Assistive Technology

Assistive technology is technology that lets people with disabilities do things that they might have otherwise not been able to do.  Assistive technology can range from self powered wheelchairs to computer programs for the visually impaired.  As with every type of technology these days assistive technology is a fast growing field with advances being made everyday.

After looking at assistive technology in general I decided to focus on visually impaired students. I feel like all of us will have to deal with a visually impaired student during some point in our teaching careers. Recent polls show that more and more people are lacking health insurance, which usually includes some form of eye care. If students do not have access to glasses because their parents cannot afford it you will need to take steps to make sure that the student is given the best chance to learn possible. If you notice a student straining to see what is on the board, or they have their nose practically on any paper that they are reading they may have a visual problem. Most of these types of problems can be solved by just moving the student closer to the board, or getting some large print material. If the problem is serious enough you may check with your school nurse to see if there are any programs out there to get the student a free or reduced priced pair of glasses.

Next I am going to talk about students that have more serious visual impairment issues. These students will not be helped by moving closer to the board, or something that basic. They will need much greater help in being able to read and see classroom material. Many great new tools have come into the market in the last few years. There are screens that you can put a book under and it enlargens the print of the book. This can save money in the long run, as you do not need to get as many books in large print.  There are also board magnifiers that can enlargen the images on the board on a computer screen that sits on the students desk. The list could go on and on with all the new technology out there. The most important thing to remember is that you should talk to your students and their family ahead of time, and to have everything in place for the student beforehand. This can help to save on any embarrassment that the student may feel. In my resources I will link the website that I looked at that has a lot of useful assistive technology for the visually impaired.

Resources:

http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?109

http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/lv/lowvision-products.asp

http://standards.gov/standards_gov/assistiveTechnology.cfm

Video in the classroom

For our recent assignment on tech tools I looked at the website from Edutopia about using online video in the classroom.  Using online videos in your classroom can be a very beneficial way to enrich a learning unit, but there are some basic things that you should know before you use them.

There is nothing quite like actually seeing what you are learning, and in a perfect world you would be able to show all of these things to your students first hand. But we all know that that is not possible, so the next best thing can be to show your students through video. Youtube is a great place to find very helpful videos, but there are some things that you need to take into account before using them. Many school districts block sites such as Youtube because of the content that is on the site. You need to check to see if you can access the site first, if you cannot you may need to save the video to your desktop then save it in a different format.  Also, with all the inappropriate videos that are out there you need to make sure that you are linked to one you want. I suggest doing your searches on your own, and copying the exact link. This way when your students get to class you can only pull up the exact video that you want.

Online videos can also be a great resource when you are wanting to see a certain type of lesson taught, or a new teaching technique. There are lots of good websites that you can view actual classes being taught showing what you want to teach. This can give you great ideas about how to use the teaching technique in your class.

With anything, though, online videos have their downfall. Teachers should not let it become the main point of the lesson. Rather teachers should use online videos to supplement what they are already teaching. Also, in elementary school you want to make sure that the videos are short and to the point. This way your students will not get bored watching a long drawn out video. As discussed earlier in class there is always the issue of copyright. Most online video use will be protected under the "Fair Use Clause." But if you are concerned that you might be infringing on someone's copyright you can always email the creator of the video about using it, or check with an administrator about using the video in the correct manner.

My thoughts on blogs

Blogs are a lot like people in the sense that no two are the same. I guess that this shouldn't come as a surprise since blogs are created by people after all.  After looking at almost all the blogs of everyone in this class, and the few that i chose to follow the thing that kept sticking out to me was the uniqueness of each blog. For instance the last blog post that most of us did for class was about copyright. We all had the same few articles to choose from, but yet we all wrote very different things. It is so interesting to me that we can all read the same thing and take away such different things from it. I guess that as teachers that can be an important thing to remember, that when you have your students read something they may all come up with different opinions about it.

I think that each blogs uniqueness is what can make them so useful. It would not be much of a help if all education blogs took the same stance on every issue. It is really nice to be able to want to learn something new about a topic and have so many different opinions on the topic right at your fingertips. This way you can spend some time learning about different points of view, and you may even see something in a way that you would never have thought possible before. I think that this is a huge benefit for teachers that no generation of teachers has had before. I hope that everyone uses all of these great new resources to their full benefit.

What is Copyright????

For my blog post on copyright I chose to read the article "The Purpose of Copyright" by Lydia Pallas Loren. According to this article the purpose copyright law is expressly spelled out in the Constitution. That goal is to "promote the process of knowledge and learning." Before reading this article I did not really know that much about copyright, or any history behind how we got to where we are today. This article did a good job of explaining how we got to where we are today and the current problems that are facing copyrights.

After reading this article I saw that I was one of the general public that has been led to believe that the main purpose of copyrights is to protect the work that people have done. But this article shows that the framers of the Constitution thought of copyright laws as a way spur discoveries and innovation. Recently all new copyright reform that has been enacted has benefited the holders of the copyright and has not done much to protect the people that use the work to innovate, or do something for the public good.

As teachers I think that it is important to remember that many, if not all, of the material that you use in class is based on someone else's work. Most of it though is meant for educational uses through workbooks and things like that. Where teachers need to be careful is when playing videos, or using material that is outside of the normal class curriculum. After reading the article it seems that most educational uses are protected under the Fair Use Act. But it is always a good idea to get permission before using someone else's work. For students it is important that they know when they use a source for a paper or project that they correctly site it. It is important for teachers to teach students about the proper ways to cite sources, and when they need to do it. Because if they do not learn the proper citation rules when they are young it can lead to much bigger problems as they enter high school and college.

Education Blogs

I was really surprised with how many different education blogs there are out there. There were way more out there then I thought there would be, all you have to do is type "teacher's blog" into Google and you get millions of hits.  There was also a very wide variety of blogs out there. You could find a blog on almost any topic ranging from high school art education to projects for a kindergarten class.

These sits can be helpful to teachers in many different ways. Since there are so many blogs out there you could find one that deals with whatever you want to look at. If you are having problems with classroom management you can find a blog to help with that. The only thing that I worry about is that none of the blogs are regulated by anyone so you have to be careful what information you take away from a blog because you never really know who wrote it. This is why when I was searching for blogs I stayed with ones that were from the websites that were linked in class so I knew that they were reputable. One of the most helpful things I think that education blogs can do is to keep you up to date on education policy issues. Education policy is always changing, and it is nice to see that there are lots of blogs out there that take the time to go through the policy changes, and put them in a format that you can understand. They also explain how the changes affect teaching.  I also think that blogs can be used for troubleshooting problems. No matter what the problem is you can find a blog to help you make a good decision on how to fix the problem.

Here is the list of blogs that I looked at:

Education Policy Blog
educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com


Education Week-Bridging Differences
blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences


This Week in Education
scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/ 


The Teacher's Desk
http://www.theteachersdesk.com/ 


The blog that I chose to follow for the semester is The Teachers Desk. This is not really your standard blog, but more of a helpful website full of information. There are sections to help you with different parts of teaching, and there is also a section for teachers to post there own stories. The main thing that I liked about this blog was how many different helpful sections there were, and not just one author writing about one subject.