Various Software Programs

Today was probably the most beneficial day for me thus far in this class. Everything we have discussed to this point has been things that I have known and used personally but not necessarily in my classroom. Today, all of the tools with the exception of Animoto were new and exciting for me.

I am exceptionally thrilled and excited about the uses of Jing in my class. With this program I can create a variety of videos instructing my kids on how to do things without me being with them 24/7. This will be beneficial in allowing me time to focus on one child's needs while another works independently with the assistance of Jing. This program was just phenomenal. After creating my captioned video I went back and recorded it with Jing so that I will always have the captioned video, regardless of whether it is pulled off the Internet.

When comparing Animoto and Slide, I personally prefer Animoto. I felt that it had more to offer and was user friendly. I am probably just biased as I had used Animoto previously. They both have potential in the classroom. The students could use these to create projects. They could create an "All About Me" project at the beginning of the year that tells the class about them. They could also use Animoto to create a variety of videos related to other projects in class.

Voice Thread was neat. I was able to take a few pictures that I had floating around of my kids and an activity we did on the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme two years ago. By using the pictures and voice input I was able to create a neat little video that my kids would enjoy watching of themselves, while also getting exposure to the nursery rhyme. Some other uses would be for the students to create a video with voice input on a project or something they have studied to share with the class. For a child that is shy, this would be a great way for them to work in peace at home and then share without the nervous aspect in front of class.

The video captioning tools were interesting. I thought it would be more difficult to caption a video than it was. I was pleasantly surprised. This will definitely be a beneficial tool for my kids as they get older. I see this tool as more of an auditory exercise in my class. It was great practice for me in using my cochlear implants. Practice is something we never quit doing. People with cochlear implants are always practicing to improve what they hear. This would be a great way for my students to practice entering what they hear, and then perfecting it to the best of their ability.

All of these tools were excellent, and I am really excited about using these in my classroom in the future.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking has been hiding from me and I wish I had known it. This is an awesome tool that allows me to bookmark sites quickly and efficiently without the hassle of school networks. There have been many times that I have found a site at home that I wanted to use at school. I had one of three ways to get it on my school computer. 1) write it down and hope I didn't mess up the URL. 2) Email the link to myself. 3) Search for the link again when I got to school.

With social bookmarking all of those steps are eliminated. I simply press a button, and the site is magically saved to my files online. Then when I get to school I can log onto the site and voila there is the website I wanted. I wish I had heard about this earlier. This has definitely made things easier for me.

One of the most beneficial uses I will get out of social bookmarking is being able to share with other teachers of the deaf. Very few of us exist and when we find a website we love we go through the trouble of emailing the link to all the teachers we know. With social bookmarking I can provide the URL and they can check periodically to see if I have anything new in my site.

This is also going to be a great tool for me when trying to find information on math, science, or social studies. These are not subjects that I teach other than a small unit here or there. With social bookmarking I can find out what sites others recommend without having to spend as much time searching myself.

Lots of possibilities.

Webquests--My Thoughts

Web-quests are an interesting way of incorporating class lessons and technology. I think web-quests would be a great thing to use for themed projects. In my class I don't focus a lot of academics, but when I do I think using web-quests would be a great way to do it.

I am debating creating web-quests for the few academic lessons that I will teach throughout the year. I will be teaching a lot of science this year to my kids and I think web-quests will be a great way to incorporate science and technology to make learning fun for my kids.

My students take a little longer than average students to learn things related to various factors. Therefore I think by using a web-quests for academic units I could help myself by planning one really good lesson that covers a larger time span and provides a multitude of activities and experiences all of which might not be done online.

I am also considering creating some web-quests related to the literature that one of my students will be learning in reading. He does not receive enough background and support in class alone. Through web-quests and a variety of other activities I could provide him with background knowledge about the person before he studies them in class. This would make his experience more successful, however this also requires proper notice from the classroom teacher to enable me to create the lessons properly.

Threaded Discussions

Threaded discussions are great for using when conversing about particular topics. The most beneficial feature of a threaded discussion is the visuals that are provided. When looking at the discussions you can tell who is responding where based on the lines that connect the replies to the post that is being responded to.

I had a hard time thinking of a way to use threaded discussions in my classroom. Then one of my peers mentioned through the threaded discussion were were having about putting up questions of the day for students to answer.

In my classroom I could post a few questions for the week and have the students respond at their pace. I would have to assist one student in entering his responses, but that would not take a long period of time.

If I use this tool in my classroom, I would post questions such as...
1) What did you do this weekend?
2) What is one thing you learned about last week?
3) What is something you want to learn about this week?
4) What is something you have heard about, that you want to learn more?

