Universal Access and the Integration of Technology into the Classroom

The concept of universal access is totally new to me. I read the three articles in our course readings with great interest. The creative and innovative uses to which technology has been implemented for the benefit of learning for the physically challenged, is commendable and admirable.
I teach in a Catholic school. We have no special education program, per se. We are advised regarding special considerations, such as, additional testing time, seating in the front for ADD, or hearing impaired.
My sister-in-law teaches in a public junior high. Since the “No Child Left Behind” program was initiated, she said that it is very hard to plan a curriculum around such a diverse group of learners. In some instances, they have an assistant who goes from class to class with a special needs student to help the student in each class.
The desire to open the curriculum to all students, irregardless of special needs, is a commendable objective.
We have a friend who is a Doctor. His son was born with cerebral palsy. Our friend did everything in his power to help his son to learn and function in the public school environment. Finally, when his son was in 8th grade, our friend told us that his son was always being beaten up by the kids at school, because he was different. Our friend decided to Home School his son. It was through the use of computers and technology that our friend met with success in teaching his son.
In the article by David Gordon, it was stated that “New technology-based strategies offer hope that students of all abilities will have the opportunity to thrive in school.”
The concept of the “Thinking Reader” in which a student can wear headphones and is read a digital text of the book that the rest of the students in a class are reading allows for inclusion. The “Thinking Reader” employs reciprocal teaching using a four part strategy. A cartoon genie prompts the student to formulate questions, summarize, clarify and predict an outcome.
The “Thinking Reader” was developed at CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology, as a concept within the Universal Design for Learning program developed by Anne Morgan and David Rose.
This type of technology and program implementation has met with great success. However, it was noted that the “Thinking Reader” takes both teachers and students considerable time to master. The incentive being that it can lead to dramatic improvement for poor readers.
Voice recognition has been used by a friend of my daughter’s for many years. He uses it as a convenience so that he doesn’t have to enter text manually.
How wonderful to read in the “New Independence for Special Needs Students” by Karen Kelly that Andrew Ashe, who was a great storyteller but who suffered from tremors in his hands that were so severe that he couldn’t write, was able to use voice recognition technology to meet with success in composition and writing at school.
Or the story of Matt who couldn’t walk, talk or move his hands. The technology experts devised an infrared beam that tracked the movement of his eyes allowed him to turn the pages of an electronic book and read it.

Peggy Roblyer said it best. “You have to be a little bit of a visionary. You have to look at what there is today and see the possibilities for the future.”
These articles opened my eyes to the tremendous benefits that technology makes available for special needs children. Technology allows then to enjoy the thrill and power of learning. These possibilities are made a reality due to the vision of people such as those associated with CAST.

Are We Meeting the National Technology Standards for Teachers and Students?

“ Traditional lines between learning about technology and learning through technology are beginning to blur.” Wrote Bertram Bruce and James Levin in their article on Educational Technology, Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction and Expression. This sentiment is true in my experience at our school.
When we establish Educational Technology Standards for All Teachers as National Technology Standards the implicit belief is that all teachers in all schools will work to achieve these goals.
At our high school, we do not formally test teachers to determine their technological ability level, but certain skills are necessary to use the Edline program that we have in place for sending attendance and submitting grades to the administration, as well as, parents.
In the Math Department, we are implementing a program to use the Tablet PC to teach math. Each of the thirteen department members has an overhead projector, a Tablet PC and wireless connectivity, so that we can walk around the room and still have a lesson projected on the screen for the students to learn from. Getting the wireless connectivity was a process. Our Tablets kept crashing during a lesson. Teachers became disenchanted, saying that they had to prepare two lessons. One for using the Tablet and one for when it crashed-which it did frequently. The last round of repairs last week seems to have corrected the problem. It’s wait and see. The Department members have seen that using the SmartView Emulator with the Tablet is an effective way to teach graphing calculator usage.
I. The first Standard regarding Technologies, Operations and Concepts is in place and continuing for most teachers I have encountered.
II. The second Standard-Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences is ongoing. This standard presentsa standard that all teachers strive for, but it takes a lot of time to create new, engaging lessons using the technology.
III. Teaching Learning and the Curriculum
In our attempt to “develop students higher order skills and creativity” we must be diligent about the importance of a particular technologically-based lesson to the advancement of our curriculum. Once our Tablets are working well, we will take a year for curriculum implementation of the technology.
IV. Assessment and Evaluation
Many teachers in our department use technology to gather and analyze data. None that I know uses the technology to administer tests, per se.
V. Productivity and Professional Practice
Other teachers, myself included, are taking Masters programs online to enhance their technological awareness and enhance skills that are applicable to better inquiry-based learning for their students.
VI. Social, Ethical, Legal and Human Issues
We, at our Catholic school, are cognizant of issues in this area and try to improve practices accordingly.

