Kahn/ Koller Interview

Khan Academy:

Khan Academy is a resource that anyone can access for free. It is a place where users can find videos on almost any academic topic. The creator of Kahn Academy, Sal Kahn is a very interesting person and I encourage any readers of this blog to do a little research on him and Kahn Academy.

I have previously used Kahn Academy to refresh my algebra skills prior to tutoring a student. I have no doubt in my mind that I will use Kahn Academy again. Its great because it is such an easy program to use and my favorite part is that you can watch the videos again and again until you really grasp a topic.

 I have also used Khan Academy in the classroom. In my most recent field placement, I, along with my mentor teacher taught our third grade class to use Khan Academy. It was an activity that the students really loved and is certainly something I will use to supplement my own instruction as an educator.

The greatest thing about Khan Academy is that the videos are easy to follow and in my own experience has been versatile for all learning types.

I believe that Sal Kahn is correct that the future of education is online. I think that most educator courses will take place online. With that being said, I am not a huge fan of online classes mainly because I enjoy the social interaction and being able to put a face to my teachers name. We shall see, but I believe someday soon most educational resources will be online.

Coursera:

Coursera is a new concept to me, I was unfamiliar with this resource until watching the article about it. Coursera is a resource that provides coursework of classes taken at the top universities to students around the world for free! My mind was blown by this concept and it really sparked my interest. There are so many classes that sounded interesting to me in college that I didn’t have to take and so I didn’t pay for them. Maybe now in my “free time”, I will turn to taking free college level classes!

I already looked into the course catalog and the first on my to-do list would be Child Nutrition and Cooking 2.0. I would love to learn about the nutrition my children and my students need to be receiving and how to cook for them!

Unfortunately, Columbus State Community College does not accept transfer credits from Coursera and neither does Ashland University or my first love, Ohio University.

I do not think that Coursera courses appear to be more challenging than any other course I have taken but it is surely a different experience than taking a class at a large university so it would take an adjustment period. I think that any course is do-able if you set your mind to it and work hard to complete. Any class can be hard if you aren’t going to put effort into it.

I do think that Coursera and other massive online classes are the future of high education. I think that it is obvious that you can cut down the cost of education by providing it online and it seems to be just as, if not more effective than lecture based classes. I think that there are surely some benefits to mass-online classes such as moving at your own pace that are appealing to me but I have always been a sucker for the in-person classes. I feel that I take a bigger stake in the classes if I have to show up everyday at a certain time and speak in person with the professor. However, if the norm becomes online learning, I feel that students will adapt. 

Ohio DL Schools

In Ohio, there are a few distance learning, online public school options for students grades K-12. I had minimal knowledge about these DL options prior to this assignment. Five of these DL choices include, Connections Academy, ECOT, Ohio Virtual Academy, Virtual Community School of Ohio and Virtual Schoolhouse. I will be evaluating the websites of each of these 5 schools to determine which school I would most likely pick for my child and which I would be least likely to pick for my child.

Connections Academy
My initial impression of Connections Academy was that its website was informative. I felt that it provided opportunities to contact teachers and parents and it provided a very community oriented spirit which is important for an online school in my opinion. One of the things that stood out about this school was that it had a blog to make it easy for students, parents and teachers to stay connected as a community. I thought the website was easy to navigate, provided informative videos and informative FAQ page.

Ecot
I felt that Ecot was very easy to navigate but that it lacked a community feel. I enjoyed the videos and felt that the information was clear however, I felt that most of the information presented was regarding enrollment as opposed other important factors in a school. I also felt that it lacked contact with a teacher and other parents which I liked about some of the others.

Ohio Virtual Academy
I felt that this website was clear and informative. It had a helpful and organized FAQ section. It introduced the staff, provided opportunities to contact other parents and promoted its community and educational excellence.

Virtual Community School of Ohio
I thought that this website was unclear and uninformative. It had no FAQ section and was mainly about enrollment but provided very little information about the school and community.

Virtual Schoolhouse
I also felt that this website was unclear and uninformative. It was not very community oriented and did not give me enough information about its community and educational excellence.

Overall, based on the websites alone, I would hands down pick Ohio Virtual Academy for my child. I think social interaction is such a huge part of development so I would most likely never pick an online school option for my child however, if I had to it would be Ohio Virtual Academy because of its sense of community and educational standards. As a parent, I would like to hear testimonies of other parents and have the option to ask them questions about the school and this type of learning, this website allows for this opportunity.

