of the less fortunate kids would be able to access their pictures.

Blended Learning Good for Classrooms?

Blended Learning is the combination of many different types of instruction to teach a classroom. As I have stated before, students like to have something presented to them in a unique and different way. Technology is a great way for students to learn, but if we as teachers use the same style and type of teaching everyday, it will be no different to the students than teaching at the chalkboard everyday. The students will become complacent with the instructional style. Teachers need to blend their styles of instruction so the students have many different ways to see the teachers present their material. If teachers were to have a different type of media for the students to learn from each chapter the students would stay engaged. Imagine a teacher who changes their teaching approach by the chapter, and teaches one chapter using PowerPoint presentations, the next chapter having a WebQuest, and maybe the next chapter using a whiteboard to teach their material. The students would stay involved in class since each week the teacher is using something new and exciting for the kids. The only problem left would be educating the teachers to learn the new styles, and time to set up the different lessons that they plan to use.