Technology and Special Education

This next article is talking about assistive technology for students with special needs. This technology is different ways to help the students keep up with their classmates and to help those with special abilities to extend their learning beyond the standard curriculum. Some teachers have kids use software that will help them if they can not use the keyboard. He helps them with project and note taking. There are also things used called reading pens. These "pens" can scan a word or sentence and then it would be read out loud. It can also provide definitions. There are other devices used for those who are site-impaired such as larger screens and other things that enhance the computer screen. One of the teachers even recorded herself saying words and definitions so her class can hear the words if they may have problems reading. There are times however where assistive technology is not used. When it is not beneficial or may be distracting for the students.
I would use these technologies for my teaching in the classroom. I am glad that there are new technologies coming out that can assist teachers with their students that may need some extra help. I like the idea of the reading pens they are small and convenient for students to use. I still like the fact of just being able to use a microphone and record things for my students. It is good that teachers can now refer to other devices to help their students understand what they are learning and help those who may be behind others to keep up with their classmates and still learn the same material. To learn more about assistive technologies click on this link.

Computer Based Learning

I found an article from Education World that shows how computers are helping teachers in the classrooms. With the computer the children are given more freedom to work on what they want to work on at their own learning pace. The "prepared environment" is used to capture the child's interest and stimulate them to learn more. The computer also has motivational capabilities to keep the children interested in their learning. It also was found to keep the classroom a more quieter environment because the children are keeping themselves occupied with their learning on the computer. The other advantages that the article pointed out in computer based learning was that the computer gives the child 100 percent of it's attention. This also frees up the teacher to help other children who may need more help.
In one sense I do see this as a good idea for the class room. Especially as a one on one project. Children tend to pick up on things quicker than most people and it would be easy for them to navigate through the computer without having to disturb others. Many children do not get much one on one attention in the class room and this method would help them more with their learning. I agree with the part in freeing up the teacher so they can help others who may need extra help but I don't think the teacher should be using the computer all the time. If there is some down time in between lessons where the student can benefit from using the computer I think that would be a great time for them to use it in the class room. When I become a teacher I would not mind having one or two computers in the class room for the children to learn with. To learn more about this article you can click on this link.

Teacher Comments

Thursday Professor Baylen decided to go through all of our e-Books and let us know what we needed to improve on them. He wanted us to see what others had done and give us an idea on the things we needed to work on with our e-books to make them better for the final submission.
This was good for me because I got to see what I did not do right and what I could improve on. Many of us had a lot of white space that the Professor showed us how we could reposition the words around the pictures. Many of us also found out that we should have put everything into a separate folder like we did with our story books in order for the sound to work on another computer. I think this was a good way to let us know what we needed to improve for our e-books because we also got to see what others did wrong or right and it is going to help me to put together my final submission of this project.

Two Questions

I first had to check before I posted this blog to see if I had already made a comment about this assignment sense this was awhile back. We had to post two questions pertaining to using technology with education and then find two articles per question that could best answer the question and post it and make some notes. First of all I had the hardest time coming up with two well thought up questions. I only remember one of them now because the assignment was taken off angel and I did not write the questions down anywhere else. I was going through the library databases to find articles that would best help with my questions and was having a difficult time finding good articles. It was taking up a lot of my time trying to find good articles to use. That is one of the problems I am having now with trying to find articles for the 12 point postings for this blog assignment. It is a very time consuming project and if we need to do so many but can't find them it is hard to get the points we would like. I don't feel the database through the FGCU library is very helpful for the topic of Special Education that I would like to look up. Even when I was trying to find some information for our first test project I was having difficulty trying to find the right material. It is good in one sense that this helps us to find many resources but it all depends on what a person is looking for.

Still Learning

On to the next project. Before this class is through we are going to have to do a "movie" on Movie Maker. I have never used Movie Maker before but I found it fasinating when we were learning about it in class. We are going to have to put visuals, narration, transestion, and sound into our project. The only challenge I am having at this point is I tried to do a test show at home but I don't think it saved correctly. When I went back to look at what I had done a couple of days later the pictures were all Xed out. I know I had saved it as a pr0ject the way we were told to save it but I don't know what happend.
I am excited to learn more about this program. We still have to learn how to put the audio into the slide. I have been thinking of ideas on what I would like to do my movie about but have not come up with anything yet. I think this form of technology should maybe be used for those in 8th grade through high school but it can be used effectivly and be fun at the same time.