Based on the websites, I would not send my child to Virtual Community School of Ohio because they did not provide me with enough information about the school, their academic standards and what social opportunities they would provide my child.

The links to these school websites have been added to my Symbaloo below.             

Assistive Technologies for Students with Emotional Disturbances

This week in class we are diving into special education and the different assistive technologies that are available to students with learning disabilities and differences. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because my educational licensure is in Special Education K-12. Over the years, I have been extremely lucky to work with students from kindergarten to adulthood all with varied disabilities. The type of disability that I have chosen to focus on this week is emotional disturbance (ED). I have chosen this category of disabilities because it is the area in which I have the most experience and I am assuming not many other students in my class will choose to cover ED.

 According to IDEA Act, an emotional disturbance is a condition that negatively effects a students educational performance and occurs over a long period of time. It can effect an individuals ability to learn, maintain relationships, act appropriately under normal circumstances, be happy, overcome fears associated with school or staff problems. According to, www.nichcy.com, some characteristics of a student with an emotional disturbance is hyperactivity, aggression, failure to interact with others, immaturity and learning difficulties. In my own experience I have found that the biggest challenge as a teacher of students with emotional disturbances is gaining their trust. Some, but by no means all of the students with ED that I have worked with come from poverty, foster care systems, and even have been in and out of jail. These are the students who really struggle to trust educators and peers because they live such a transient lifestyle that they rarely form trusting relationships, even with their own families. Another struggle that I frequently ran into in these ED classrooms was being able to reason with students. In many cases there is a very fine line that dictates a student with EDs ability to handle situations calmly as opposed to becoming violent.

As educators, it is part of our job description to maintain control of our classroom and at times it can be very difficult to do this when teaching in an ED classroom. It can be extremely helpful to use some forms of assistive technology to help keep order in the classroom. When I researched assistive technologies in the classroom a lot of the results showed low-tech options which is not really what I was looking for. This includes a lot of behavioral tracking charts which are very useful in working with students who have ED, especially at the elementary level. One assistive technology that I came across that I have used before includes a “motivader.” This is a device that is used for students who have a tendency to zone out and get easily distracted. It looks like a pager and you can attach it to the student or set it on the students desk and set it at certain intervals to vibrate which will in theory, regain the students attention before he or she gets to distracted, lost and frustrated. In my own experience, I have found that this is certainly not a tool that can be used for every student with ED that has attention problems .I once had a high school student get frustrated with the vibration every 45 seconds and he chucked the motivader at me while I was teaching, needless to say we never used this with him again. However, on the up side, I have used this tool to help a student whos main source of ED behavior was attention deficit and she wanted to do well in school but could not keep her focus and would get very aggressive when this would lead to frustration. With her, the motivader worked like a charm, she just needed a reminder to stay focused and it really helped with her frustration, depression and aggression. More information on the Motivader, can be found at http://habitchange.com/.

The other type of assistive technology that I would like to talk about is using ipods, ipads, and educational video games as a bargaining tool. In the research that I did, it seems like a common theme to most peoples knowledge of using assistive technology with students who are labled ED, is to basically bribe them to accomplish certain tasks and to give them a goal to reach. I found that in the elementary setting especially this can be very effective. A lot of times, a student with ED will have an emotional breakdown or fit of aggression surrounding an assignment that they just do not want to do. One way that you can get a student to complete a task is to tell them they can have for example, “15 minutes to play educational apps on the ipad once they have completed the assignment.” Like I said, in elementary this often works well, but my experience with middle and high school bargaining like this usually is not very helpful. I also found that by making promises like awarding ipad use upon task completion, and then following through with those promises, a teacher can really build a students trust which is really important when working with students with ED who tend to lack trust in anyone. More information on this topic can be found at http://education4ed.weebly.com/assistive-technology.html.

 I chose to cover two high-tech devices that can be used as assistive technologies in the field of ED however, most of the assistive technologies available are in the low-tech form meaning that they do not involve a computer or device at all. I think the future of assistive technologies in this field will evolve some of these low tech solutions into mid and high tech functions. I think that there will be a lot of apps and software that are created in the near future to help students to track their own progress and success on a technological level as opposed to on paper. I also feel that as more people research this category of disabilities as they pertain to education, we will gain a greater insight as to why students with ED are suffering from these disturbances and how we can help them to overcome these issues. Unfortunately, I also think that you will see less and less of educational inclusion involving students with ED because a lot of these students have that aggressive demeanor which can be a danger to “regular ed students.” I think that inclusion in a regular education setting is vital to these students but unfortunately, based on the schools I have been in, I think there is just too much of a liability for students who become aggressive. I hope that you learned a little about assistive technologies and how they may help students with Emotional disturbances. Below I have listed some resources that I found helpful in researching this topic and of course, I will update them to my symbaloo as well.

