Project 16 Final Project

Project 16 is an Ibook that we had to make for our final project of the semester. This project consisted of work that we had done throughout the semester to be used collaboratively so it has elements from each participant. My group was named Sparta and the Spartans of this group were an excellent group to work with. I'd like to thank Mitchell, Greg, and Jefferey for the great group we had. Best of luck to everyone.

C4K last summary

For my final C4K summary I was able to meet two very pleasant young students who have great potential. The first of these students is Mya. In her post which can be found here, was how to describe her setting. She done a wonderful job of describing the cold around her. I told her that she had done a great job of describing what the area around her was like and that I hoped she would continue on the great path she is on.

The second student I had the pleasure of reading a blogpost from is DJ. DJ's post was describing what FIAFIA is and why he enjoys it. He explained that FiaFia is a type of dance that he has learned. I told him that he has done a wonderful job of explaining what this event is and that I hope he continues to enjoy it.

Final C4T blogpost

For my last comments for teachers assignment I was assigned Dr. Vitulli from here at the University of South Alabama. In Dr. Vitulli's post she was talking about how wonderful her class had done with one particular assignment. This assignment was mask making.

There were many different types of masks that her class had made and she was quite proud of them. I would have been too. I told her in my comment that I was in Dr. Strange's Edm310 class and that she had just opened a new door for me to study in history and I thanked her for the great post; which can be found here Unfortunatly there was no other blogpost for me to comment on for Dr. Vitulli as the rest of her posts were about grading resuming.

Project 12b

In this blog post about project 12b you will see a video that Sparta group has put together following the instructions for Project 12b. I hope you enjoy.

Blog Post #13

The instructions for this post are as follows.

I want you to use research to find websites about how to use technology in a history classroom. This is a broad subject but I want you to use your imagination and come up with something other than "the internet" as a technology tool. What I am looking for is useful ways to give a History lesson using today's technology. Be creative and use your imagination.

Here is an example

Blog post #12

There exist plenty of assistive technology for blind students. There exist Portable Notetakers. They’re lightweight devices that use a speech output rather than a visual one. They can be connected to printers and computers and are usually equipped with a special, braille keyboard. However, there do exist QWERTY keyboards for those who prefer that style of keyboard. There also exist screen readers which reads aloud everything that is on a computer screen. This includes text, icons, and even drop-down menus. There are also digital book readers which are sort-of like audiobooks and there are also various magnification devices that help those who may not be blind, but are still considered visually impaired.

Here's a link to all those devices mentioned as well a list of well-known products that are commonly used by the blind. - Jeffrey Brazeal

C: The concept of teaching mathematics to the blind seems a little far fetched, but is something that should not be overlooked. As teachers, we may encounter students with special needs and we will have to figure out how to handle that. In the video (How to teach math to blind students) they explain how that even numbers have their own braille symbols and all it takes is just a little extra mileage to help the students understand the concepts. This is more true with Trigonometry then anything else, as having to feel the shapes takes a little longer than simply looking at the object. Texas is one of the leading areas in the teaching math to the blind thanks the efforts of Susan Osterhaus, a Secondary Math Teacher at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Susan brought this to the attention of the 10th International Congress on Mathematical Education, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark on July 4-11, 2004. As we can see, this is something that became a huge deal in the teaching community and is something that needs to continue to be looked after. The end of video, however, had a statement that affects children of all kinds. The statement is that when a student has positive feedback and encouragement, then the student will do better in school. - Greg

E: In the Video “Teaching a Mother What Her Deaf/Blind Child is Learning on the iPad” was an interesting view, and rather hillarious. It is a teacher, I assume, teaching a person, a mother I assume, how their child uses the iPad. First off, it is interesting to watch a normal person trying to figure out how to use it for the first time even when it is just sliding to the next screen. The difficulty that she was experiencing is only increased drastically by the fact that the student is blind or deaf. I remember when I first got my HTC One, I had no clue how to handle any of the devices or even get it to sign into the internet. Turning it on was a chore, I couldn’t find the button for 30 minutes. It is amazing that there are students out there that are figuring out how to not only navigate an iPad simply by touch and sound alone, but also can figure out how to type on the device.

Assistive technology comes in many shapes and forms. Last semester I did a site visit to the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind for EDU400 and I got to see and actually use some of these tools. My guide that day was a man named Stephen Sullivan and he has been legally blind his entire life and has worked at the institute for 20 years. He uses a lot of the technology there to help him with his daily tasks. In my research for this blog post, I stumbled across a great website called EnableMart. It is kind of like an Amazon for assistive technology. It has things as simple as large print keyboards and magnifiers for computer screens as well as more advanced tools. The large print keyboard and magnifier would be very helpful in a classroom that has a student with vision problems. An example is the Headmouse Extreme, which “provides precise and efficient head-controlled access to computers” (EnableMart.com). This particular tool would be extremely valuable with a student with sensory and motor disabilities. This website provides assistive tools for people with a wide range of deficits and disabilities. It has tabs for speech and communication, learning and instruction, vision, hearing, sensory and motor skills, and even assistive technology for the elderly. I would encourage everyone to take a look at this site just to see how much technology is out there that can be used in the classroom or even at home. Some of these tools can make a huge difference in a child’s education and all teachers need to at least be aware of them. – Mitchell Lane

There are a lot of assistive technologies out there for use in the classroom as a teacher. I have found a program called word talk that I think would be useful when using Microsoft word in the classroom. This software can help students with reading and writing difficulties. Some of the features of this software is that it reads the text in the document as well as highlighting the text as it reads allowing for the student to follow along. There are numerous options that allow for customization. For access to this software go to this link.
Another interesting assistive technology that I found is called speedtype. Speedtype is software that is used to make typing easier for those that struggle with it. Speedtype is an abbreviation expanders otherwise known as shorthand. With this software those who have difficulty with typing or those that are slow can increase their output of word processing. By decreasing the time in which it take them to put a word document together this program could potentially help self-esteem and give them time for other projects. –John McPeek

Project #10 Teacher Interview

Unfortunatly the video portion of my interview is nothing but my desktop background but the audio and the meat of the interview is still intact. Here for your listening pleasure is me interviewing High School Art Teacher Anna Villareal from Toledo, OH.

