Blurfing in the Blogoshpere

Thanks to Lori, a student in my graduate class, who taught me a new vocabulary word the other day—“blurfing” or blog surfing. I was so excited to have something to describe one of my favorite pastimes, just clicking on links from one blog to another. I decided to finally do something practical with all of my blurfing and let others know about some of my favorite blogs and blog posts related to education and accessible technology.

Since Karl Fisch is one of the 1st blogs I started to read, I must mention 2 of his great posts:
2020 Vision is a profound reflection on the state of technology in the year 2020.
Is It Ok To Be Technologically Illiterate? is a frank discussion of the need for educators and others to develop media literacy. His statement,
“If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write.”
is thought provoking, to say the least.

Another thought provoking blogpost, is Will Richardson’s URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First where he discusses the need for technology to be a focus in Educational Reform. The comments to this post are as interesting to read as the post itself.
Karen Janowski’s Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms - Spread the Word! post from her EdTech Solutions: Teaching Every Student Blog is a gem, filled with free tools for creating a UDL classroom is updated regularly, most recently on 2/14/08.
Let me know what your favorite blogposts are!

Free clip art, photos, and other media for educational use

This week I was helping my daughter create an ABC book on China for her World Studies Class. She has learned in school how to use Google Images to search for pictures, but doesn’t really understand that many of these pictures are not legally free for her to use in school projects. It is a common misconception made by many individuals, including educators and parents, that if they are using an image off the web for educational use, that it is fine to do so. In reality, many, if not most images on the web are not free to copy, download, or print, even for use in school projects by students. However, there are a growing number of graphics, images, and other types of media that are available legally for the public to use. These public domain, copyright free, or Creative Commons licensed images are out there for individuals to use, without charge for a variety of purposes.

As educators we often look for images to use for a variety of purposes, from graphics from multimedia presentations in PowerPoint, to use as picture graphic symbols for augmentative communication systems and adapted curriculum materials. Here is a list of some of my favorite sources for images that are free and legal to use.

1. Microsoft Clip Art Gallery: If you have a MS program on your computer (Word, PowerPoint, etc) you have access to this huge (over 150,000) assortment of clip art images, photos, sounds and animations. You can search by keyword the entire collection, or within specific categories of media and collections. When you download the media, it will automatically store these images in your Microsoft clipart folder in My Pictures. You can then search these images at any time within Microsoft applications.
2. Flickr: This online photo sharing website is filled with tons of photos and images. Be careful, though, as many photos are not free to use. To be sure you are only using images that are made available for public use, search for images licensed under Creative Commons, at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ . Creative Commons licensing allows individuals to set parameters on the use of their work, such as attribution or no modifications, without having it copyright restricted.
3. http://www.pdclipart.org/ is a great website that has 25,000+ clip art images that can be used without restriction.
4. Clker.com has royalty free clip art that is great for picture graphic symbols for adapting curriculum or creating communication boards. The clip art is generally simple and uncluttered, without backgrounds or distractions. It is where I found a likeness of me (the cute redhead pictured above!).
5. For historical images, go to The Library of Congress’ American Memory collection. The American Memory Collection provides free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience, such as this advertisement for Spalding baseball equipment.
   

Switch SlideShow on Picasa

Kate A. who is a member of the QIAT listserv, has created a great Picasa web album featuring switches from a number of different manufacturers, as a resource for AT providers and others. Check it out at

http://picasaweb.google.com/teechkidz/AdaptiveSwitches

While on Picasa, which is a great online photo site, I saw this blog post by Todd Bogdan, a Google Software Engineer

Quick tip: super-fast full-screen previews

If you spend a lot of time in Picasa, here's a keyboard shortcut that may come in handy: When you're in Library View, move your mouse cursor over any picture thumbnail, hold down the 'ctrl' key, and then press 'alt.' You'll instantly get a full-screen view of that picture.

Obviously, this wee bit of trickery isn't meant to replace a full-screen slideshow -- the moment you take your finger off the 'alt' key, you'll be returned to the regular Library View. But it's a great way to quickly jump in and out of full-screen zoom so you can preview pictures in detail. This trick also works on the current photo when you're in the Edit Room.

If you're looking to quickly compare a few adjacent thumbnails with the benefit of a full-screen view, simply scroll the mouse wheel when using the ctrl-alt key combo. (This is especially handy if you've just imported a clump of similar photos and want to quickly decide which to keep.)

