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.