C4K monthly summary

I had two comments for kids this month the first one was a student named Kama from little voices little people. This was a post welcoming Kama to the class. I extended a greeting and welcomed him into the class as well and said that I hope he enjoys his time learning.

The second comments for kids was Gloria from a School in England. She and a fellow classmate had done a brainstorm on Australian New Zealand Army Cooperation. I told her that she and her friend had done a wonderful job of showing support for their soldiers and that I hope to see more great posts from them.

C4T #3

I have had the great pleasure to read 2 posts from David Warlick on his blog The first one involve him talking about time travel and him coming back from the future to come to a conference. It was not a very long post but he did say that he would do some Q&A at the conference and that he met someone he wanted to and took a selfie with him so. The selfie that he took would go onto twitter and he would look it up in the twitter archives when he went back to the future. I told him that this was an interesting story and that I wished he would have elaborated more on the Q&A portion of the conference as I think it would have been very interesting.

In his second post he says a little about learning that their maybe two types. "personalized learning" which he classifies as being able to be packaged, monetized, and marketed. While the other "personal learning" liberates learning. In my comment on the post I told him that I agree with his assessment and although I am not yet an instructor I hope that I will be able to tell the difference between the two.

Blog Post 11

I watched the 1st one, and it has some awesome stuff discussed. To begin with, he talks about how he deals with students that are not high in knowledge, not just because of their grade level (4th) but instead because most of them did not even know what country they lived in. He talks about a weather balloon project that they did in class and the different aspects that went along with it. Not only did it have science and math, but also some language arts and literary aspects. The students were engaged throughout the entire project, and learning became a serious experience to them. Using the web to talk to people, conduct research and even give presentations about the project to other classes across the globe the students had their work cut out for them. - Greg

Sam Pane is a 5th grade teacher at Wilson Focus School in Nebraska, Tennessee. In the video, Sam Pane is teaching his students on how to be good “digital natives”, denizens, or, frequent users of the internet. To teach his students how to be good digital natives, he has his students create their own webcomic that stars a superhero that they themselves create via a online program that allows you to create a superhero. I think that is perhaps the best idea for a lesson EVER. Seriously, I wish I could have done neat stuff like that when I was in elementary school. Shoot, I make my own superheroes every now and again already, it’d be something I’m already awesome at, heh. The hard part though is coming up with a good name for your hero or heroine. This just further reinforces the fact that if you make lessons fun, it’ll make children become much more engaged and passionate about whatever it is they’re learning, mostly because it won’t really feel like learning. Also, by having your students create something, it instills a sense of ownership, a sense of pride in whatever it is they’re creating. - Jeffrey Brazeal

In a video called Project Based Learning by Dean Shareski, we get to see yet another classroom that is fully utilizing Project-Based Learning. In this classroom, multiple subjects are actually combined. So, students aren’t participating in a class that is divided up into “periods” or “blocks”. It’s all one classroom that is being taught by three or so teachers. It’s a very interesting system, though the teachers do talk about how difficult it was to put such a system in place. But, it was worth it. This video further proves just how effective Project-Based Learning is (as though you really needed more proof, heh). - Jeffrey Brazeal

Heres #2:
Paul Andersen teaches AP Biology at a high school in Bozeman, Montana. His video may only be ten minutes long, but it is packed with valuable information. He introduces his style of teaching as a blended learning cycle. He combines blended learning and its three components: online, classroom, and mobile with a learning cycle that aims to engage, explore, expand, explain, and evaluate. He created a mnemonic device to remember the steps of his blended learning cycle. He uses the word quiver. First he presents a question. Second, he encourages inquiry/investigation. Third, he uses video to further explain his topic. Fourth, he elaborates upon the material. This step involves reading and being able to pull valuable, relevant material from text. Next, he reviews his students in small groups so that he can verify that they fully understand the material covered. Finally, once all other steps are reached, he tests his students with a summary quiz over a few units. This was a very helpful video that I'm sure I will be looking back to for inspiration in the future. - Mitchell Lane

Video #3
This video by Mark Church is a promotion for his book Making Thinking Visible. In this video Mark has put his students into groups and encourages them to talk about what they have learned up to this point. While they are discussing the topic the students are to come up with a headline about what they have learned. Mark then states that after a couple of weeks they will revisit the headlines and see what headline they would now come up with. This was a very interesting way of getting students involved in a project. I believe that this would be a good way to get the students interested at the very beginning of a project to see how time and a little more learning about a subject can change their outlook on things.- John McPeek

Video #6
In this video Roosevelt Elementry highlights their Project Based Learning teachers and students. They talk about all the aspects of PBL that help the children grow. One of these aspects that they highlight is that of public speaking. PBL really helps in these lower level classrooms to get children comfortable speaking to groups. Another thing that is highlighted in this video is collaborative work. This skill is a great thing to teach at this early level of learning because it’s what most adults have to do at work anyhow and to learn how to do it effectively and efficiently at this age can only help the students as they grow and learn. The last thing that is highlighted is how much the students enjoy it. The video has parents of children that are in the class tell of how it is helping their child and how much their child is learning using this method as well as how much they enjoy PBL. The aspect that children are loving PBL is what has brought me to believing how powerful a learning tool it can be. - John McPeek