Wednesday 6 June 2012

My Other Bloggs!

Here are links to my other two blogs that I made with my classmates for this course.



Course Reflection

As I look back on my AT journey I remember feelings of unsureness and anxiousness to explore the unknown.  I took this course because I wanted to learn more about AT and how to integrate for students of need.  I found myself learning a lot about AT but also learning a lot about technology.

I can say that I am pretty technological and find technology interesting and useful.  I have been a person who has always tried to become better in my practice and technology has played a key role.  I have wanted to make a blog for many years now but just didn't know where to start.  I can now say that I am a blogger!  I have learned the craft and see its value in this course and beyond.

I now can take away key learnings from this class: knowledge of learning disabilities, how Apple technology can make learning better/easier, how the reading process works and finally how to blog individually and as a team.

The knowledge I have gained of different learning disabilities is endless.  By doing research and working with peers on projects I have learned about ADHD, Autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia to name a few.  Working together we were able to uncover these LD's and plan for them using technology.

The second learning is the richness that Apple has added to education.  Making sure that there is a medium for people to create and share apps that help students with various problems work past their disabilities and experience sucess!  I must say we are an Apple family.  I am married to an ADE, we have multiple devices and our schools both have given use access to use Apple technology with our kids.  Before this course I would not have known the various apps that were available for students.  It is really never ending!

Thirdly I learned everything I know about the reading process from this class.  I had some basic knowledge but very little.  I found this class to be challenging and rewarding.  Talking about reading is something that really put me out of my comfort zone and for that I am grateful.

Lastly I have learned a great deal about blogging.  As I have said in my last post blogging is something that I was interested in for a while now and I am glad I was able to explore it in this course.  It was a great layout and I am glad that I was able to communicate my learnings with the world.  I have wanted to make a blog for a while and I have wanted to learn how to integrate blogging into my classroom.  I can really see Blogger as a great way to have students create a blog together and post as a whole class or in teams to make pages similar to the way we did in our class.  I loved that format.

Special thanks to Barbara.  It was a great course and as you can tell I have learned a lot and plan to take  this back to my practice.

Cheers

Interactions and Ecosystem Project

Last class we were asked to create a blog on a specific unit.  Aside from the obvious curricular gain of diving into the curriculum deeper and integrating new resources I found the structure of this assignment to be amazing and very useful.

As a team of three we were responsible for creating a blog that would contain lots of resources for our unit.  Aside from the resources we needed to be aware of some students who would need consideration in our planning.  I learned a lot about these conditions as well as a lot about the topic itself.


Although this may not have been the attempt I have learned a lot about blogger from this assignment and can see how doing a similar assignment in a classroom would be amazing.  Having students working on a joint project all posting at their rate and from their own computer would be a great way for them to communicate with each other and with the outcomes!  FABULOUS !!!!!  I am excited to start blogging and can see how this medium can open doors for so many students!