Another Tool For Those With Exceptional Needs

I get so excited when I find something I can use that relates to students with exceptional needs and technology. In the first class test we did, our group talked about using hand held devices for the students. I was having such a difficult time finding articles that I really liked that showed how these devices were being used in the class room. Today I found a great article and not only are these students using the hand held's but they are high school students with autism and Asperger's Syndrome. A school in Texas was trying to see how these devices would work for their student's.
They found that the main thing these devices help with were the student's social skills. They were talking with other students they may not have talked with because they had to do projects with their hand held's that required taking a classmates picture to learn their names. They would also use them to take notes in class and the other students in the class who did not have one would be very interested. It also proved to be another way to help keep the students organized and planning their schedules so they would not be as frustrated if something changed. Some students were even able to take their frustration out but writing journals on their hand held's instead of lashing out in other ways. These hand held's proved to be beneficial for those students with autism and Asperger's Syndrome.
Again another great article that shows how technology is working for those with exceptional needs. They are able to comprehend their work more and feel more like a part of their class. The hand held's are a great idea for any student when it comes to organization but I think the socialization was great for those with exceptional needs. Most people with exceptional needs tend to keep to themselves or occasionaly talk with others like them but usually they don't talk with other student's especially in school. I think the hand held's make it a more comfortable experience for these students. If you would like to learn more about this article click here.

Technology Resourses for those with Special Needs

This article opens a door to a world filled with new technology devices that can help children with special needs. This article would be helpful for educators and parents to explore to see what technologies may be available for their children. These technology tools help children who may have learning disabilities, may be hearing impaired, or visually impaired. This article was written back in 2001 so there may be many new technologies that have emerged sense then. There are so many opportunities now with children who have special needs and the educational help through technology that they can get. Some of the devices include items from interactive software to computer devices that vibrate and flash for the hearing impaired.
I chose this article because I wanted to give a resource that points others in a direction that would get them started with finding technology that can help their special needs child. Many of the items mentioned in the article can help the child comprehend what they are learning and help guide them through the educational process. Even though a child may have special needs there are many things that they pick up on and technology seems to be the growing phase for any child to easily navigate through if they have the right instructions. To learn more about these technologies click here.

Diffrent learning levels

This is an "E" posting

Throughout this semester as I have sat through each class I have learned that there is not one student that is on the same learning level as another. I have observed that this has been somewhat of a challenge for Dr. Baylen. His job is to teach us how technology can be used as another teaching tool in the classroom to help our students grow and learn. Through the years as he has taught this class he to has been observing his students to see what works best for them and what seems to be most effective. There are some projects we are doing in class that his students did not have to do a few years back unless they wanted extra points but he is seeing what works best for his students. Sense we are all on different learning levels and most of us are learning of new technologies ourselves in this class he has had to take us through each technology program such as power point, audacity, and movie maker to get those who are not familiar with these programs up to speed. After we have learned the basics we can focus on how these programs will help us as teachers in the future. Knowing these technology based programs I feel would help make the class room more interactive and a little more fun for the student. We may not use them all the time but like Dr. Baylen we can see what works best for our students and work around them.

Technology help

The journal article that I have chosen focuses on the use of technology with special needs students. The title is "Cheshire tried new approach in special-ed". There is a group of educators who are trying to incorporate computers and technology into a class room to help special needs children with their learning. The educators are trying to find a way that the students can learn in the school right along with the others students who may not have special needs. That want to try to avoid having to send them to specialized programs outside the district. The project is more like an assistance program in the class room for the special needs child. A class room and a special needs teacher would work together with coming up with a system that could better assist the special needs student in the classroom.
Computers and computer programs used to assist the special needs student would give them access to general education curriculum. There were several things that were on display that were being tested for the classroom in the project. One of the things was a screen reader that could take classroom material and convert it into spoken words. The student could also take there own notes from an on screen duplicate text book and they can just highlight the words or passages they want to use as notes. This may be more work for the class room teacher but that is why they want to pair a classroom teacher up with a special education teacher so they can use these technologies together with the students.
I selected this article because I myself am studying to be a special education teacher and I want to see what technologies are being studied that can help the special needs students develop in the class room more. I wanted to see what is being used to have the child who may not be as advanced as some students comprehending the same type of educational material. I believe the ideas in this article would be good to use for a special education child who may need a little more help in the class room. Seeing what is being done for those students with different challenges is very encouraging to me as I continue my education and one day be directly teaching myself. If you would like to learn more about this article click here.