Webkinz—Just a Kidz Craze Or Is There Educational Value?

So, my 9 year old and 11 year old are not on Facebook or MySpace, yet. They have email accounts, but don’t really use them very much—mostly just to send each other a Hi and I love you (sort of the same excitement of getting snail mail cards), or to email their teachers with a question they are too shy to ask them f2f at school. However, they are OBSESSED with Webkinz, the stuffed and virtual pets by toy company Ganz, and the Webkinz website. Time on Webkinz has become my bargaining tool—they have to have all homework done, read for at least 20 minutes, practiced their flutes, taken their showers, etc before being allowed on, and if they fight with each other or don’t listen to me, it is the first thing they lose.

At first I thought it was just wasted time online, but that it was ok as a reward. Then I looked a little deeper. They were working (ok, playing arcade type games) to earn Kinz Cash to purchase clothes, furniture and treats for their virtual pets. When buying these items they have to make decisions about the best way to spend their money and how much time it was going to take them to earn more if they spent all they have. They are learning some social networking skills and how to look for their friends user names online and send a “hi” or a gift to them, and how to never, ever respond online to anyone they don’t personally know. There is a craft corner where there are ideas for offline Webkinz crafts and activities, and a gallery where they can post pictures of what they have done offline (pictures do have to be snail mailed in, unfortunately). The Kinz Chat area only lets kids chat with pre-constructed messages from menu, which means that not only is chatting a safe activity, but that kids with developmentally younger literacy skills can participate with minimal support. Many of the games require only the use of the space bar or enter, so it is easy to set up access for students with physical disabilities (some timing skills are still needed). There are even grade leveled educational games (that they earn Kinz Cash for playing) in the areas of reading, math, science, and social studies that I found to correspond well with my daughters’ curriculums at school!

Do I want my daughters spending endless amounts of time playing on Webkinz when they could be reading, playing with friends, or riding their horses? No, but at least I feel better that the time they do spend is not a total loss. I even plan on using Webkinz to work on literacy skills with some of my students at school (unless I find the server has blocked the site, as not educational in nature!)

What do you think of Webkinz? Take a minute and let me know.

Creating a Web 2.0 Classroom

A really successful UDL classroom integrates a range of digital tools to support learning. With that in mind here are:

10 Ideas for Incorporating Web 2.0 Tools into Universally Designed for Learning Classroom

1. Plan for podcasting your classroom lectures and discussions. Be sure to get permission from school administrators if you allow students voices to be a part of the podcast. Then allow students to download lectures from the school website for review and reteaching
2. Create scaffolded notes using Google Docs, print them for in class use and post to your school website/broadcast the link in an email to parents—take it from one who knows, parents will love being able to see the notes! This is also a convenient way to easily provide materials for students who are absent, disorganized or are just poor note takers. In addition, the materials will be readily available in a digital format for those students who have text to speech accommodations or just benefit from being able to pull up notes on their computer.
1. Start out with a thorough set of notes, with all points covered, and the least notetaking needed. Save
   
2. Working with the first version, delete key vocabulary words or key points, creating a fill in the blank set of notes, for students that can add these key points in as they listen to the lecture.
   
3. Working with this next version, keep sentence starters or key points for notes to be filled in by student and delete the rest, creating lines for students to continue filling in the information as they listen to the lecture.
   

3. Use a social bookmarking site, such as del.icio.us or diigo to tag resources for projects or units. Utilize features of the bookmarking site, including notes to highlight important things for students to pay attention to on the website.
4. Start a classroom wiki and have students post drafts of projects or papers for peer review and editing. PBwiki is a good place to start for a kid friendly wiki.
5. Use Flickr for young students to create a photo portfolio of their work, including activities and actions across the year. Be sure to have a digital camera readily available at all times.
6. Using cooperative learning groups, have students plan and write a podcast script based on a curriculum topic. Utilize UDL tools such as Intellitools Classroom Suite, Write Outloud or Kurzweil for writing the script for those students who benefit from text to speech software. Record the podcast and post to the school’s website.
7. Have students plan, write, and create multimedia poem using Flickr or Picasa Web based on a theme. Each photo in the sequence would be accompanied by a line or stanza of the poem.
8. Create a classroom blog to post curriculum related discussion and questions from students to the teacher and to each other. Students comments should always be moderated by the teacher.
9. Use a classroom blog to create an online book group. As an introduction, show students the blog created to discuss the book The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.
10. Use Google Earth and Maps to create a virtual field trip to a geographical area being studied. Create placemarks and keep track of where you have visited for a school year.

