Assistive Technologies

This could be the first article in the Educational Leadership magazine where I only have good things to say. The idea of being able to use technology that is very specific to helping students with learning disabilities is a fantastic one. I am enthusiastically for anything that can help students develop grade level reading and writing skills.

• The ultimate beauty of this technology is that many students can read grade level text without a teacher
• It gives students the wonderful feeling of independent accomplishment

Read & Write Gold sounds like some good software with the text to speech that students can listen to at their own pace. The writing software that instantaneously gives students a choice of words that they may be trying to use, can only be positive because the student still has to figure out what the correct word would be. The software does not do all of the thinking for the student.

Believe it or not Sitka High has some type of related technology. I have several students who use it, but I don’t know exactly what it is, and I would guess that there are a lot of teachers that don’t know about it. I am now feeling rather ridiculous not having experienced it with one of my students. I will do this soon.

The Over Dominance of Computers

I have a small problem with the analogies at the beginning of this article that are not analogous to the author’s argument. Comparing youthful computer use to alcohol use or driving a car as a youth is too much of a stretch. This sort of thing makes me leery as to how much hyperbole I’m going to have to swallow, and it makes me mentally discount any statement that is vague or is not backed up by reasonable studies or statistics.

His suggestion that since we are teaching computer literacy to students we are not teaching certain values like, “commitment, loyalty and tradition” is an argument that could be made for just about any subject.

However, just because his argument process is weak, it doesn’t mean that the essence of what he is saying is wrong. The article has a solid core of truth; we don’t need to be pushing major computer literacy on young children and there are more important things to be teaching.

The main ideas that can be lost in this rambling article are:

• Students still need to be prepared for the world of technology
• The authentic world, and worldly values, are critical parts of student growth
• Parents and teachers need to recognize and secure a balance between both worlds

short fiction

I will have students write a work of short fiction using the story map as a guide, once they start writing the actual story they must stay very close to the original story map.The reason is that beginning writers of short fiction usually have problems with randomly straying from the main point.The other main aspect of this is that the core of the story should be at least loosely based on some real experience, and then fiction can be added on, like frosting and colorful little burning candles on a birthday cake.
I decided to go with just one image on this video because I thought it would go along with the idea of singleness of effect, which is one of the main points of this writing lesson along with staying focused on the core of the story. I chose one image
that I thought generally expressed the idea. This is not at all necessary, in fact I originally had a whole group of images picked out to use, but then decided to do it this way simply to emphasize the point.

The lesson for creative writing students is to use the story map as the core and then once the core is established the writer can expand using:

• dialogue
• description
• character development

But not:
• additional characters
• extra plot development

The story I posted on Teacher Tube follows these rules, it has a core of real experience and then just story telling all around the core. I think that using movie maker with its time limit along with a story map will be an excellent tool for short fiction and non -fiction writers. It really works by forcing a writer to stay within the story.
You can find my story example by going to teacher tube.




A rubric for the digital story can be found at
Google Docs

story map

This project is going to be about students learning how to take something from their life experiences and use it as the core for a piece of fiction. Staying with the general idea that you should write what you know. It will be okay,in fact necessary to add fiction to this core of fact. One of the biggest problems all writers and especially novice writers have with short fiction is keeping the story line focused. Since this is a piece of short fiction it is critical for writers to keep focused on the main story details. The story map will work to help develop plot and keep writers focused on a central idea. My story map takes an actual experience I had, and then quickly expands into fiction. This story map will be used an example for students on how to do this, as well as showing students some basic elements of short fiction.

Philosophy of Education Movie Maker and Me

I would have to agree that the movie maker is a bit clunky. I would think that having another channel to record would be a simple thing, and it probably is a simple thing, they just want you to buy it, and I guess that’s fair enough. So I ended up buying a twelve dollar microphone for my laptop and I played my i tunes on my computer, and then held the mic up to the speakers for a few seconds and then pulled it away and started talking, then when I was finished talking I put the mic back by the speakers again to finish.I did this so I could have music in the back ground while I was talking. This all sounds pretty simple, but it took a lot of tries to get it even close to right. And then when I finally got one that was at least okay, I listened to it, and noticed that I read my philosophy wrong. The vocals are a little soft too, but no matter what I did I kept getting those popping "P's", so I had to keep the vocals down, probably should have spent more on a microphone, the one I borrowed from Sitka High was even worse than the one I bought.
I published it anyway because I figured at this point in time everybody’s eyes glaze over and their minds go in a fog when they hear the words, “philosophy of education". But actually I had a lot of fun doing this,but I think it would have been more fun on a Mac.
So if you want to take look it's on teacher tube.

TOOLS FOR THE MIND

Tools for the Mind

There is a lot of validity to what the author of this article is saying. For example the idea that most of the computer use by students is limited to research based projects. There is definitely an abundance of going to the computer lab, and just finding some information on something, and using Word to write about it. And then, of course, there is plenty cutting and pasting going on too. I’m coming from a language arts base so there will always be more research type computer use in language arts.
The author is right on about this lower level thinking process that is going on with computer use, and I think she is right in saying that we need to move beyond that to developing some high order processes with computer use. But there are some big steps to take to get there.

Reference Points:
• It’s true that most computer use in schools requires only lower order thinking.
• Higher level activities for computer use will take much more time and energy than the lower order activities.
• Critics should start offering solutions instead of just pointing to our panoply of problems.


I think this article would have greater impact if the author would give us more of the “how to,” instead of “where to.” She has astutely recognized the problem, but it would be nice to see some more details on how to get where we need to be. The really tough part is mentioned, but somewhat brushed aside. The author mentions that the higher order tools are not as user friendly, and they are time intensive to use and to learn, and this is a major factor contributing to the stuck in the muck of the lower order thinking levels with computers. In the end, I have to completely agree that it’s time for more analytic skills to be brought into the computer room. I guess I just didn’t want somebody to remind me that there is even more work to do.

Power Point Presentation on Energy
Self Critique

One of the first things I noticed while watching my video was that I managed to break the Cardinal Rule of talking in front of a group, and that was chewing gum, yuk, at least the video is a little bit dark so you can’t see it too much, because it is a little embarrassing. Also I think it would have been nice to have some kind of a pointer instead of using the video remote as a pointer. Also I need to work on voice projection, maybe if I didn’t have that big wad of gum in my mouth I would have sounded better.

Another big thing is that I was not as prepared as I should have been to actually give a presentation. I knew the material, but when you get up to do a presentation just knowing the material isn’t good enough, at least not for me, I know I’m not any good at “winging it”. I thought I could follow along with the PowerPoint and it would all go smoothly. It did go all right, but it wasn’t good. It actually makes interesting material boring if all you do is follow along with the presentation without making those interesting interjections that you should be doing as a presenter.

Valuable Lessons Learned:

• Don’t speak dumb – get rid of the gum (I just now made that up, I kind of like it)

• Follow the Boy Scout motto: Always be prepared

Click here to see this PowerPoint presentation on Teacher Tube.