Apps Review

Google Documents

Google documents is an app that I have used many times in my career as a special education teacher. The app has worked well to create team reports on individual students after their special education evaluation is completed. The process we use is that one staff member creates a document with the report template and then shares it with the rest of the team members. Team members then input their test scores for the student on their own time. As each change is being made, the document is automatically saved. Once everyone has their part in, we are able to print the complete report. Another our school staff has found for Google documents is planning our social gatherings such as staff breakfasts and wedding showers. The event coordinator creates a list of needed items and shares it with the staff. Each staff member is then able to access the document to see what is still needed and sign up to bring something. Google documents is also useful because it is linked with Google drive which is a great way to store and access documents from any device that is connected to the internet. Another feature I like about the app is that you are able to use many of the same formatting tools that you would find on Microsoft Word. They are easy to find and user friendly.


PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an photo editing app that I had not previously used. The first thing I liked when accessing the app was that you didn't need to create an account or sign in to be able to use the photo editor. This made it quick and easy to get started. There were many different tools that could be used to enhance the photo including text, backgrounds, shapes and images that could be overlaid, and more. Photos could then be saved to the computer or shared on Facebook, Twitter, etc. When trying some of the different editing tools, I thought this app could be fun to use to create holiday cards for a family or even for students. Students could even edit a photo of themselves by adding text or holiday headings. These could be printed off on the regular classroom picture and then colored by the students. I think this would be a fun activity that both the students and their parents would love. One thing that I would have liked to see in the app that I didn't find was a way to store the edited photos online or create an album that could be shared with others. Either this option was not available through this app or if it was it was not user friendly or easy to find.

Google Sites

Here is a link to the classroom website I created on google sites. I included a map for parents to find the location of our school and a calendar with the national holidays on it. I also included our classroom handbook with information about our program. I included photos of some of the centers in our classroom for parents to get an idea of some of the activities we offer.

bubbl.us

This is a concept map that I could use to explain to parents or other teachers how students qualify for the Early Childhood Developmental Delay program for which I teach. Since my students are not readers, I would not use bubble.us with the students directly, but could use it with parents or the staff team.

Jing

This screencast video shows how I would use a social story on SMART notebook to teach my students about the rules for our center/play time. Since my 3-6 year old students don't yet use the computer independently, I chose to show how I would use the SMART board lesson with them. This is an activity I use for several days in a row at the beginning of each school year. I read the story to them and then demonstrate how to use the clips and point out the location of each center.

Flat Stanley Map Lesson

For my lesson, I would create a google map to go along with the story Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. In the story, a board falls on a boy named Stanley, making him flat. Stanley then mails himself around the world in envelopes to visit his friends.

For my lesson, my students would first read the story. They would then create paper portraits of themselves and name them "Flat (their name)". Each student would be asked to mail several copies of their flat self around the world to different cities or states. They would include a letter asking the recipients to send a return letter addressed to our class and perhaps include a photo or postcard of something from their part of the world. We would then document all of the locations that we received letters from on our google map by saving the locations. The map of all of the locations could be displayed on the SMART board each day or week to show the locations on the map that go along with the letters and photos we would be reading or looking at. We could then also interact with our map by going to street view or weather to explore the different places our flat selves have visited. The map below is just an example of a world map with several locations marked. Our map would be similar but would contain many more pegs.



View Nairobi in a larger map

Podcasts

Here is a link to the "Sid the Science Kid" podcast from PBS kids.  It can be found on iTunes. The episodes I listened to were "Summer Activities To Do With Your Preschooler" and "Science Centers." This would be an appropriate podcast to use to get ideas for my Early Childhood Special Education classroom. In the summer activities episode, they talk about ideas about integrating science activities during everyday summertime life. Some examples include learning about temperature after feeling cold coming out of a pool or doing some planting and gardening. In science center episode, they talk about the benefits of visiting science centers (or a museum). They give personal experiences of visiting these places with their own children and ideas for types of places to visit. Other topics that can be learned about on Sid's podcasts are libraries, play time, literature, or different holidays. This website could be useful for either parents our teachers working with preschool age children.

Multimedia

Early Signs of Autism

My nieces and nephew

View Larger Map
My School

Photobucket

Click here to view my photobucket.

Delicious

My link is:

delicious.com/jessicalouzon

Link to my wiki

Click here to visit my wiki page.

Week 2 Reflection

      -What are your early impressions of using a blog and what was your experience using an RSS Reader this week? Any surprises, pleasant or otherwise?

The blog was easy to set up and easy to add information. I feel that it could be a useful tool for communication with my special education students’ families. That being said, it would be an easy way for me to get the information out there, but I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to access it. I know that there are many obstacles for the parents of my students that may be in the way of them accessing the blog. Some of these include lack of access to a computer, busy schedules at home and looking up the blog may take longer than pulling a note out of their child’s folder, lack of knowledge about how to use a computer, and parents’ own disabilities making reading difficult.

