Shira+Levy

This is Shira's web page created for ISCT 301 in spring 2012.

This is the Voki I made for class to explain why standards are important as a pre-service teacher. media type="custom" key="12715652" media type="custom" key="13892300" media type="custom" key="13823690"

In taking the learning styles survey, I confirmed that I was correct in thinking that I am primarily an Auditory learner. I am the type of person that benefits a lot more from hearing a person explaining something to me, than reading instructions in a manual. I never thought of recording a lecture as a way for me to review what was taught in class that day. I'm glad that this test advised this because I am not very good at taking down written notes, and voice recording what a teacher says will be a lot easier for me to execute in class and to study from later.
 * UDL Assignment Reflection:**

My overall impression of the CAST website is that its a really wonderful site. I really like the way that they have that text book taken apart and presented in different ways for different learners. As a auditory learner I really appreciate the multiple layouts because usually I find it extremely difficult and boring to learn new things from ordinary textbooks, but this online version made it a lot easier for me to pay attention and actually learn what I need to learn. I also really like how they have links to activities and background information that can give a student a deeper understanding of the material that they are reading, I wish that every text book was like this.

I found some really interesting information on the online version of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age. For my group in class I had to read the second chapter of the textbook which had to do with learning differences in peoples brains. I learned that everyone has three main networks in their brains that helps them think and learn new things: the strategic network (helps plan things), the recognition network(helps name and recognize objects), and the affective network(helps with motivation and emotions). However, despite the fact that everyone has the same networks, everyone still thinks and learns differently from one another because these networks work independently from each other. So someone could have something wrong with one networks, but the other two can still work perfectly fine. So with that in mind, I can use this information as a future teacher, in order to plan my lessons to accommodate students who have weaknesses or strengths in a certain network of their brains.

These exercises that I have done for my technology class have taught me that I work my best with groups of people. I always tend to work by myself because I usually feel like group work or group studying would be detracting to me, but now I realize that I really do work best when I'm working with others. Maybe now I will be more excited for group work in class and maybe I will even form up a study group to see if I test better when I study in a group as opposed to studying on my own.

I really feel like educators should follow the example of the cast website and create different ways to teach new ideas to their children. As a student I always hated when teachers only stuck with one method of teaching because it was extremely boring. I often zoned out in classes where teachers would exclusively lecture, so I often missed important information. I know that I am not the only student who has ever felt this way. As a future teacher I would hope that my students would be paying attention to ever word I say, but I cannot make them listen, especially if I decide to lecture most of the time. Therefore, I will work my hardest to make my students interested in what I have to say by creating multiple ways to teach the children the information.

I would like to explore the cast site more, to look into ways into getting more textbooks into the same format as the Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age textbook. I am especially interested in that because I would personally love it if all of my college textbooks were in this format, it would make reading them a lot more enjoyable. As a student and future teacher I would love it if everyone could read their textbooks and actually understand and learn from them. Assistive Technology Assignment: 1. From visiting the websites and viewing the videos in Part I of the assignment, what information did you learn about assistive technology for disabled individuals? Visiting the websites and viewing the videos in Part 1 of the assignment helped me learn that there is a wide variety of assistive technologies available for disabled individual. It is interesting how there are different assistive technologies for different types of disorders. There are devices that can be used hands free for those that can’t use their hands and there and also items that help the visually and hearing impaired. 2. Were there any sites, products, or resources that particularly impressed you and that you want to remember as you prepare to become a classroom teacher? (http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/edspec.html) This site impressed me the most because it has a wide variety of special education resources. When I become a teacher and come across a disabled student, I can use the resources to help understand and/or teach the student better. 3. What promises/potentials does technology provide for students with diverse learning needs? Technology has a ton of potential for providing students with diverse learning needs. Technology can possibly help disabled people do everything nondisabled people: travel anywhere without legs, talking without a voice, hearing while deaf, seeing and reading without eyes. 4. Have you ever had a personal experience with a student or other person who has used some form of assistive technology to help them function in learning or everyday life? If so, describe what you observed from that experience in terms of meeting the special needs of those individuals. I have had some personal experience with a person who uses some form of assistive technology to help them with learning in school, and that person is my brother. My brother has Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder and Aspersers Syndrome. His writing is illegible to most people that try to read it, which is a big problem in a school that doesn’t allow laptops (so that students won’t get distracted by the internet). In order to fix this problem, he has been allotted an assistive technology called the Alphasmart. The Alphasmart is a computer like keyboard that comes with a small screen and its only function is to type notes into it, to save the writing, and connecting it to a computer to transfer or print out the typed notes. This assistive technology has help out my brother a great deal in school because now his teachers don’t have to try to make out his writing; they just simply need to read what he typed out in class. 5. From this assignment, what will you carry with you as you prepare to become a teacher – one that will, most likely, face the challenge of meeting the needs of special education students along with non-disabled learners? This assignment has taught me that I don’t need to be afraid of or pity disabled students because they have can have access to technology that could help them fulfill their potential. I’ve also learned that with assistive technology, disabled students can have just as much potential as non disabled students in the classroom and in life.

The virtual field trip sites are very interesting and fun to go through, its like being in an interactive museum! The specific sites provided for us would be very useful for teaching students in history classes without actually having to leave the classroom. As a future English teacher, the only site I think would be useful to be the Library of congress, which has some links that teach about literature. Some of the history sites might also be useful in explaining the historical background of the books my class would have to read. Understanding the historical background to a book might really help the students understand certain situations that happen in the book and understand attitudes that characters have to certain situations. If you were to teach Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men, there are many rich sources to use as background for the Dust Bowl and the Depression. Those sites would surely help to set the stage for the story.
 * Virtual Field Trip Assignment: **

This is the [|movie] I made for my ISTC 300 class.
 * Movie Maker Assignment**

** Final Reflection Exam Assignment ** I was asking about the amount of technology in the classrooms because I feel it is important to know what tools I have available to me as a teacher. While I could teach children without technology, technology is a good tool to help me teach the children with a wider variety of techniques and will help me teach the children in a more efficient way. In today’s society children are more in tune with technology than ever, so it is really important to incorporate at least some technology into my lessons so that the students will pay more attention to the lesson, and will therefore have a better understanding of the lesson. Since I want to teach English, I probably will not need the students to use the computers for most lessons. If they do use computers in my lesson, it will be to write out their responses to the readings. I will definitely want to use the projector and white board in order to give the students a visual of what I want them to learn in addition to my vocal lecture. This will make it so students that have stronger learning styles in visual learning or auditory learning will both benefit from the lessons.
 * At the beginning of this semester I did not think that technology was that essential to teaching students effectively. At most I figured that I would be using something like Powerpoint to illustrate my lessons, but nothing else. Now I realize that there is a ton of technology available for educational purposes that could potentially really help me teach my students effectively. **