Children and eBooks

We did another project based on the eBooks. This time we had to oberve a child watching the eBooks. There were some questions we needed to ask the child and observe there reactions to see what books were best for the child. I chose a child that I have babysat for about three years now. I wanted to use a child that had special needs but the child from church that I wanted to observe was not available. The child I chose is six years old and is being home schooled. If she was in public school she would be in kindergarten because of her birthdate but her mom started her off in first grade. Observing her was not how I thought it was going to be.
When I first viewed the eBooks I had fun watching them. She did not have much of a reaction. She did like the eBooks and thought they were cool. She would like to use these at home and for school. I'm not sure if it was her level or the type of books but it did not seem like she really understood most of the lessons in the books even though they were on her grade level. It was neat to see her react to the Bug book though. She read along with the narrator and liked the words and facts at the end of the book.
I would use this project with my students as a one on one project. When the other students are still working on a project if the child is able to navigate on the computer eBook site on their own I would have them read an e-book and then write about something they learned from the book. This project let me get a better idea of a child's reaction to these eBooks.

E-Books Part 2

In our next project we basically had to create our own e-book. The tools we used were audacity and power point. This project was fun to do but time consuming and a little challenging at times. We had to take the second story board that we created and make a power point presentation out of it. We had to have text, pictures, and audio all incorporated.
The challenges I had were my memory disk was full and I was not aware of that and was recording my sound files and half of them did not get recorded and I had to record them all over again. I do not have power point on my computer so I had to go somewhere that did. Once I found power point putting together the presentation was not very difficult.
I enlisted my brother to help me with the pictures and one of the voices in my project. We were not allowed to use clip art or pictures from the Internet so I had to be creative in what I used. I am a terrible artist even when it comes to stick figures so I wanted to do something else that was more creative. I really did not have access to take pictures because my story focused around a second grade classroom setting and I did not have access to take photo's of a class room. In the end I found a Hello Kitty Coloring book that had what I needed along with some scrape book stickers and I put together my pictures and used a digital camera to take the pictures and download them to the computer. There was probably a more easier way to get the pictures on the computer but that is what I am familiar with.
My story was of a little girl who would not pay attention or listen in class and she had to learn why it was important to listen. After I completed the final project it was OK but even I thought it was a little boring I wish I would have done something a little more fun. When I observe a child for the other e-book project I will see what she thinks about this story.
This would be a great project however for a teacher to do for their classroom. I think a teacher that is in elementary school should make there own and present it to the class along with a quiz in the back. Our class has not gotten to the quiz part yet but we will have to incorporate a quiz eventually. This will also help the students to follow along visual and audible and let them see that any one can use technology. For those in middle or high school I think this would be a great group project for the students to create. It would help them to organize and work together to make something fun.

E-Books

Until I took this class I did not even know about e-books. After the Professor showed us a few examples in class I was hooked. It does not take much to amuse me and I thought the e-books were a really fun idea. The next project we had you probably already guessed it by now was doing an e-book review. There were two categories with five books each that we had to choose. I chose group A the K-2 group. I have always liked the second grade kids and hope to one day be teaching around that age group or middle school. Sense there was not a category for middle school I decided to do this group. With ESE children there are many different levels so even in middle school the children may still be reading on the K-2 level. We were to "read" these five books and answer twelve questions about them. Some of the questions included, was the content appropriate for this reading level, how were the images, sounds, and how was it presented?
Even though this was one of the better projects I still had a minor challenge. I still have dial up at my home and the e-books were taking forever to download and play on my computer. I had to go to the school library and work on the project. I would defiantly use e-books in my class room to help teach the students. This would be one way to incorporate technology into my classroom in a simple and fun way. All the books taught something and there was also a value in most of them that could then been spun off into another project to teach the children. When the narrators were reading some of the books they did not make it as fun as some of the others. I learned that there is a better response when the narrator really gets into the book and distinguishes the characters voices. It is more fun to listen to the story. That is why when I read to children I like to change my voice with the words. This project would defiantly be good for any child in elementary school as well as some ESE students who are in middle or high school.