Overall, I believe that most teachers, on some level are reaching these National Standards. Technology is changing so rapidly that this will be a continuous process to promote effective learning through technology.

Our students are making great strides in their computer use. We even have a Programming class in C++ and JAVA for them. It is taught through the Math Department. There is a lot of peer pressure to use computers, graphing calculators and other technology in our school, effectively. Most seem to enjoy the methods for learning that incorporate technology, thus meeting the National Standards for students.

Are We Responsible Users of Technology?

Are We Responsible Users of Technology?

The consideration of topics such as fair use and copyright has come to the forefront in recent years due in no small part to the proliferation of information provided so readily on the internet. A previous CTER instructor, Professor Burbulis, noted that we benefit tremendously from the easy access to information on the internet for intellectual research, but, on the other hand, we have never been so vulnerable to internet crimes such as those committed by sexual predators, credit card thieves, intellectual property thieves—the list goes on. These problems exist because the internet is a worldwide arena for information. We have little recourse when wanting to capture and prosecute wrongdoers. Each country has a different set of laws and methods for enforcement.
In our reading from the copyright office on Fair Use, it was noted that “the distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined.” The Fair Use doctrine evolved over the years through court decisions. The doctrine is codified in section 107 of the copyright law.
Reproduction of a work is considered “fair” for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching scholarship and research. Section 107 ennumerates four factors to consider when judging a particular use as “fair”.
1. the purpose and character of the use including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
2. the nature of the copyrighted work.
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
It was noted in section 107 that “acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.”
“Copyright protects the particular way an author has expressed himself; it does not extend to any ideas, systems, or factual information conveyed in the work.”
Brad Templeton in his article “10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained” defined copyright as “the legal exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work.” He further noted that “almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has notice or not.”
If a professor should create a course while in the employ of a University may not have rights to that course. It is owned by the University if the employment agreement so stated.
And so where does that leave us in the classroom? It has been my observation that very few teachers know much, if anything, about copyrights or licensing. At our high school, the Technology Director is very careful to register and follow up on all licenses that are in place for the CDs that we get from the textbook publishers or for any software installed on our computer systems. We are told whether the software companies will allow us to put the programs on our home computers for lesson planning at home, or not.

The Role of Digital Storytelling In The Classroom

The inclusion of Digital Storytelling into the curriculum of all disciplines in a high school seems, on the surface, engaging and educationally beneficial on many levels. The student must be creative, organized and digitally literate. Further, the student must create a story that is applicable to the specific subject area of the course.
It might be advisable to begin with digital literacy. Such programs as Windows Moviemaker make the process easy and fun. The students should be exposed to this form of expression. The Digitales also exhibited a form of expression that could be utilized in the classroom. Here they stated that, in the Podcast, it is the authors own voice that is central to the storytelling. The storyteller must “make magic” from the voice.
Jason Ohler made the point that Digital Storytelling can enhance a student’s skills in critical thinking, expository writing and media literacy.
In Mathematics, this Digital Storytelling form of a project might be applicable to the learning and understanding of word problems in which Math concepts are applied.
Theodsakis advises working backward from a goal. Have a vision, he advises, for creating the mode of posing a problem, creating computing processes necessary for the solution and perhaps relating the solution to the original story setup.
Tom Banaszewski had some great tips for working with students to learn and apply digital literacy.
I envision using Digital Storytelling as a project for my Mathematics classes. I might utilize the process myself during some classes during the first semester when I am teaching word problems. The students could then generate their own Digital Math Stories for the second semester, after they have developed some Digital Literacy.
Using Digital Storytelling as a method for teaching and learning is viable for students on so many levels: creativity, critical thinking, content applications, and Digital Literacy.