For more great ideas on integrating Web 2.o in the classroom take a look at this post from Langwitches, on the Best Web 2.0 Applications for Elementary School Classrooms.

Universal Design for Learning Basics

Yesterday I taught a session on Universal Design for Learning as a part of a course on Web 2.o Technologies for graduate students at Johns Hopkins University. This was intended to be just a brief intro to the principles of UDL, however when I walked away from the building at the end of the class, I felt that I had not communicated my message as well as I could have. As sometimes I have a tendency to do, I overcomplicated something that needed to be stated much more simply. I thought about just sending out an email to clarify and summarize the lecture, but decided instead to blog about it, since I figure there are lots of folks out there (some of whom may some day just happen across this blog--who knows, stranger things have happened!) who are looking for a basic explaination of Universal Design for Learning. Soooo....

UDL in a Nutshell

Principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (summarized from CAST)
1)Multiple Means of Engagement
Stimulating interest and motivation for learning (the "why" of learning)
2)Multiple Means of Representation
Presenting information and content in different ways (the "what" of learning)
3)Multiple Means of Expression
Differentiating the ways that students can express what they know (the "how" of learning)

A key to UDL is how the inherently flexible nature of digital materials allows for these multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. While UDL does not exclude the use of low tech materials and strategies, it definitely emphasizes the use of technology to achieve differentiation. Additionally, a UDL environment or classroom is frontloaded with these materials and strategies, rather than having to put them in place as a fix to a learning need.

Some ways that technology can be used to create a UDL environment are:
1) The use of multimedia (graphics, video, sound) for presentation or expression of information, such as PowerPoint presentations, Windows Movie Maker, or use of United Streaming video content (there are many more ways, as well)
2) The use of digital text that can easily be manipulated to meet the individual learning needs of students

• text can be enlarged to meet needs of visually impaired
• text can be highlighted or color coded to provided organizational cues for students
• text can be read aloud via text to speech programs for students with poor reading skills
• text can be easily simplified for students with comprehension/cognitive limitations

3) The choice of multiple means of expression for student work, including the use of

• video presentations
• word processing (as opposed to hand written)
• audio/oral presentations
• multimedia presentations

While this is far from the be all end of of UDL, this is the essence of what I had hoped to communicate to my students yesterday (and my apologies to you all for not having done what I had set out to do!!)

Information Literacy--Teaching Students in the Digital Age

As educators who advocate the use of technology in education, we have a responsibility to ensuring that we and our students develop not only literacy skills, but Information Literacy skills. On Alan November’s website, November Learning, there is a wealth of information on information literacy, including an Information Literacy Quiz and follow up activities.

This is a great way to find out what skills you have, or to find out what skills students have (probably no younger than middle or high school students). It is very eye opening to see how websites evolve and change over time. The activity on website validation was really thought provoking. It gave great examples of how to sort out facts vs. misinformation. I especially liked using the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org. While many websites changes are for the better, it is surprising to see how some websites have changed in order to deceive, including sites funded by White Supremacy groups.
While the dangers of allowing young people access to chat rooms or not supervising their Facebook/My Space pages have been made quite clear, the importance of teaching students that just because it is on the Internet does not make it true is really emphasized by this activity. I encourage all parents, educators, and teens and young adults to go through these activities in order to gain information literacy.

Are You Smarter Than A 6th Grader?

Are you smarter than a 6th grader? My 6th grader has just taught me how to create graphs in Excel. In under 5 minutes she quickly and beautifully created a bar graph for her science expo project, showing the absorbency of different animal beddings (very practical applications for this for her goats, chickens, and horses; but that is whole other blog). I am quite excited, as I often want to put graphs into reports and other documents I am creating, but I never quite knew how. For anyone else who is not as smart as a 6th grader, directions for this are as follows:
(courtesy of my daughter’s 6th grade science teacher)

