Week 3

These week we looked at quite a few different resources including desktop publishing, bloom’s technology, and assistive technology. As I am not yet, teaching I haven’t made an fliers or newsletters, but I was a Zumba instructor for a year before an injury made my hobby come to a halt. I have made fliers advertising my Zumba classes I offered. What makes it visually appealing is all the bright colors and designs. You can’t help but look at something like this. It has the Zumba logo and my picture. 

I think what distracts from it is too much wording on one flier. Its overloaded. It needs to be sharp, simple and to the point, not long winded or you lose the audience halfway through! Some of the colors also need to be a little darker so you can seem them.

I was unable to use the Zumba logos again as I am not currently an instructor anymore, but this is how I would shorten the wording and make it a little easier to read. As I am not the greatest creator of fliers, I plan on working on this until I can be better at it.

We also looked at 4 technology explorations this week, assistive technologies, 4Teachers & Dimio, Full Measure, and WebQuests & Read to Words.

I am unfamiliar with assistive technology. The IDEA defines this as Any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of children with disabilities. The term does not include a medical device that is surgically implanted, or the replacement of such device. This definition is very board and lets the IEP teams decide what would be in the best interest of the student to utilize. A host of technology resources are available to support student performance, achievement, and independence in the following areas: academics and learning aids, aids to daily living, assistive listening and environmental aids for the hearing impaired and deaf, augmentative communication, computer access, leisure and recreation, seating, positioning, mobility, and vision. They also have resources for academics including math, reading, writing, spelling, study, and organizational skills. The Georgia Project for Assistive Technology (GPAT) is a part of the Georgia Department of Education which provides support to the local school systems in their efforts to provide assistive technology devices and services to students with disabilities. According to the website “The mission of GPAT is to improve student achievement, productivity, independence and inclusion by enhancing educator knowledge of assistive technology and increasing student access to appropriate assistive technology devices and services.” The IDEA mandates the school system’s responsibility to provide assistive technology devices and services to students with disabilities. If a student needs assistive technology, it should be documented with the IEP. GPAT has developed resources to assist educational teams in the implementation and integration of assistive technology into instructional activities.  They also provide sample lesson plans which include set up and follow up activities for each lesson. Educators can also receive tutorials, technology tips, and supplemental materials.

Zoho.com offers productivity and collaboration applications. To date they have launched 25+ applications including Office Suite and Web Conferencing. The collaboration application would be the best use for assistive technology, here you can create and store documents, chat, create and store projects, online web conferences, discussions, and creation of Wikis. The productivity applications include the creation of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and the use of a notebook where you can create, aggregation, and collaborate. I didn’t find any real testimonials where educators had used this; it seems to be more of a business benefit. I did see where some educators asked about their interest in Zoho, but they never came back to say if it worked out for them. There are different plans that you can purchase from free to $5 month per user. 

I am not currently a teacher, but I am definitely using something along the lines of this for my students. I know I will have some students in my classroom with disabilities and I am hoping to be able to use this assistive technology to help them. Since I am not sure what type of student’s disabilities I will come across, I will start with study and organizational skills. I plan on using Microsoft Word to help print out agendas and calendars. If I have students who have visual disabilities, I will use software such as screen readers and text enlargement programs so they maybe to see the PowerPoint content. As I have read through all the information on these websites, I have learned one big point which is the use of assistive technology depends on the needs of each student. Like I have learned, education is not a one size fits all!

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. Anything that is beneficial to special education students, is a must for me. It is our duty as teachers to make sure everybody receives an education. There is no cost for GPAT but very minimal cost for Zoho.com. The personal plan has one workspace, 1 GB storage, file processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools. The standard plan is $3 per month per user, and extra $3 for 5 GB. This plan has everything from the personal plan but includes password protector sharing, user management, role based access, and custom branding. The premium plan is $5 per month plus an extra $3 for 5 GB. This includes everything from the standard plan plus adding attachments into folders. Both seem very easy to use as long as you have some history with Microsoft.

4Teachers family of tools is a site of educational resources that use technology with all content areas and grade levels. These resources align with current standards and promote higher order thinking. 

TrackStar is place point for online lessons and activities. Teachers collect web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add explanations for your students, and you have an online lesson. You can either create one or search through a database by subject, grade, or standard. All tracks are reviewed to make sure they pass copyright laws. Appropriate material includes educational value, images, sounds, and language. There is also a tutorial to help you learn how to use TrackStar.

As we all know classroom management is very important. We need to provide a safe and nurturing environment inside and outside of the classroom. Classroom Architect helps you play with the layout of your room visually before you actually move the furniture.  You select the basic dimensions, drag objects to and around the grid and then print it out so that you have a hard copy to use to actually move the furniture.

Another tool that I thought was useful was the Assign-A-Day. Here teachers can create a calendar for each of their classes and add assignments for the students view. Students can use these calendars to view their assignments for their classes to keep up in class or see assignments they may have missed die to sick day. This can only be used for school; it is not for personal calendars. 