Digital Age Methodologies for Learning: Roblyer & Prensky

M.D. Roblyer states in his article on the “The Fifth Literacy” that “…the digital age both develops and calls on new forms of intelligence.” Correspondingly, I have read recently that students’ IQs have actually increased in the past decade. They attribute the IQ increase to the increase in video game usage among students tested. The children have to make quick, comparative judgment calls to continue on in the video game. These “Digital Natives” are entranced by the visual challenges on the screen. Parents, the “Digital Immigrants”, bemoan the hours spent by their children playing their video games instead of being engaged in more traditional children activities, like soccer. The reality is that these Digital Natives are actually increasing their IQs.
As a teacher, an example of visual representation that struck me as very effective for Mathematics was at a Workshop in which they representated the concept of slope by using a Calculator Based Ranger (CBR). One teacher volunteered to be the “motion” object. The axes represented distance and time. As the teacher moved a greater and greater distance away from the CBR, the line representing slope increased over time. The teacher stood still and the slope line was straight. As the teacher returned to the podium, the slope went down. The student can watch this change visually using an overhead projector and coordinates axes.
Using visual representation of a slope graph and then asking students to create a story regarding how the graph was generated, is another method for teaching the concept of slope. This creative, visual method allows the student to think critically and inferentially regarding the concept of slope that is represented visually.
Marc Prensky indicated that we are moving too slowly as we attempt to incorporate technology into the curriculum. We must engage these students in the classroom using the visual literacy and technology that these “Digital Natives” have grown up with and are accustomed to.
Prensky stated that an Algebra course should be one big video game. The students have to beat the game to pass the course. Prensky has many great ideas as he informs us, “as educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives.”
He is right. My students are much more engaged in learning when I bring up the SmartView Program from Texas Instruments on the overhead projector and walk around the room with my Tablet PC to teach graphing calculator concepts to them.
In these articles, Roblyer and Prensky made many valid points regarding the changes in visual literacy and how, as educators, we must reshape our thinking patterns to engage students in effective learning for their Digital Age.

The Role of Media in Learning

The Role of Media in Learning

Michael Williams in his presentation invited us to consider the fact that in our present “Read-Write Web” it is now as simple to create content, as well as, consume it.
The Blog is a relatively new concept, that is popular with most high school students. In the article “Tech Tools for Learning”, it was noted that math teachers can post pictures of geometric shapes in a blog. The students could then identify geometric relationships and write their contributions to a discussion of the geometric intricacies of the structure. The teacher could go one step further and bring these blogs up in the classroom on an overhead projector. This projected blog would provide the Geometry class with a basis for further discussion on the subject of content specific geometric relationships.
In my classroom, I found United Streaming to be especially effective when teaching Trigonometry. United Streaming provides topic specific video clips. This is an affiliate of Discovery Learning. The clips that I used were the “Standard Deviants” who are students from Princeton University. The lessons are very detailed and accurate in teaching the math content. Furthermore, the students are engaged by the lessons taught in the video clips and the comedic, visual way in which the material is presented. As an example, the SOH-CAH-TOA lesson has the Princeton boys soaking their toes on buckets of water while explaining the lesson. The students in the classroom do remember the lesson and reference the lesson with a smile.
Mike Williams stated that the advantage of Podcasting is that content is automatically delivered to you. It is an exciting new concept that would allow a student to create a Podcast that is related to a Mathematical concept. These media enhanced lessons enrich learning.
Thru www.edublogs.org a teacher or student can upload images, audio, documents, Powerpoint, or digital material that they want to share. This provides tremendous possibilities for a teacher, as well as, a student to provide engaging presentations of Math concepts.
On the downside, it is a concern that the media resources may be too costly for some. Another concern is for the safety of the student, because we are not always able to control these media concepts. However, although we must be cognizant of those drawbacks, the educational benefits of the role of media in learning must continue to be nurtured.
The “Bubbleshare” website into which a person can place their photos, as well as, their audio explaining the shots was an interesting concept provided on that site that could be utilized in the classroom. However, I felt that “ pbwiki” was the website that was the easiest to use and had the advantage that multiple people can edit it. This site provides tremendous possibilities for educational content engagement.

