Blog Post # 16 Final Reflection

My dream is to teach kindergarten or first grade. I want to have a fun and happy classroom that my students look forward to coming to every single day. I want to be one person to put a smile on each and every one of their faces, daily. I want the learning process to go both ways. I want my students to learn from me, of course, but I also want to learn from my students. I aspire to be a life long learner and constantly improve my classroom for the benefit of my students.

I want my students to be active and involved in their learning process. I have learned a lot from the famous EDM310 quotes "No more burp-back education!" and "I don't know. Let's find out." These are two quotes that will stick with me throughout my teaching career. I want to help and guide my students, but I also think that it is so important for them to research and discover new information on their own. This introduces them to different technology tools as well as prepares them use these tools throughout their entire life.

One tool I plan on incorporating in my classroom is blogging. I feel that this tool can be used with any grade level and it gets the students so involved and interested with technology while learning. I want to use blogging for projects and for my students to talk about daily activities, as well as use it for their daily journals. In the lower grade levels students usually write in a journal on a specific topic every day or every other day. I want to use blogging instead of pencil and paper for my students journal entries. This will get their work recognized by people all around the world and I feel like this will excite them and inspire them to work even harder knowing that other people will be seeing it and commenting on it. This will also allow my students to explore other students blogs and see about different cultures and what is going on in other classrooms all over.

Another tool I plan to use in my classroom is podcasts. I think this would be a great tool to incorporate in their "centers." I will either have my students read a short story on their own and get in an assigned group to create a podcast on given questions or I will have them create a podcast based on a story we read together in class. This gives the students an opportunity to work together in groups and discuss what each of them took out of the story and what they have learned. This will also get the students using another technology tool in the classroom.

Referring back to Blog Post #1
When I began this semester, I wasn't exactly sure what tools I wanted to incorporate in my classroom. I do want my student to be creative and find out what works best for them, but I now know of specific activities I would like my students to work on when they have free time throughout the day. I had said I would like them to grab a book, or find another activity. Instead I want my students to get on the computer and I will have a list of topics each week for my students to blog about or I want them to get on the apps on the computer or iPad's to help them with our math, reading, or spelling that we are currently going over in class. This way they will get to use technology while learning and perfecting the skills we are working on.

I had said I wanted my primary way of teaching to be through hands on activities. I do want to incorporate fun hands on activities, but now I have seen how important technology is in the classroom and I would love for this to be my primary way of teaching. I want my students to be interested and engaged the whole time. I want to find different ways of incorporating technology in everything we do. I want to use Google Presentations, Prezi, Google Docs, iPads, blogging, podcasts, and much more. I want my students to be active learners and try to find their own information without having to rely on me for everything.

Blog Post #15

Summarized by: Keri Brown
Teaching Mom What her Deaf/Blind Child is Learning on the iPad
This video shows a mother using an iPad to learn what her deaf/blind child is learning. This video showed me that just because a student is blind or deaf they are still fully capable of using technology. The deaf students can see all of the icons that are on the iPad and work the same way a hearing student does. For blind students, this showed the mother learning how to swipe with four fingers to change pages and when she scrolled her fingers over the apps and icons they say out loud what exactly they were helping the blind student hear what they are using or what they are looking for.

Apple has a special link on their website for special education students. They say "We believe that technology can provide great learning tools for all learning abilities. Every Mac and iOS device comes standard with innovative accessibility features." The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch come with assistive features that have changed the learning landscape for students with special needs. These features help with learning and literacy, vision, hearing, and physical and motor skills. "Guided Access helps students with autism or other attention and sensory challenges stay on task." This allows the teacher to limit a device to stay on one app by disabling the Home button, and even restrict touch input on certain areas of the screen. "VoiceOver is a gesture-based screen reader that lets students know what’s happening on their Multi-Touch screen — and helps them navigate it — even if they can’t see it." This is great for blind students to still be able to work the technology and navigate through the assignments. "Closed captions offer all kinds of visual learners the ability to see captions in video to help with comprehension." This application is very useful for deaf students.

Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Students
Summarized By: Ke’Nesha Brown
Assistive technology is “an umbrella term used for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices” (Wikipedia). It promotes independence by giving people the opportunity to perform tasks they were once unable to perform (Wikipedia). Assistive technologies give disabled children a chance to feel normal and interact with others in the classroom. It enhances their learning, remove all learning barriers, and pushes students to go beyond their boundaries. Assistive Technologies give each disabled child a sense of hope. In addition, it changes the way people think around them. According to the video, one in 2500 Australian children have vision impairment (ATVHIC). Every day in Australia, one child is diagnosed with hearing impairment. With the statistic given, the curious questions for educators are “Are we doing enough to support impaired children” and “Are we prepared” (ATVHIC). Teachers should be the main line of defense for all children when it comes to quality education. They should be willing to knock down old walls and building new ones. With assistive technologies, impaired kids have the ability to engage, investigate, and explore. Most importantly, it gives the students the ability to interact with their environment. There are many devices that can be helpful to sensory disabled children. Some of the devices are: · Text to speech devices · Text phones · Talking Calculators · Note takers · Sensory aids · Speech to text devices · FM radio’s · iPhone, iPods, iPads · Screen magnifiers · Flip cameras

The Mountbatten
In The Mountbatten video, they explain how vital immediate feedback is to struggling learners. The Mountbatten Braille Writer allows students to receive audio and tactile feedback. It produces braille while announcing what letters are being produced. In addition, the device is an advance tool. It has the ability to save files; transfer files to, and receive files from a computer. For teachers and students who don’t know braille, the Mountbatten Brailler is a great tool for mainstream classrooms. The braille text converts into print and is display upon a screen. This tool allows blind children to be included in curriculum. It also allows them to receive feedback from teachers and participate in peer group projects.

Assistive Technology for Children with Autism
(written by Susan Strokes under a contract with CESA and funded by a discretionary grant from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction)

The assistive technology tool I found useful for the classroom was provided by Autism Consultant,Susan Stroke. She explains how technology have improve the quality of life for people who suffer with different disabilities. However, despite the fact that technology attracts the children who has autism. Stroke explains how technology can be helpful for children who has autism. Stroke explains how technology can be helpful for children with autism. It can help them understand their environment. It also help them with communication skills, social interaction skills, and motivation skills.

Stokes explains how the Visual Representation Systems are helpful for autistic children. Objects, pictures drawing, line drawing, and written words can be used with various modes of technology, as long as the child understands. One software program Stokes mentioned is Boardmaker. Boardmaker is a software from the Mayer-Johnson software program. It is a program for children, as well as adults, that provides 3,000 picture communications in black and white or color. PCS present a clear representation of objects or words. However, autistic kids may dislike color; therefore, teachers should take caution on what color they may use.

Another tool that provides a more concrete images without risking ambiguity because of background clutter is Picture This (20). It has over 2,700 pictures from a lot of different categories like, creating schedules, sequence activities for following instructions, etc. Strokes tells us that some children who suffer Autism have difficulty understanding two dimensional visual representation system. These students may require an actual object, or True Object Based Icon. TOBI can be any line drawn picture that has been cut out in a shape or outline of what it is suppose to represent. The child has the opportunity to see and feel the symbol and shape.

Having assistive technologies in the classroom helps teachers and disable children communicate with one another. Every child’s learning ability is different; however, every child has the ability to learn. By providing the tool sensory aid children need, teachers are providing their students with a fair chance in receiving the same quality education as others. It also teaches the other students how to interact and accept people who are different from them. I personally think this assistive technologies is a tool that all teachers should have.

Teaching Math to the Blind,iPad Usage For the Blind
Summarized by: Chelsea Calvert

Both of these videos gave instructions and reasoning for using the two different resources. The first video discussed how it is almost impossible to learn or teach math through braille. The University of San Francisco invented a board or a work space for the student to lay tiles that had the letters printed on them and written in braille. The board also would connect to a computer and the computer would say the numbers as they were placed on the board.

The second video shows how the iPad has the over voice feature. With having this feature one could set the iPad to say out-loud what functions were being used. The video shows how to navigate an iPad with having the iPad read whichever icon you ran your finger over. It will also read books once they are selected. For the blind this is the only tool that you can turn on and have this feature in effect.According to the 2007 National Deaf-Blind Child Count, over 10,000 are children under the age of 21.(National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness. (2008, September)) This tool gives these students the ability to have a book at the tip of their fingers that can be read to them.

Both of these videos were informative on different subjects. I never thought about how difficult it would be to teach a blind person math until now. I think that the board would be a great asset to the classroom with a blind person. I think that this board would be helpful in learning the basics of math. I think both tools would be beneficial in the classroom. Using the iPad to read and for other things is a great tool. The students could read whenever they had free time and it would be an easy transition. I think the iPad could be used for every subject in some way.