Open Microsoft Excel

1. A table looking screen will appear with letters across the top row and numbers along the left column. There will be many individual data boxes on the screen.
2. Enter your data into the empty boxes. Each box gets just one data value.
   You should enter your data into the boxes based on the set up of your data table values.
   Hint: place a particular set of data values into its own letter column. Do not just list all of your data straight down in one column.
3. Once all your data is entered use your mouse to highlight all of your data.
   Then, click on the Chart Wizard button, which is depicted by a bar graph with three bars of different colors.
4. A box will appear that will allow you to choose which kind of graph you wish to make.
5. Click on the Chart Type you wish and then choose specific Sub-Chart Type you wish.
6. After you have chosen your chart type and sub-chart type, click the Next button.
   A new box will appear that depicts what your data looks like based on the way in which you entered it in Excel.
7. If you like your graph, then click Next.
8. If you have more than one set of data, you may wish to click on the Series Tab in order to label each line, bar, etc. that is displayed on your graph.
9. To do this, click on the first series, Series 1, and provide a name for it in the Name box.
   Then, on the values box, click on the white box and then highlight the data on the excel spreadsheet that you wish to represent that particular series.
   You may do this for however many different data series you wish to have on your graph.
10. When finished this step, click Next.
11. Fill in a Chart title, Category(X) axis, and Value (Y)axis in the blank boxes based on your data/experiment.
12. Then click Next.
13. Finally, click on the bullet to have the graph displayed “As a new sheet.”
14. Then click Finish
15. Remember to SAVE your GRAPH!
    
    

Now the point of this blog entry (in addition to explaining how to make a graph in Excel) is to illustrate the simplicity of using the power of technology for digital natives like my daughter. Digital immigrants, like myself and so many teachers of digital natives never use many features of technology, because they are unfamiliar and don’t seem intuitive to us. However, we have to remember that our children and students have cut their teeth on technology we never even dreamed about 10 years ago.

Web based technology to Support Writing in the Content Areas

Teachers, time, assessment and technology. It often seems that teachers never have enough time, and way too many assessments to do! However technology can be a way for teachers to maximize time and manage assessments. Judy Richardson (among others) discusses this in her article from Reading Online. Many technology supports exist for teachers on the web, indeed it seems new websites are launched daily. There is such a wealth of resources out on the web to support students writing in the content areas, that one blog post can't do justice to them all. However, I did want to highlight some of my favorites and some new ones that I have come across lately. These are listed in no particular order.


Brainpop.com---This subscription based site has a free 30 day trial and some of the features are always available for free. Brainpop (and its offshoot for younger students, Brainpop Jr.) is great for building background knowledge in any content area and for providing writing prompts. There are also online quizzes available. It is also available in Spanish.

ReadWriteThink is a fabulous site from the National Association of Teachers of English and the International Reading Council. While there is a big focus on the Reading/Language Arts curriculum, there are many cross curricular tools within the website, making it of value for students and teachers across content areas. Within the website some of my favorite activities include:
The Acrostic Poem Maker
Compare and Contrast Map

http://www.diigo.com/--diigo is a social annotation and bookmarking tool--much like del.icio.us on steroids. One of the coolest things that diigo can do is to create sticky notes and annotations right on websites. This can be invaluable for students doing research on any subject and as a pre-writing strategy. Watch a video about diigo on YouTube.

Merriam Webster's Word Central is a great dictionary and word finding resource. There is an online dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, as well as word games and a create your own dictionary where students can add new words that they have come up with and want to share with others.

There are so many more resources, so as I find outstanding ones, I will add posts to highlight them. Please let me know your favorites, too!

You Don't Feel Alone

George Donahue of Watertown is a role model to young people in the Boston, as a mentor for the online program, Partners for Youth with Disabilities that is out of the Boston area. He uses online communication tools to connect with other individuals with disabilities.

"Being online and talking to other people, it keeps you social," said Donahue, who has a neurological disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and uses a wheelchair. "You don't feel alone."
Boston.com, November 26. 2007

This article by Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe, goes on to discuss how a Donahue and his 28 year old protege, both with disabilities and in wheelchairs have created a solid friendship online, despite the fact that his protege, Gregory Walsh is non verbal and does not have use of his hands. Gregory will soon take the lessons he has learned from Donahue to another, when he becomes the mentor to a Boston area teen who is also non-verbal.

This is such a great example of how technology opens up the world for individuals with disabilities. In a school setting Gregory and Austin might have been viewed as less capable simply because of how they looked and the supports they need. Opportunities for writing and socialization would have been limited by the time that it takes them to generate language and Gregory, who looks at a chart with letters to spell out what he wants to say while an aide writes it down, it is likely to have have been viewed as not really doing his own work. But give these individuals an accessible computer, computer based voice output systems, and other technologies (I imagine they use word prediction or other tools to increase their speed) and the playing field is leveled.

