edlf345

digital story reflection

2005-03-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

At first I was having difficulties with the digital story in terms of technology. I had scanned my pictures, but not cropped them. Then, they were in the wrong place on my computer to be used. Once, I overcame that, I had virtually no problems with iMovie-I taught myself how to do everything through their tutorial (Dan gave me no help). the writing part of the assignment was much more difficult than the movie part for me. I am not creative. Ask me to come up with something meaningful and I will give you a math formula. That's just the way I think. Anyway, it got a little better once my photos were in order and I could see how they could tell the story so that I didn't have to talk as much. In terms of a reinvention for my classroom, I think that it could best be used in self-contained and inclusion classrooms (it might not work in ). In inclusion classrooms students could use it to develop an imovie showing different characteristics of different regions in Geography. For example, one group could be responsible for Sub-saharan Africa. Each person in the group could be assigned a different country to research and find pictures of it. As a group they could put together a short i Movie about the regon as a whole and characerisitics unique to each country. This movie would be shown in class. This would be a good way to use the time because (if the teacher were to combine this with a WebQuest) there would be sites already chosen for them to get thei information from, which would save time. Also, everyone would have to participate. Additionally, all of the other students would learn about the other regions (and they would be held responsible for that knowledge) and would probably find it more interesting than readin it in a book. Finally, for all those students who hate getting up in front of the class, this would help to ease their anxiety.

digital images in the history classroom

2005-02-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

I thought the idea of kids using digital images to understand chronology and change over time was an intersting one. I don't know what part of the curriculum it applies to (i don't remember learning about chronology directly), but I am assuming that this is done at a very young age. Therefore, iI think that it probably works best in elementary schools (where it was developed for). However, I think that as discipline social studies is lucky to have access to so many digital images. There are so many things that can be done with them and they can convey so much more. They can make learning more personal, allowing the students to identify with events that happened a long time ago. Sara, you saw Dan's Vietnam lesson. It was incredible. It made the viewer realize why it is important to learn about the war. Also, the images allowed one to see how the war affected different people-those in the States, the Vietnamese and the soldiers. After viewing something like that, I think student will be able to remember more of what they are being taught because now it is interesting. Something that would be great to expand on this would be some collaboration with other teachers. For xample, if in English the students are working on writing, possibly they could write about one of the images they saw in their social studies class. This could be factual or descriptive writing or writing about what they belive is the past of those in the image...There are endless possibilites

powerpoint

2005-02-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

my experience with the powerpoint presentation was slightly frustrating. First, the obvious-you still haven't seen it because my images didn't save to my disk. Well I fixed that or Ithought I did. I burned another copy of the ppt just to find out that some of them still didn't work. While i am redoing everything for the 3rd or 4th time, I have also been redoing the hyperlinks over and over and over again because they seem to change themselves. I redid them again right before the last time i save the powerpoint and they switched themselves around again. Any ideas as to why this is happening? At first i thought it was easy. But now I have realized that the more you do the more you have to correct if it gets messed up. If I had done it right the first time, I probably wouldn't be aware of this.
For what I could do in my classroom, i am not sure-it would depend on the content. I think that images would be very helpful for social studies and earth science classes to help give them a visual idea of things, instead of relying on coming up with images in their heads. It may be a fun way for kids who are not so good with writing to use to come up with presentations for their classes.

Sara, I will bring my powerpoint on thurday. I tried to upooad it to homedirectory, but the file was too big and the upload would usually fail before it was completed. Also, I don'tknow if you saw the correct posting for my reading response last timebecause you commented on the "virtual guidance counselor" which was from my fird day with the other class.