I would ask a variety of questions about different things to guide possible units for vocabulary instruction in my classroom, as well as other things. My students lack in world knowledge so this would be a way to find out what they might be interested in to explore further.

I also considered using this with one of my higher students. We usually read a book together throughout the week focusing on comprehension. I thought about possibly putting up some things to think about or questions at the beginning of a unit and have him answer as he is ready. I could then respond to him via the discussion. I think this would also help with his spelling/grammar if I could find a threaded discussion that had an automatic spell check program. He is able to recognize the correct word, but not always write it.

It has some potential that I am interested in exploring within my class. I don't know what works till I try.

Tweet Tweet--Using Twitter in the classroom

I will say that I was surprised to read on the syllabus that we were going to use Twitter. I have avoided this program like the plague since it came out. I did not understand all the hype about it and I am still not sure I do.

So I took the journey...not my choice and explored Twitter. My verdict...it's not too bad. Twitter is more time efficient for updates than Facebook. This is mainly because on Facebook you have to scroll all the way down through people's updates and all the comments to them, etc. Not to mention, some of the updates posted on Facebook can be rather lengthy.

So with that in mind I do like Twitter from the aspect of speed with reading updates. I can scroll through and see what I want to about certain people without having as much excess stuff to read. However I don't particularly care for the set-up of Twitter. With Facebook everything is together, the update is followed by the comments. In Twitter it can be difficult at times to follow the updates because they are not linked together, especially if it is a response to another person.

Could I use Twitter in my classroom. Honestly, I don't see a way at the moment. I am still pondering this thought. I only have two students that I am with regularly and I don't think either of them would get benefit out of using Twitter to update things.

If anyone has ideas...I would love to hear them.

Blogging about blogging

The article (Zwalinski) I read today in class talked about four different uses of blogs within a classroom. They were used to share news with parents, mirror blogs (reflecting on one's thinking), showcase blogs (used to display student work), and literature response blogs (used to respond to literature in class). All of these were interesting uses of blogs in a classroom that had never crossed my mind. When trying to transfer what I read to my classroom I had difficulty thinking of uses.

While this was a challenge for me, I did think of two ways that I could use blogs in my class. I could use a blog as a method of keeping in touch with my students' parents. I already write in their school-to-home journals daily, and I talk to the parents on the phone at least twice a week. However blogging could provide a more time efficient manner of communication for both myself and the parents. Through a classroom blog I could let them know when field trips are coming up, or what permission slips need to be returned as well as a short note about how the day went in general.

I visualize getting more use out of a blog in my room through letting the parents know ahead of time about the units we will be studying in class. Most of my units are themed and focus on particular vocabulary. If I structured the blog well I could provide the parents with vocabulary to start using at home without providing any identifying information that would breach confidentiality based on IEPs.

For example:
The vocabulary I teach is tiered based upon difficulty and frequency of use in language. If the parents know what tier their child is on, I could then list the words for each tier without anyone knowing where the kids are other than the parents. I would not have to identify a specific child.

I am curious about this possiblity of using a blog to let parents know what vocabulary to start using because this would save me about an hour and a half a week that I spend writing the information in their personal journals. I am going to explore this further, and hopefully start getting a blog set up.

What is Literacy?

I view literacy as a tool for communication. I feel that communication and therefore literacy has four parts: reading, writing, speaking, listening. In my experience as a teacher I have found that you need all four aspects to be considered literate by the world. However, the question I am often asking is “Is one part more important than the other?”

What if there is a Deaf child that cannot hear or speak (they use ASL to communicate at school and home). But imagine if that child also cannot read or write. What are the implications of not being able to complete any of the four tasks I have listed as a part of literacy? The implications are major...to the extent of being isolated in your own world and therefore not literate.
What does this all mean....if there are four parts of literacy: reading, writing, listening, and speaking then which is the most important? Is it more important to be able to read than to speak? To listen rather than write? This is the question I ask because on a daily basis I work with a child that essentially cannot read or write and he is 12 years old. Yet he cannot speak fluent sentences either. Most of his sentences are three words long, and they are not usually grammatically correct. He can listen, but he doesn't always understand and you have to talk to him in five word utterances. So, is this child literate? No, not in my opinion. But what skill do I target? Do I try to teach him to talk correctly so that he can be understood and have his wants/needs met? Do I teach him to read so he can fill out medical forms, or a job application? Do I teach him to write so he can pay his bills? Most people would say that you should teach all of the skills...and I agree and do teach them. But is there one skill that has dominance over the others? You tell me...