Bookshare

I stumbled upon Bookshare while researching technology in the classroom and I can't help but love this program. My minor is Special Education so I love all ideas, services and programs that help those with special needs. Bookshare is an online library of digital books for people with print disabilities such has visual impairments, physical disabilities and learning disabilities. Those with special needs can listen to the books with a text-to-speech synthesized voice, read Braille, or read the books in large print. Bookshare also allows those with special needs to read books on a variety of portable devices, all which are easier to access on Bookshare than books on tape. Those with learning disabilities benefit from Bookshare because books are offered in visual and audio versions. Bookshare also has many great software programs that provide a large variety of reading support such as highlighting text as the voice reads the book aloud, changing the margin of the book along with paragraph and line spacing, as well as being able to change the background and the color of the text.

Bookshare is a nonprofit organization that uses the support and help of volunteers to offer their services to those with special needs for free! Print books are made accessible to Bookshare by publishers and authors, volunteers that upload scanned books, universities and schools that contribute their scanned books as well as books that are assigned to Bookshare by educators from the NIMAC repository.

Bookshare has reduced the time it takes to provide a book in an accessible format to those with special needs from months or years to days. Not only that, but all books are provided at a cost that is 75% less expensive than books that are provided for those with special needs using traditional methods. Other nonprofit organizations, schools, and different technology companies make up the 18 different partners that Bookshare has.

Below is a video of a student, Shane McKnight, who explains how he uses Bookshare, how it helps him and why he prefers to use Bookshare over reading out of a normal print book.

Bookshare image from flickr.com

Using Facebook in the Classroom

When Facebook first became popular I was in high school. Going on to Facebook soon became a distraction for students and was blocked on all computers so I never thought that Facebook would become a positive thing for teachers, students, the learning environment and communication. I came across a PDF called "Drive Belonging and Engagement in the Classroom:Using Facebook" that touches on all the positive ways Facebook can be used. The first suggestion is creating a "teacher" profile, one that is completely different from your personal life. It then says to become friends with your students. You even can create a profile or page for your entire class. If a page is created for an entire class the students can then upload Youtube videos that they create, the teacher can share pictures of a student's exemplary work, or reminders for future assignments and projects can be sent out or put on the page status. The Facebook page can also be used to upload pictures that the teacher or the students have taken during different units in class, or pictures of events, objects etc that would apply to a certain unit in class. Using Facebook in a classroom doesn't seem like a bad idea after all. The only advice that I read in this article is to get permission from parents to post pictures of their child's work or of their child working in class.

Here is where I found all my information of the positives of using Facebook in the classroom.

Facebook image from flickr.com

iPods in the Classroom

I really enjoyed reading the interview given by Susie Meserve to Robert Craven from Orange County Department of Education in California. Robert Craven's school district uses iPods in the classroom, in this interview, Robert Craven, stated many benefits in using iPods in the classroom. Some of those benefits is that it's easier to integrate audio like music or famous speeches into the curriculum. Other benefits stated by Robert Craven was being able to load images, audio and videos onto the iPod to catch a student up to speed if they may have missed a day or if they are struggling with the content. Students can also practice vocabulary and listen to stories on an iPod at their own pace and then record themselves reading the story using the voice recorder. Craven tells Susie Meserve that iPods in the classroom are not distracting to students if they use the set of iPods that belong to the school because the student’s music or games are not downloaded onto the school’s iPod set. Craven also states that he is impressed with how excited the students are to be using the iPods and that they are talking to their parents more about what they're learning because they are more interested in the way that they are learning information.


Below is a link to the interview between Susie Meserve and Robert Craven
http://www.schoolcio.com/ShowArticle/1014

iPod image from flickr.com

SMART boards

My level 1 teaching experience was the first time I had ever seen a SMART board in person. The teacher that had it in his classroom loved it and used it all the time. It wasn't until I looked at the Florida School of the Deaf and Blind website that I saw all the advantages to having a SMART board in the classroom. SMART boards are a way to show students anything that is on a computer's desktop. I think the biggest advantage to having a SMART board in the classroom is that you, as a teacher, have the ability to record the instruction or lesson and post the material. By being able to record instruction gives students the opportunity to see the material again, which is very beneficial for those students that learn best by repetition as well as for struggling learners. I am minoring in Special Education so I thought the best feature of a SMART board is that no digital pen is used, so the SMART board doesn't interferer with the signing a teacher does for deaf students.

Below is a teacher talking about SMART boards in her classroom. Also, click here to find more information on SMART boards.

Image from flickr.com