content rationale

2005-02-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

The Implementation of the Education for the Handicapped Act in 197 and it’s new and most recent, revised version known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has required that all children receive a “free and appropriate education.” It emphasizes that every child deserves a right to an education. This means that children with disabilities are included within this definition. Children with disabilities vary in their disabilities and abilities. Though many children, often those with mental retardation, are many times identified before they enter school, many children’s disabilities, usually those with emotional or behavioral disabilities and those with learning disabilities, do not become apparent until after they have been in school for a while. Therefore, it would benefit the school to have staff members present that are familiar with the different disabilities, how to identify them, and what can be done to assist the child so that they do, in fact, receive an appropriate education.
Special Education at the secondary level is extremely important. At this level, students are going through many changes physically, socially and environmentally. These changes can many times add new stressors to children’s lives and can bring out previously unnoticed disabilities, especially emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and some learning disabilities (LD). In middle and high school children are being prepared for and taught skills for their adult lives. It is very important that students with disabilities get as much of they can out of their education at this level. For these students, this proves to be a great challenge because they not only need to learn the regular curriculum, but they have to learn many compensatory strategies as well. Furthermore, since there is such a range of disabilities and many of these children are already behind their peers, they can require a lot of teacher attention and extra help, which a regular classroom teacher often does not have the time to deal with.
In order to successfully implement a special education program into the school, I believe that the first and most important thing to be considered is what kind of program is going to best serve students with special needs. In my eyes, this is a program that has a continuum of placements, including full inclusion, collaborative teaching, partial inclusion, and self-contained classrooms. It has been agreed upon by many, and is now part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, that children should be served in an education setting that is as close to the regular classroom setting as possible. This would be my goal as well. To accomplish this, I would like to work at the beginning of the school year to help the regular education teachers learn some of the behavior management strategies that have been proven to be successful. A successful behavior management program can lead to the success in the classroom of many previously unsuccessful students, especially those with EBD. This can also be achieved on a schoolwide level. Programs such as these have been proven to improve academic success for all students. Something else I would like to work on before the school year started would be a discussion with the regular education teachers defining collaborative teaching and what the requirements are to ensure that this teaching model is successful.
The identification process of students with special needs and the maintenance of their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) can be a complicated process. To make certain that the students are best served, I would like that all teachers involved with special education students work together to devise and implement IEP objectives and goals. I also would like to stress the importance of the parents’ role in this process. Parents need to be informed of what is going on with their child and be informed about the identification and IEP processes in a language that they can understand (not legalese). They need to be treated equally, made to feel comfortable and that they are an equal part of the process. Finally, teachers need to remember that this process can be very difficult for some parents and to try to understand the parents’ point of view.
Since high school is the last stop for students before college and becoming independent it is important that they learn those skills necessary to be independent. For some students with special needs these skills need to be taught explicitly. Many schools have already adopted what is known as a transitions program. It typically begins freshman year and continues through graduation. It teaches students skills, such as identifying what type of job they would like, researching its requirements, writing resumes, money management, etc. I believe that a program like this would be worthwhile for some special education students at the school.
As previously mentioned, education at the secondary level can be very difficult for students with special needs. A special education staff will be able to work with regular education teachers and the students to identify what can be done to help these students be successful. Receiving help from special educators, students will be provided with the accommodations and modifications necessary to help them accomplish their best educationally and socially. Additionally, the students will learn problem-solving and compensatory strategies as well as how to generalize them to environments outside of school. Being equipped with a good education and these strategies will help these students attain a more equal-footing with their peers and, therefore, provide a means towards their success in adulthood.
Special Education at the secondary level is extremely important. At this level, students are going through many changes physically, socially and environmentally. These changes can many times add new stressors to children’s lives and can bring out previously unnoticed disabilities, especially emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and some learning disabilities (LD). I middle and high school children are being prepared for and taught skills for their adult lives. It is very important that students with disabilities get as much of they can out of their education at this level. For these students this proves to be a great challenge because they do not only need to learn the regular curriculum, but they have to learn many compensatory strategies as well. Furthermore, since there is such a range of disabilities and many of these children are already behind their peers, they can require a lot of teacher and attention and extra help, which a regular classroom teacher often does not have the time to deal with.
In order to successfully implement a special education program into the school, I believe that the first and most important thing to be considered is what kind of program is going to best serve students with special needs. In my eyes, this is a program that has a continuum of placements, including full inclusion, collaborative teaching, partial inclusion, and self-contained classrooms. It has been agreed upon by many and is now part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, that children should be served in an education setting that is as close to the regular classroom setting as possible. This would be my goal as well. To accomplish this, I would like to work at the beginning of the school year to help the regular education teachers learn some of the behavior management strategies that have been proven to be successful. A successful behavior management program can lead to the success in the classroom of many previously unsuccessful students, especially those with EBD. This can also be achieved on a schoolwide level. Programs such as these have been proven to improve academic success for all students. Something else I would like to work on before the school year started would be a discussion with the regular education teachers defining collaborative teaching and what the requirements are to ensure that this teaching model successful.
The identification process of students with special needs and the maintenance of their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) can be a complicated process. To make certain that the students are best served, I would like that all teachers involved with special education students work together to devise and implement IEP objectives and goals. I also would like to stress the importance of the parents’ role in this process. Parents need to be informed of what is going on with their child and be informed about the identification and IEP processes in a language that they can understand (not legalese). They need to be treated equally, made to feel comfortable and that they are an equal part of the process. Finally, teachers need to remember that this process can be very difficult for some parents and to try to understand the parents’ point of view.
Since high school is the last stop for students before college and becoming independent it is important that they learn those skills necessary to be independent. For some students with special needs these skills need to be taught explicitly. Many schools have already adopted what is known as a transitions program. It typically begins freshman year and continues through graduation. It teaches students skills, such as identifying what type of job they would like, researching its requirements, writing resumes, money management, etc… I believe that a program like this would be worthwhile for some special education students at the school.
As previously mentioned, education at the secondary level can be very difficult for students with special needs. A special education staff will be able to work with regular education teachers and the students to identify what can be done to help these students be successful. Receiving help from special educators, students will be provided with the accommodations and modifications necessary to help them accomplish their best educationally and socially. Additionally, the students will learn problem-solving and compensatory strategies as well as how to generalize them to environments outside of school. Being equipped with a good education and these strategies will help these students attain a more equal-footing with their peers and, therefore, provide a means towards their success in adulthood.