Blended Learning

Blended Learning
In the K-12 Classroom

When considering my thoughts on blended learning, I am struck by the enormity of possibilities for blending technology with traditional teaching and learning.
A couple of days ago, the two-year old son of a friend of mine, sat at my computer and found the keys to spell out his name in capital letters in a Word document. “See, see. I spelled, Jack!” he exclaimed. He then confidently took the mouse and “Xed” out of the Word document and pulled up his favorite website friend, “Clifford” the red dog, who taught him new lessons.
Daily, the men commuting in on the train, use their quiet time to open and do work on their laptops. They use them wirelessly. They use these laptops to communicate and learn new skills, both in, and out, of the workplace.
People who are retired are filling classes at the library and local Community Colleges to learn. Technology is their tool for e-learning. Even though these people lack mobility, they can learn from lessons on their PC or laptop. Lifelong learning is a reality due to the ease of use and access to technology.
For us, as teachers, Norma, in her lecture, stated that “Blended Learning” combines the traditional learning with e-learning. Chris Proctor in his article, “Blended Learning in Practice” stated that, “Blended Learning is simply the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning.” While Don Clark in his “Blended Learning White Paper” found Blended Learning to be a flexible term that means different things to different people”. The challenge is to make decisions in each learning experience that will provide the “optimal blend” of technology with the traditional methodology to maximize learning for the learner, no matter what his/her age.
Chris Porter stated that to achieve “Blended Learning”, that is effective, takes “substantial time and substantial expertise”. I am finding that to be true at our high school. In my department-mathematics-each teacher has just gotten a Tablet PC to teach Math. The “Tablet Mode” allows the teacher to move anywhere in the room and still write equations and problems that he/she is presenting. The lesson from the Tablet PC is projected wirelessly onto the screen in the front of the room for all to see. The teacher has access to all the Math programs such as Geometer’s Sketchpad, SmartView, etc. and even to topic specific video clips from United Streaming, to enhance the lesson’s presentation. Furthermore, the teacher can move freely among the students to engage them in the lesson and promote dialogue.
The problem is that this program is going to take “substantial time”, as Proctor stated. Time to integrate the technology into our Math curriculum. This is the first time that our tech people have worked with a wireless projector setup. Everyone involved in the program is learning something new. I have instituted “dialogue groups” among our Math teachers. It helps to verbalize problems and find that someone has a quick solution.
In the end the Tablet PC program will provide a wonderful learning environment for our students. However, integration into the Math curriculum to determine how the technology will be used the most effectively will take substantial time and effort on the teachers’ part.

Roller Coaster WebQuest-Empowering Student Learning

Roller Coaster WebQuest
Empowering Student Learning


The target group for my Roller Coaster WebQuest are the Freshmen Algebra I students. This WebQuest has educational value to the students on many levels. In Algebra I the students must learn to create an equation that is applicable to a real-life situation, properly solve the equation, and then interpret the answer as it applies to the indicated situation. In this Roller Coaster WebQuest, the student is challenged to write and use equations for many purposes.
Roller coasters have appeal to students at this age. Kids like to know how fast they are going at different times in the ride. How high are the hills? How low the valleys? How fast do you have to go to make the coaster do a loop? What are the safety considerations in the design? The Algebra I students are already curious about these concepts. This inquiry-based WebQuest to design a model of a roller coaster takes the students to the internet for answers. The websites are many, and well created, to provide a wealth of resource information. There are websites that allow the students to move a roller coaster along a track that the student can make higher or lower. When the student pushes a button with the mouse, the virtual coaster takes off and shows current speeds and heights along the way. This is very engaging learning for the student. Other websites address the safety and costs of different roller coasters.
The Algebra I student uses formulas for velocity that are already in the Glencoe text. This relates the roller coaster project to our coursework. Some students have never considered financing. Financing is a reality for the business owner. When making the proposal, the Algebra I students have to offer two methods for financing the roller coaster project. The formulas for financing are in our text as well.
These students work in teams to create the model of a roller coaster and then present the design package, including costs to the prospective buyer. Working together, and yet, having each student lead different aspects of the project, allows the students to see the project from different perspectives—design, implementation, costs, financing, and presentation.
This is a great preliminary project for these Freshmen who, when they are Juniors, will be going to Great America on a field trip to study the rollers coasters found there. They will be going as members of their Physics class. They will study the Physics of the roller coaster concept.
We have Bernie Dodge to thank for creating the WebQuest which we now use as a very dynamic form of inquiry-based learning that empowers student learning in the Math classroom.