9 Squares Game

The fun and challenges never end in this class. We had to create a listening picture game this past week so as to get us familiar with another project we could use for the students in the class room. We had to take the story and the pictures we used from our first story board. We created a table and put the pictures in random order and put the story sound file behind them. When we clicked on the picture the portion of that story would play. The objective is to get the students to try and put the story in order.
Again, this will be a great technology tool for audio and visual learners. It might be a little more challenging for some students with special needs and younger children but most children third grade and older would probably do well with this project. I also had a challenge with this project. I could not figure out how to get the sound into the picture but I later found out that I saved all my information into a shortcut folder on my desk top instead of a regular folder. Once I fixed that I was easily able to get the sound inserted behind the picture. The only problem I had after that was that the audio kept going when I only clicked on one picture. I did not worry about that too much because someone else in the class was also having the same problem. I would hope that if I ever used this project in the class room for my students that this would not happen. I know that the more I do these projects the easier it will get. I am learning more each time I work on a project and it is getting easier.

Audio Fun

Using technology can also be fun. Another project we had to accomplish was three audio recordings. We had to use the software Audacity to record our voices of three different stories. We had to choose a poem, a Dr. Seuss book and a children's picture book that had at least two characters speaking with each other. We then had to burn our recording onto Cd's and create labels for each CD.
I really enjoyed doing this project because it was fairly simple. At first I had a challenge because I did not know how to save the sound file so that I could burn it to a CD. Once I was told how to export the wave file I did not have many challenges. I did have to rerecord the children's book several times because of some interference I was having with noise in the background. I learned from this project that technology can be used in a fun way. I also learned that there are different methods of teaching and presenting information to the students. Some students are audio learners and this would be a great project for those students. This project also allows a person to be creative. When recording stories we can have fun and distinguish the different voices of the characters and be animated. This would be a project I think I could use when I'm teaching in my classroom with my ESE students because they would be like to hear the different stories on audio especially if they have challenges reading.

Group Testing

There are many different methods of teaching and learning. One of the projects our class was required to do was a group proposal for our first exam of the semester. I have never done a test this way and was very overwhelmed with the whole process. We were assigned a group that included other class members. We had a scenario we had to stick with. We had to all meet once as a group on our on-line chat that was set up by the Professor. This form of technology was convenient but it did not give us a chance to really discuss what we each were going to do for the project. After we all put our ideas together on the discussion board we had to individually write a proposal for our test.
Every person has a different way of learning. Some people like to use the chat and the discussion boards and it works well for them but if I am going to do a group project I need to at least meet with the group one time face to face so that everyone gets a chance to contribute if they want to. I know this can be very difficult with every one's schedule which is why the chat ideas are beneficial. There are so many resources for teachers out there with technology in education that the project was also very time consuming. The project did help me to manage my time more but I really could have used more time to get the right resources together and put all the information together that I needed for the proposal. In the end I did not feel like I really learned or contributed much to the group discussion because I had more questions than I did advise. For me this is all a new experience because all I have ever done is typed essay's on word and submitted them and wrote e-mails. That was about the extend of my technology experience. I did over come these challenges by keeping up with the assignment and working with the technology everyday. If we have to do another project like that again I would like to have more time to prepare and research.

Welcome

Hi, welcome to my page.

I am a Special Education Major at FGCU. This blog is desined around information in education for our Introduction to Computers in Education class. Throughout the rest of the semester I will be posting information that has to relate to education. One of my main themes will be the diversity in education and how that influences our lives. All are welcome to view this site but it will be limited to a chose few who can edit it. Feel free to explore and I hope you will enjoy the content.