Blog Post #15 - My Final Reflection

It's been a great semester! I have enjoyed learning about so many new things that I can use in the future when I teach at an elementary school. Thanks for following my blog through the semester and continue to watch for reflections after I start teaching.

C4T #4

My teacher for this C4T is Tony Baldasaro. In his latest blog post called, "9 Words", he talks about the impact that words can make on someone. The CEO at his school said, "If we are really going to change the world..." These 9 words had a bigger impact on the staff rather than saying something else like, "If we are going to get a board approval," or etc. The mission of their school is to change the world. He believes this should be all schools mission statements, and if not, they should think again.

Tony has not yet posted a new blog post, so I chose to comment on a previous blog called, "On Being Attracted". He stated that teachers and parents often say that kids are distracted from the work they are supposed to be doing because of technology. He then says that we should think about it in a different light. Maybe kids aren't that easily distracted and are more easily attracted to technology. He ends his blog post with, "It’s time we focus on being attracted and less with trying to compete with being distracted."

C4K - April

This week, I was assigned to comment on Henry's blog. He posted a google slide show about robots. He guides the robot on a path by pressing certain buttons. He would show a grid, showing what path the robot had went on. He would also give you the path through letters (the buttons he had pressed to make him go certain ways). For example: F=Forward, B=Backward, L=Left, and R=Right. So for one path it may be "LFFFFLFF". It was a really cute and interesting idea!

For my second week in April, I got Bobby-Jon. In his latest blog post called, "My Very Fabulous Friends", he posted a picture of him and his friend. Above the picture he posted, "I love my friend because he backs me up." I find it cool that he said 'backs me up', which is a type of slang that we also say in America. Booby-Jon is from New Zealand, so I find it interesting that things are said the same on the other side of the earth.

Blog Post #13

This week I have been asked to create an assignment that I feel like Dr. Strange left out that would be in my area of expertise. The assignment I chose to create, would be very helpful to elementary teachers in my opinion. It can result as resources for teacher's to use when they teach. I believe this would be a great starter blog post to let EDM students get the hang of the system.

Here's the assignment I would have loved to have been assigned in EDM 310:

This week, research different apps for iPads that can be used to supplement learning in different subjects in the elementary classroom. Give a brief description of what the app does and if it is free or costs money. If you do not own an iPad, you may use one from the lab, or simply research the app through the app store's website. If you happen to not find an app that interests you or that you feel doesn't fit, describe an app that you feel should be made for the iPad! You will need to give at least one example for each subject. The subjects you need to include are:

1. Mathematics
2. Social Studies
3. Science
4. Language Arts
5. Reading

Here is my example of the post I would give for this assignment:

I have listed some really fun learning apps for certain subjects that are taught in an elementary classroom. I really enjoyed researching these apps and plan on using them when I become a teacher. I hope you also find these apps helpful.

1. Mathematics: My Math Flash Cards App- This app is made to use flashcards for elementary math facts. You can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on the flash cards. It gives sounds effect for feedback for the students. It's a very simple math app for students to supplement their learning. This app is also free!

2. Social Studies: 4th grade Reading Comprehension Social Studies Free App- This app caters to fourth grade students, but the same developer also has this app for other grade levels. This app happens to work for both reading and social studies. As for the social studies side, this app includes 20 different stories about social studies. This helps students learn fourth grade history information while improving their reading comprehension at the same time. This app is also completely free.

3. Science: Enjoy Learning Anatomy Model Puzzle App- This app is great for learning about organs and bones! This is a puzzle where you can do just organs or just bones. You could also choose to do organs and bones, though. It's a really fun and interactive way to learn about the anatomy of the body! This app is free and fun!

4. Language Arts: Third Grade Skills Language Arts- This app is really helpful for the elementary classroom. For example, it gives you a list of words, and you can choose which is a noun/adjective or even what the subject of a sentence may be. There are many different language arts subjects that you can learn from this app. It seems very simple and easy for students to use daily. This app is $1.99.

5. Reading: Read Me Stories - Children's Books- This app is a wonderful reading app. This app has great reviews and is free to everyone! There is a new book everyday on this app. It shows great pictures and graphics with the books so the students can use all of their resources to read well and comprehend. Touching the characters in the pictures even creates new story lines. This seems like a really great app that would get kids really engaged in their early reading stages.

Project #12 - Part B

Here is the slideshow we used for our lesson.

Blog Post #12

Assistive technology is something great to use in schools. Assistive technology is used to help children with learning disabilities. iPads are commonly used in schools now. I decided to do research on my own. I found several apps for iPads that have been reviewed for use in schools. The National Center for Learning Disabilities gives an extensive list of apps that are great to assist in education. You can view the list of writing difficulty apps here. The Dragon Dictation app was very appealing to me because students can talk and the app recognizes the voice and turns it into text. They also list apps to help with different learning disabilities. There are so many different apps that could be helpful in the classroom now.

Something else that I think would be really helpful to students struggling in math, is a talking calculator. The calculator will read aloud the numbers, symbols, answers, and etc. This vocalizes everything for student who have problems with mathematics. I also believe that it could help students with ADD or ADHD, but helping them focus on the task at hand. I personally can get side tracked, and if a calculator was talking to me, I believe I would also pay more attention. More information on talking calculators can be found here.

Another great assistive technology is screen readers. They have devices for this, programs, and applications. I know for a fact that Macs have screen readers on them, since I have a Mac myself. If you do not have a Mac then you can download software for this. A great example of software that can be downloaded is JAWS. This software is made specifically for Windows computers. It's known to be a great product to help educate blind students!

These are just a few of the assistive technologies that stuck out to me. There are so many other things that you can use to assist children with learning disabilities in the classroom. Technology makes learning so much easier for LD students and we need to take advantage of what we have available to us.

Blog Post #11

Project #10

In this video, I interviewed Mrs. Regina Everett. She is a 5th grade American History teacher at Saraland Middle School. She was also Alabama Elementary teacher of the year and Mobile County teacher of the year twice. She tells me how project based learning helped with her astounding teaching accomplishments.