Day 22: My happy Place
Day 23: Cartoon yourself
Day 24: Bokeh background Senior Pic I took of friend’s daughter
Day 25: Put a poem on your fridge
Day 26: Filtered Selfie
Day 27: Something crazy on my walk…. Snow in April
Day 28 Leave a stack of books somewhere…. My May Day basket was a stack of books at a neighbors house.
Day 29: Can’t you hear me knocking This is my Audio create. I used voki
Day 30: slogan mix up Sea World and Disney World
**** This is shared, I did not write it, just wanted to share it. ~Amy
The US Environmental Protection Agency offers some nice resources for teaching about the water cycle and water treatment. Thirstin’s Water Cycle takes students on an animated and narrated tour of the water cycle from water, to vapor, to clouds, to rain. Thirstin’s Tour of a Water Treatment Plant takes students on a narrated tour through a…
via An Animated Tour of the Water Cycle and Water Treatment — Free Technology for Teachers
I really liked that these two items were paired together for the last assignment for this semester because, I believe they work together. Our whole lives, well mine anyway, we were really taught one way and there was not much straying from that. I am a non traditional student which means I am “old” or older than some of the other students in the class. When I was in school technology was not a thing, we literally used the computer to play games, educational of course, and for computer related classes, like typing. We also had to go to a computer lab to do so, as the computers were not in the classrooms. When I was in high school I did an advanced creative writing class and that is the first time I remember in a class doing most of the work on a computer. All my teachers taught the same way and we were all expected to learn the same way. there was no deviation or differentiation. If you couldn’t keep up it was off to resource with you.
I share this because I feel it is the prime example of the wall that were talked about in the article we read about the unlearning curve. It was the rules and regulations set on education at a young age that I personally need to unlearn. This concept to me is not hard because I always fought against the status quo of learning. I always wanted to find a better and easier way to do something. I wanted to understand it more but, in my own way. It is because of this that I believe I am and always have been an innovative learner. As George Couros stated, I question thinking, I challenge ideas, and do not accept “this is the way we have always done it” as an acceptable answer for our students or myself. We need to get away from this mindset, we need to stop taking things at face value and we need to dig in and find out for ourselves why we do the things we do.
Too many times people take the easy way out and just do what the person before them did and in education that will not work. There is a couple reasons why. The main one is, no two students are the same. You can not expect what worked for one student or one classroom of students to work for everyone. You need to re-examine your thinking, look at what has been done and figure out what you can do to improve it. Connect to your students and find out who they are and what they need to learn, gain insight from the educators around you, share ideas and resources. Do not get tripped up by the obstacles that you encounter but instead work towards a solution and keep moving forward. These things make you an innovative educator.
I chose my career path as a special educator because I want to break down the wall, I want to tear a part the status quo in the education of students who have significant disabilities. I feel that society and even the education system has counted them out. They are unable to learn, so they just bring them to school and give them color sheets, have them trace their name, let them watch “educational cartoons” and then send them home at the end of the day. I believe these students can learn and can grown and will develop. I think they are smarter than they are given credit for and can teach us a thing or two. As mentioned in the Steep Unlearning Curve, “We need to unlearn the premise that we know more than our kids, because in many cases, they can now be our teachers as well.” I believe students can serve many of their educators a nice helping of humble pie. I want to go into my special education classroom and be and innovative teacher and help those teachers around me do the same. I want to break down walls and unlearn old norms of what education looks like. It is time for change… Be that change!
For my story I decided to use several metaphors that describe teachers. As we have learned and will continue to learn, teachers are many things and this video that I made on Kizoa is only a few of them. I struggled with this assignment because I had so many metaphor floating around my head and I just could not decide what I wanted to do. It took me a little bit of time to decide what direction I wanted to go. As everyone turned theirs in I noticed classmates talking about the classroom and about live and few about learners but, of the ones I looked at I did not see one that specifically spoke of who a teacher is. I think people forget how many hats a teachers wears, and I decided to use my digital story to give them credit for all the jobs they actually have. I hope you enjoy my digital story.
Day 15 click on the day
Day 16 the Zen of Adult coloring books
Day 17 Marshmallow Snow People
Day 18 write a tongue twister This is my writing create
Brianna bought bananas before babysitting babies at the ball field.
Day 19 Close eyes and draw a cactus. This my drawing create Click on the day.
Day 20 where are my feet click on the day.
Day 21 my theme song click on song This is my video create
Well believe it or not, the time has come and the end of the semester is here. With that, it is also the end of the Independent Learning Projects. So now I get to spend some time reflecting on my time with this project to share with you wonderful people a self analysis of my time. So, here we go.
