Teaching Students' The Way They Were Meant To Be Taught

My classmates have been discussing playing favorites in our schools. With all of us there seems to be a few students or a student in each of the classes we are in who really want our attention whether its academic need or not. It’s hard when you think of having students with special needs in your classroom especially if you aren't provided with help, which is a lot of teachers who I have observed, are dealings with. I have already mentioned in a previous blog that I see the benefits of technology to use with students with special needs, March 23rd, this student's work was just as impressive or more impressive then his classmates work. Talking with my classmates we were concerned with taking too much of our time to direct instruction to those with special needs and feel sometimes we are taking away instruction from the other students. But Last Monday we were exposed to a pretty great virtual Monday with Karen Janowski. She really believes in Universal Learning Design, which is learning to teach all students no matter what their disability. She gave us so many resources and more importantly free resources to help our students with. These tools like the enlarged tool bar and color-coordinated writing that can be added in Microsoft Word allow all of our students to be on a level playing field when using the computer. These students can be doing the same project with adaptations to help their learning style that allows classroom instruction and assignments to be fair to all students regardless of their disability. These tools will be great like a tool that creates flash cards, speech to text, and many more free tools. I learned from her presentation that helping the students that need help more help is not about playing favorites its about helping a student learn.

Tapped In!

This semester I was so lucky to be apart of my EDUC 330 class. We were exposed to many different people on the online community, learned how to use technologies we had never heard of, and found out we had more talents when it came to using technology then we had thought. One of the most memorable experiences in this class, however, was our mentorship that we had in tapped in. Tapped in which is a gated online community where in our group of tech-enhanced learning members responded to threads about education. I was so scared on my first few posts to write anything because I was afraid that my opinion wouldn't be accepted or people would disagree with what I had to say. Basically I didn't want to cause controversy in my posts. My hesitations didn't change until I set up a thread about Multiple Intelligences and experienced educators had different opinions about the Multiple Intelligences Theory put forth by Howard Gardner. Educators on both sides of accepting the theory had links and facts to back up their opinion. I came to the realization that this experience in tapped in is for the collaboration of ideas and points of view. Posting wasn't about being right or wrong, which is something I have carried though from my elementary and secondary schooling. Which needs to change!!!! Being honest and willing to share your ideas I found to be way more beneficial for myself posting and reading posts. I learned how to articulate my thoughts better, and felt confident in my ideas from them being supported and more important learning how to improve or enhance them! I was exposed to many sides of arguments that go on in the education world that I never even thought of. I don't want to go into too much detail of what was discussed to preserve the importance of our thread not being available for the public to read, but each post of mine and every thread I read was beneficial and important to me. I realized what a special opportunity being involved in this community really was. I was exposed to new ideas, new ways of thinking about education issues or issues in general, expanded my resources and tools to use for the classroom, and enhanced my perspective of education. I really hope that the threads continue, because I have learned a lot from the experience as I hope others have as well!