As the world of education and technology continue to merge and as Web 2.0 tools become more commonly used by teachers, opportunities for individuals like Gregory Walsh expand. Writing is oral language for for individuals who are non verbal and communication online becomes an opportunity to write to learn--about the world.

For more information on Partners for Youth with Disabilities visit http://www.pyd.org/ and for info on their online program see https://pol.pyd.org/phpBB2/login.php

Technology is Not Gravy! A musing on Thanksgiving Weekend.

"The big step between us and animals is language. But the big step between civilization and more primitive forms of human society is written language.... it doesn't just enable it (civilization) in the sense of making it possible, but rather, it constitutes it. " - Dr. John Searle, Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at University of California- Berkeley (COTC interview)

I am currently taking an online course on Writing in the Content Areas, from PBS Teacherline. In this course we have focused on writing across different curriculum areas, specifically examining secondary students and curriculum. I am the only special educator taking the course and probably the only teacher who has worked with students with severe speech and physical impairments. The perspective that most teachers have presented throughout the online discussions in the 5 weeks we have been taking the class has been that technology is a great tool, but is the gravy on the turkey (forgive the trite comparison, but it is Thanksgiving weekend!). I have tried to explain that for the students I work with technology is a necessity. However, after no one showed too much interest in my descriptions of how my students communicate and access the curriculum with switches and keyboard emulation, I just sort of gave up and tried to pretend I was just another teacher, using my 11 year old daughter and the work she has done as a 6th grader as my example for all things.

In our online discussions, we discussed the importance of time in teaching writing, but I don't think anyone in my class quite gets the fact that it takes one of my favorite students, Lizzie, a good 2-3 minutes to use her head switch to construct a simple sentence using her Vantage voice output device, let alone type an entire paragraph.

We discussed the impact of technology in writing for today's students. One of the teachers in my class worries that technology has over taken social interaction for today's students. I guess I should have done a better job explaining to him that technology opens social doors for my students who would not be able to have a face2face conversation without technology, and who often love email because their disability becomes invisible when they are on the computer.

So where am I going in my rather morose musings this evening? Am I just venting online for all the world to see (can you tell I haven't quite come to terms with the fact that anyone who is looking/stumbling around might see this?)? No, not really, although I can see how bloggers can really use this as a form of therapy. I will instead try to turn this around and move on to how one of Karen Janowski's latest posts directed me to a fascinating website called The Children of the Code
"How well children learn and how they feel about themselves as learners profoundly shapes their lives. For many millions of children, how they feel about themselves as learners is determined by how well they learn to read the 'code' of our written language. The connections between the code, literacy, learning, self-esteem and life success are profoundly under-appreciated in our society. " This quote from the website really sums up to me the importance of providing accessible education for all children and the role that technology can play in altering how a child feels about themself as a learner. Karen's blog directs you to some great simulations that let an individual without a disability see what it is like to have dsylexia and other reading disabilities. Try being dyslexic for a few mintues and then tell me if technology to support reading and writing is just gravy or if maybe it is at least the sweet potatoes with marshmallows that I will not celebrate Thanksgiving without.

Getting Started

Well, I have put off really starting this blog for months now. I have had the best of intentions. After reading Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts, and reading his blog I was blown away by the power of a blog and other web based tools to motivate students to write. I thought, "Wow, I need to do this so that I can provide a model for both writing and use of web tools for students!" However, I just never could seem to motivate myself to sit down and do it. I have started blog entries in my head, over and over again, but to just put it out there on the page seemed more than a bit intimidating. Yet, teachers ask their students to do this all the time--put their thoughts down on paper (or in digital text, which is my preference) and turn it in to be graded and left open to criticism. And a blog is putting it out there for strangers to see! (Yes, I know you should not start a sentence with and or but.) However, (is that better than but?) I am taking a class on writing and one of the choices for our final is to start a blog, so here I am!
The purpose of this blog is going to be to write about strategies to support students with technology, but this introduction is really just about me getting over my fear of writing for general consumption. As I write I do realize however, that without the technology I am using there is no way I would ever do this. I need to be able to cut, copy, and paste. I need to use spell check and right click. I need to be able insert, delete, and rearrange my thoughts. So I am beginning this blog on how to help students use technology to achieve in school and I am using technology in order to do this. This may not be nearly as inspiring as Will Richardson's work, but it is a start.