This week was all about getting more comfortable using the technology available in the school building, experiencing a twitter chat, and trying out Story Bird, which was recommended by a colleague. The classroom teachers that I co-teach with are always in charge of the projector, smart board, apple TV, and iPad mini. Unfortunately, support staff in our building does not have any of these cool tools. That results in a feeling of appearing slightly less competent when we teach in the general education room. I will take some of the blame, since I know they are used to these things, I let them do it all. That is why a teacher's absence was a blessing in disguise. I discovered that I am perfectly capable of managing the technology, even in her absence. I still used my personal iPad, since I don't know where she keeps the mini and I'm comfy with mine. Anyway, I managed to show the class a video, using the Apple TV and projector, and model the graphic organizer using the document camera with no problem. I'm growing up!
I participated in a Twitter chat, #nebedchat on Wednesday night. At first, it seemed random. Then I realized that I had to click "all tweets" in order to follow the entire conversation. After that, I enjoyed it. It was fast paced and fun! The moderators (not sure what they are actually called) posed a question (Q1, etc...) The answers are labeled by the participants (A1, etc...) so that everyone knows what they are responding to. I would do this again!
Story Bird will require more tinkering. I added a student to my class, but he has had to work on his book in my account, since we can't get his log-in to work. Once we work out this glitch, I will add other writers. It is awesome, because the illustrations trigger their imaginations, much like a good writing prompt. My student who struggles to write a sentence, has written a paragraph for each picture! THAT is worth a little extra time to figure out.
More Technology on the Way!
We learned yesterday, that our district will be providing 3-5th graders with their own Chromebooks, midyear. Also coming soon is text to speech as an accommodation for students with disabilities. I have used free text to speech applications, but they do not sound very natural. Hopefully this will be an improvement.
It was another exciting week in special education!
Delia, congratulations on making great progress this week! You figured out how to add to an ed chat and enjoyed it! You learned how to connect your iPad to the projector to teach. You are using tools from class and others from colleagues. You are growing as a teacher using technology. Congratulations! Excited to hear more about it tonight.
ReplyDeleteI love the way you seem to feel intrepid about technology, but yet you jump right in! You have done some awesome things with your students in very creative ways!
ReplyDeleteI am so proud of you Delia! Look at how far you have come since the first class. I loved your statement about the teacher being gone as a blessing in disguise! It really is just getting ouselves a little uncomfortable to help push us out of our comfort zones. I hope your students are loving this change as well! You using shadowpuppet also was a great way to help those students be more hands on with their learning.
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