As you know I decided to learn ASL or American Sign Language for those that hate acronyms. I started my ILP with a basic knowledge of ASL. I knew the alphabet, minus a couple tricky letters that I just made up each time I needed them, and I knew some basic words. My goal was to become more fluent in it so that I could actually use it in my classroom and even teach it to my students to open up more avenues of communication. I do not feel I achieved that goal but, I would not say I was unsuccessful. I have developed a decent list of words that I now know, along with the colors, body parts, a couple songs and I no longer have to make up those couple alphabet letters. So I am not fluent, but I am also not done learning. So, I am hoping that in a couple years when I am in a classroom, I will be more fluent.
The thing is, this assignment was never about what we wanted to learn or if we mastered it or not. This assignment was about self discovery. To show ourselves we are capable of learning something new and getting us to step outside of the box and try to do something. It was about being accountable to ourselves because in the end, we are the only ones that really knew if we were doing out ILP or not.
So, what did I learn about myself? I learned that I am capable of learning a new language and that if something is important enough I will make time for it even if I think I have none to spare. Time, that seemed to be my biggest obstacle on this venture. Just like everyone, my schedule is packed, some of what it is packed with is important stuff that needs my attention and the rest is meaningless stuff that steals my attention. I had to learn what belonged where and make my “needs my attention” list a priority. At times I was on the ball and had no problem whipping out my hour or ILP but other weeks it was taxing and I just really did not want to. That is where the accountability came in. Lead by example right? Well, if I just chose not to do it, what was I teaching my daughter who was sitting in the same room not wanting to do her homework or how could I stand in front of my students in my future class and tell them the importance of doing their homework when I couldn’t be bothered with my own. Life is all about choices but those choices make who we are. I want to be successful so I need to make successful choices so I did my ILP. Even on the weeks we got a break from ILP, I decided to do it simply because losing a week did not seem productive to learning a new skill.
The best part of the project for me was knowing I was learning a skill that would help me teach my future students. Going into special education, it is very possible I will encounter a child that communicates by sign and to be able to talk to him/her myself without needing to have someone come in and communicate for me is very important to me. I want to become fluent in ASL so I can not only communicate with my students but so I can teach other students to communicate as well. ASL is a language that I think all people should learn.
Will I implement ILP in my classroom? I think so, I will need to modify it a bit to meet the needs of my student’s specifically but, I think there is great value in it. Overall I am happy that this was given as an assignment and I am really hoping I can keep moving forward on learning ASL.
Hey yall! If you didn’t catch the Let’s Talk Sped blab this week, make sure you check it out at the bottom of this post! Structured work systems are HUGE in Autism classrooms and classrooms for students with all types of disabilities. It teaches so much more than the skill, keeps kids engaged, builds independence, […]
This week we looking into Pictochart and comic creating sites. So now I get to share my thoughts on what I learned.
First, this was not my favorite week in learning. I spent some time with the comic strip makers and was not a huge fan personally. Fit thing was that in order to use Comic App you need to have an iTunes account which I do not, nor do I have any desire to. So, admittedly I passed that one by. I think that if we use things in the classroom that require parent to download specific things in order to use them, we will have resistance with some parents.
The next place I visited was Pixton. I went ahead and signed up for a “for fun” account. I was fairly easy to use for a very basic comic, but I could not figure out how to move my character around so both my slides ended up looking the same. HERE is what I created for your entertainment. I think the students would most likely get the hang of it easily and would probably have some fun with it. Myself though, I do not see myself using it. The main reason is I do not see it being useful in the area of which I plan to teach.
Bitstrip is an app I have used before with facebook. It is very easy to use and can be fun. I do not see the educational value in it though and again I do not see myself using it in my class. It is a little easier to work with so my high functioning students may be able to work with it a little easier with it than the other ones. It may be fun for them to create a character for fun possibly as a incentive to getting their work done. If I did us it, I think it would be for that.
I also went in and looked at Pictochart. I created an account and made my first creation. It was easy to use and I did not have any trouble figuring it out. I may use this in the future for personal use. I also think it could be used in classrooms with older students. I do not feel that it is something that younger student could or would use. I also do not see any use for it in my classroom.
Now if any other future sped educators out there have thoughts of how to integrate these technologies into a SPED classroom I am all ears but for now I am not over impressed with their usefulness in my classroom.
Day 8 Hidden Faces click the date
Day 9 My name in graffiti this is my GIF create
Day 10 Powerpuff yourself click the date, this is another GIF create
Day 11 Power or four …. In sign language
Day 12 Selfie click on the date
Day 13 Historical site in my neighborhood
Day 14 Something ordinary I thought was super beautiful
Best Practices in Project-Based Learning with Suzie Boss From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Project-based learning (PBL) works, but not all project-based learning is alike. PBL Expert Suzie Boss takes us into assessment, project design, and teacher PD for more effective, meaningful projects that improve learning. Click to listen…
My educational journey
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My educational journey
My life in a world of exceptionalities
I am a special education teacher in the suburbs. I teach in a structured classroom, although I use many different approaches within that structure. I love my job and when people ask why, I always answer that I love it because every day is an adventure!
Learning From Life
Redefining Possible 