The RSS reader was also simple to set up. I’d never heard of or tried this tool before. I don’t read a lot of blogs on a regular basis, so I’m not sure how useful it would be in my daily life and I’m not sure it’s something I would really use with my students or parents either. I could see this tool possibly being useful for those who work with older students. Perhaps, the teacher could create an assignment where students use Feedly to follow current events or receive updates in certain subjects they are studying.

       

      -Which part(s) of Dale’s Cone do you think each tool (Blog, RSS) lends itself best to and why?

    Since there are many different uses for blogs and so many options to consider while creating one, there is a range on the cone where different blogs could best fit.  Most uses fall in the more abstract zones. Some blogs may contain only written information. These blogs would be on the very top of the cone. Other blogs may include words and diagrams and fall into the second section to the top.  This could be a teacher’s blog that writes information about reading lessons and attaches pictures of diagrams that could be used to help children with comprehension (i.e. Venn diagrams). Many if not most blogs probably fall into the next two sections, “recordings, and radio, and still pictures” or “motion pictures.” Most blogs offer many visual images to go along with the information. This could include a teacher’s blog who shows pictures of classroom activities or a family blog with family photos. Some blogs may include video recordings of lessons or family moments. Although most blogs probably end at this level, I think there is potential to use them at higher levels on the cone. For example, a teacher could link a demonstration of a science experiment that students could repeat at home.

    Since the RSS links to blogs, I believe that they both would be on the same level on the cone. The RSS simply creates access to the information in the blog and doesn’t offer any information on it’s own.

       

-Considering Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination”, what do you think would be at least one “imaginative” educational use of each tool (blog, RSS) that takes advantage of each tool’s inherent strengths? That is, what do you think you and/or your students could use these tools for that they might not be able to do with other more simple or low-tech tools? Or, as Postman might ask, what is a problem to which each of these tools is an answer?

            I could use Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination” to create a blog that gives information to my students’ parents.  I could use some of the web’s strengths listed in the article such as integrating multimedia into the blog. I could do this by linking a voice recording of the notes I send home for parents who have difficulty reading. I could create a link to google translator for my Spanish speaking families.  I could create videos of some of my classroom lessons to show parents things we are working on in class in order to help them also work on them at home. I could create community by posting information about parent support groups and other school activities. The blog could be made interactive by having parents answer questions on an online survey to specific questions that would guide them to the best resources to help their child or family. The blog could be easily updated with the most up-to-date classroom calendars and newsletters.  Postman might say that this tool could solve the problem of communicating with parents who have limited time, limited reading skills, or who don’t speak English.

            Since I wouldn’t likely use feedly with my young students, I could use on my own to stay in touch with old friends. I could create links to blogs of people I went to college or high school with.  This would be a good use of the tool because of the time it would save and the greater access I would have to information about people I wouldn’t otherwise be able to stay in touch with.  To answer Postman’s question, this tool may solve the problem of keeping up to date with many individuals in a limited amount of time.

Week 1 Reflection- Jessica Louzon

            After reading the articles by Reigelith & Joseph and Postman, it is clear that the authors of each article have very different opinions on technology. There are points in each that I can understand and agree with, but I also believe they are each a bit off on other things.

            In the Postman article, he wrote about questioning the purpose of education before implementing new technology. I agree that this is an important part of the process that does often get overlooked in the schools. I think that schools often just use the technology with the purpose of teaching kids to use technology rather than using it as a tool to solve a problem or improve the teaching of the curriculum. I also liked his point about the function of schools including learning how to be a member of a community. With the recent push toward online learning in K-12^th grade, I have been concerned that this would be missed.

            One thing I disagreed with in Postman’s article was his comment about the problem of getting information to people fast being solved long ago. He mentioned that the telegraph did this. I think he missed an important point that there are more than one solution to problems and some are better than others. Using his logic, we could also say that the problem of needing to get from one place to another more quickly was solved with the invention of the horse buggy. I think most of us would agree that the car may be a more practical solution and are glad that we didn’t consider that problem solved long ago.  Another problem that I had with this point was that getting information to people fast is not the only problem that we can solve using technology. I have special education some special education students who have a problem. They are unable to speak and communicate. Using an iPad to touch pictures to communicate solves their problem. I have had other students who have a problem with attending to group activities. Technology helped solve their problem by making the activity bigger and more interactive on the SMART board.

            In the Reigeluth & Joseph article, I was at first surprised at their comment that “To date, technology has had a minimal impact on K-12 education in the united states.” Then, when I looked back at the year 2002, I thought about the changes before and after that date and began to think he may have been on the right track. As a teacher, the technology in the classroom has changed dramatically since then. I also liked their discussion about the shift from a sorting paradigm to a learning paradigm. I feel that this has been especially important in the area of special education. Technology has done wonders for helping my special education students learn and communicate. If it weren’t for the increased focus on the learning paradigm, schools would not have continued to invest the time and money into technology for my special education students. They would have been sorted out and put to the side as less important. Technology has also allowed for differentiation. For example, having iPads in the classroom allows one student to work on an addition app while another works on identifying numerals. The attainment-based system is a much better fit than the time based system for my special education students.

            In conclusion, I think it is important to look at our purpose in education before implementing technology. I have seen both pros and cons to different uses and it is important to evaluate these things both before and after implementation.