The other website we looked at DSpeech is a text to speech program with the ability of Automatic Speech Recognition integrated. It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. All programs are free, but he allows for donations. They also have this in numerous languages so that it is available to everybody.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. The 4Teachers tools that I picked can use be used in the classroom. TrackStar you can use to create and find lesson plans specifically for your classroom. The Classroom architect can be used to sketch out the layout for my classroom so that it is an inviting and fun environment for the students. Assign a day I can use to post a calendar of assignment so that my students can keep with them or find assignments that may have missed while they were out sick. These programs don’t have many variables, but generally one purpose but these are all something that can help you in the classroom. Dspeech is useful for the visual impaired. This can be used to any of your presentations or documents that can be read.  

I would recommend these for educators since they are very useful for the classroom. All of these are free to use and easy to use, the only one I question about is the DSpeech. It seems like it could be a questionable website and I would prefer to use PowerTalk since it seems more of a reliable site. All the sites from the 4Teachers are incredibly useful for teachers to build lesson plans, make a classroom layout, and establish a calendar for your classroom. The Dspeech is more to utilize in the classroom and would be helpful for the visually impaired.

I had heard of text to speech programs, but here you don’t have to buy software and uplaod it to your computer. PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation and slide from Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. The advantage over other Text To Speech programs is that it is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images. Speech is provided by the synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows 7 and Vista and XP. PowerTalk uses PowerPoint supplied with Microsoft Office to show the presentation. This is very beneficial to the limited sighted community. It is a good example of assistive 
technology. The only real requirement is you have to have PowerPoint 2000 or later.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to students with visual impairments. You could use this software to help students in your classroom who may not be able to see a PowerPoint presentation. As I plan on using PowerPoint to put my notes on, this would be an awesome resource which could allow the students to be an active participate in the classroom. You could also use it to read stories created by students.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. This would be a very important resource to use in the classroom for the visual disabled community. It is very easy to use since it works with PowerPoint which you should already have on your computer. There is no fee unless you have to purchase an updated version of Microsoft.

After looking WebQuest, I have bookmarked this for my future classes. I find inquiry based learning very interesting for my future science classrooms. WebQuests are a way to make good use of the internet while engaging my students in the world of web 2.0. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which the information that learners interact with comes from the internet. Here you can create, share, and search for WebQuest for the classroom. WebQuest include an introduction, a task, information sources, process, guidance, and then a conclusion. They are most likely to be group activities, use motivational elements, and can be designed with a single discipline or interdisciplinary. Short term goals include acquisition and integration while long term goals of these activities are extending and refining knowledge. They have links to websites that would help you getting started in constructing one with short term goals as well as a link to books you can purchase. The site allows for you to bring inquiry based learning into the classroom plus allows for the learning technological resources.

Read the words is where you can convert everything to speech. You can always write text, copy, and paste it into a text box. There is also a file upload section, where you can upload any Microsoft office document, Adobe PDF, txt, and HTML document. They have 15 voices and you can choose any reader that you want. You can also have someone read in French or Spanish. If you see the reader is mispronouncing a word you can try typing in the word phonetically. You can embed your recording in web pages, emails, and share on Facebook. There are video tutorials if you need them to get started. This site allows you to do more than just with the previous sites since these reads documents, but it doesn’t work with PowerPoint. You can custom create an avatar that talks to you. There is also a toolbar you can download that will talk webpages on the internet that you surf. Read the words also allows for the creation of videos as well as audio podcasts which can be uploaded to the internet.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. The WebQuest would be a great resource to find and create web-inquiry based activities for my students. Not only would I be teaching this part of lesson, but also teaching them how to navigate around the internet with a purpose in mind. Read the Words would be great for any student especially students with visual impairments. With the toolbar it could read words off of pages on the internet that you or the students want to hear. Here you could upload an important document that they need to know about or even upload a story that was created by a student. The video creator and podcast creator are also very useful for your classroom. Here you could record experiments that can be seen by students as well as using podcasts where you could record study material that the students can listen to for a test. This would be helpful in the end of course exam for high school biology students.  It has endless possibilities for use.   

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. WebQuest are free to use and will a little tutorial and some practice you could construct your own for students or locate ones to use for your classroom. As for Read the Words, it seems fairly easy to use, but there can be fees involved if you wanting more. The free bronze plan created 30 audios files up to 30 seconds in length, 15 voices, 3 languages, 2 customable avatars, 8 podcasts, 8 embedded reading and 8 saved readings. The Silver plan is $40 a year or $10 a month and includes all from the bronze plan but allows for unlimited audio files up to a n hour in length, 5 customable avatars, access to manipulating and enhanced reading, 25 podcasts, 25 embedded readings, and 25 saved readings. The Gold plan is $70 a year or $15 a month and includes everything from the Silver plan but allows for unlimited audio files up to 8 hours in length, unlimited avatar customization, unlimited podcasts, 100 embedded readings, and 100 saved readings. There is a specific teacher pack which is $100 a year or $20 a month and includes everything from the Gold plan plus the ability to share your readings with your students. There are testimonials from other teachers on the website including a librarian who states that this site has been a lifesaver and even had their students go up a letter grade with its usage.