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.