my tech autobiography

2005-02-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

My first experience with computers was in elementary school putting in coordinates to make the turtle draw a line, a square, a whatever. I don’t think that I even saw a computer in intermediate school. If I did, it obviously was not a very memorable experience. In high school we had an IBM PC jr.. It was fine for me-it spell checked my documents and the printer always tore up the paper (the holes in the paper never seemed to line up with the spokes in the printer). I bought a word processor to college. It was much easier to deal with than a computer because I could have it in my room and I didn’t have to wall all the way over to the computer lab and, besides, it spell-checked my documents. My sophomore year (or as those here at UVA would call it, my second year), my Statistics teacher had us look up two assignment on the Internet or what may have just been the university network-I don’t know. Then as a junior, some of my younger friends who were majoring in something that had to do with computers told me to e-mail them. They had to write down an explicit set of instructions for me to do this. Also, I did not understand why anyone would want to e-mail someone when you were going to call or see them in only a couple of hours. It seemed stupid to me. Also, there were only three computer labs on campus, so it seemed a little labor-intensive to find one of these to just write what was essentially a note to someone.
That was it for computers for me until years later as I was having a going away party before I left for the Peace Corps, my same college friend told me that I could keep in touch with people through hotmail. Luckily, when I got to Mozambique, other volunteers there knew how to set up an account. Also, while I was there I wrote an English grammar book and one of my friends was able to help me with the various specialties of Word, such as bold and italics and columns, etc…. Since, then anything I know about computers, I have taught myself. Although, I really don’t know much, I have found that most things tend to me self-explanatory or, if not, someone else knows how to do them. So that’s pretty much it for my tech experience.

netwise teens: reading response

2005-02-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

I thought the article "Netwise teens: Safety, Ethics and Innovation" was a well-rounded article that looked at kids' internet use and addressed important considerations for that use, such as the implications for teachers and schools, the importance of keeping parents informed, teaching the kids to be smart about how they use the internet, and taking advantage of the things that kids use and bringing them into the classroom.
I was happy to hear that a lot of the kids in the article recognized that some things on the internet they they encountered were "creepy" and that some were already aware of the fact that all of the information that they encounter on the internet is not always true. However, I would guess that most kids using the internet are not as aware of these things. As a future teacher, I think that it is important that they students learn how to determine what information they find on the internet is valid or not and even to give them particular websites that are known to be good resources. They also need to be informed as to what is proper and improper use of the internet. This was addressed in the article when mentioning Prospect Sierra's Internet Skills class which talks about these issues. I think a class like that is definitely necessary for children growing up with the internet. I also think it is important, as the article mentioned, to monitor yet still allow the kids the freedom to explore the internet and learn through it. In schools, the implementation of acceptable use policies (AUPs) seems to be a successful way of doing this.
I agree that parents should be educated about the internet and informed about what their kids are doing on it. I don't think a lot of the parents know that kids don't have to do a pornography search to have links come up on their screen or e-mails sent to them leading to porn sites. I agree with the article that it would be a good idea to take the parents web-surfing to show them what is out there. At that time, parents could be educated on how to set their own network settings (even though I bet a lot of their kids could find ways around this) to keep some information/websites out of their children's reach. It is also important that as with tv and video games, their childrens' internet use must be monitored. I thought that the bookstore analogy provided by the article is a great way of calling parents' attention to this fact. To invole the parents further in their child's internet use, it would be interesting to (if, of course, all of your students have access to the internet) have assignments that involve the student and a parent (nothing longer than 5 or 10 minutes).
For teachers, I believe they must not forget that not all students have easy access to the internet when they are assigning homework. The article noted a huge discrepancy 41% of children on the assisted lunch program and 72% of the other students have home internet access. Therefore, if possible, the assignments involving the internet should be limited to time during the school day.
I believe that the internet is a great tool and can offer students a lot of things. As a student myself, the ease with which I can find the information for school is mindblowing. I also like the fact that I can get in touch with my professors and other students by just sending an e-mail, which usually takes less than a half of a day to get a response. I enjoy how easy it is to comparison shop or get the information about products that I am looking for before going to a store to buy anything and have to deal with a sales person. All of thee things make my life easier and althoughI don't know how to do everything or even that much on a computer, I feel that I am smart enough to be sucked into any scams. Unfortunately, I do not believe this is the case for everyone, but as already mentioned, it is definitely a skill that children should be taught.

the internet as a virtual guidance counselor

2005-01-25T17:02:00.000-08:00

The article says that more and more those students that are considered "internet savvy" are using the internet in increasingly more areas of their lives. One of these areas is that of the "virtual guidance counselor." Kids claim that it enables them to do searches for information on careers they would like to pursue. It can tell them about the skills they need to acquire and useful informationabout the job itself. This allows them to plan for the future and to know what they must do in order to successfully become what they would like. The internet is also helpful to students for learning about colleges and universities and is something that is considered more approachable or more likely to be used than a school guidance counselor (because they can be doing ten other things on the internet while doing their search and can also remain anonymous). The internet can also help them study for college prep exams and even fill out college applications online.