 Sources:

 http://www.atstar.org/atinfo/info_disabilities_behavioral.html
 http://education4ed.weebly.com/assistive-technology.html.
http://habitchange.com/.
http://nichcy.org/laws/idea

Peer Blog Evaluation Activity

This week, an assignment was to evaluate a peers Blog. I really enjoyed this because it was interesting to learn about another student in my class and to admire their work.

Here is my evaluation:

1. What is the name of the blog you reviewed? Please include an ACTIVE link to the blog here.

• I reviewed Eric Womack's blog which can be found at   womack64.blogspot.com. 

2. Is the style of the writing style of this blog you reviewed suited to the blogger's intended audience? In other words, is the writing professional enough for a teaching blog?

• I found that the writing style of this blog was informative and direct. It was obvious that the author is writing the blog for the purpose of evaluating his experience with the different assignments we have been given in our educational technology class. For the purpose of this class, the blog was perfect however, if in the future the author wants to use this blog to communicate educational topics with other teachers, he may want to address the audience in a different way. Again, I felt that the style of writing was great for the purpose of this class.

3. Are the colors/ fonts appropriate? Are there things that are distracting about the blog that need to be changed? Are the Voki's in the correct place?

• I found the colors and fonts to be simple which I appreciated. I do not typically enjoy reading blogs with fancy fonts and distracting colors. I think for the purpose of this blog, I would not change a thing about the fonts and colors. I felt that the pictures were all the correct size and the Voki was in the correct spot. The only critique that I have about the appearance of this blog is that the Prezi post was done in three different posts which was a little confusing to follow. I would have preferred to have that entire assignment posted in one post so that I did not have to search for the Prezi when reading about his experience.

4. Is the spacing and layout easy to navigate? Are there "repeats" of posts? Does the flow and direction of the blog make sense? 

• I think I may have answered this question in the previous response. Overall, this blog was easy to navigate I just would have preferred to see the Prezi Post all in one instead of in three separate posts.
  
  

5. Are correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar used?

• I found a few grammatical and spelling errors but for the most part I felt that this blog was very well written.

6.What is your overall impression of the blog?

• My overall impression is that this blog is easy to navigate and well written. As a reader, the only thing I longed for was a little more information in the three blogs post. I will continue to read this blog and I think that it would be helpful for people attempting to use goanimate, Prezi, voki, etc. because he clearly explains his experience with these resources and I think other teachers could benefit from it

Overall, Great Job Eric! My readers should check out his blog at  womack64.blogspot.com. 

GoAnimate

This week, I used a website called www.goanimate.com for the first time. I found it to be somewhat irritating to use mainly because my children were fighting for my attention while I was trying to create this short video. The purpose of this website is to create animated videos. The videos actually very adorable and I know that my future students will absolutely love to create these videos, I just need a little more time to play with it and become a pro!


Welcome to the third grade! by Lauren Grunder on GoAnimate

My experience using Pic Monkey

I used a website called www.picmonkey.com. This is a photo editing tool. I have never before used this website for photo editing although I have edited photos before. This is a pretty user friendly editor and it was a lot of fun to play around with it. I of course used a photo of myself to play and use the weight loss tool however I wanted to share the below photo with my blog readers. This is a picture of my daughter earlier this year at a corn maze. she loved finding her way through the corn field and I will always cherish this memory. I also cherish the quote featured, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and make a trail." I decided to merge this quote and photo together and I think it could make a good classroom poster someday. What do you think?

Below in my Symbaloo, I have attached the links to the picmonkey.com website, and a few others that I used this week!

My QR code

qr-code-generator

This is a QR code. There are certain scanning apps that you can download on your smartphone or tablet that allow you to scan the above image and go directly to some sort of information whether it is a photo, text document, website, etc. The above QR code will direct you to this blog. You can try and make your own   QR code by visiting this website: http://goqr.me/#t=url.