Blog Post #3

Peer Editing

Everyone should know and learn how to peer edit. It is an important tool for all students to have. In the video and slide show, What is Peer Editing? and Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial, it had many important learning skills for peer editing. In both the video and the slideshow it explained what peer editing means and the rules students should go by. They described peer editing as working with someone your own age to help improve, revise, and edit his or her writing. The rules that they suggested were: one, stay positive, two, always start with compliments, three, suggestions, and lastly corrections and to be specific.

I really enjoyed the video Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes. I thought they were so cute. I like how they started out with a tongue twister and when they described the students they used the same beginning letter. The students also used the rules that were in the first video and slide show. For example, they had a "Jean the Generalizer" this student was not specific on any of the corrections on the peer review.

Technology in Special Education

In this video, the teacher uses technology in her classroom to help her special educatoion students. Laptops are used for students that have trouble in cognitive learning and for the nonverbal students. In her classroom, without technology learning can be difficult.

Her student, Corbin, without technology it was hard for him to participate in silent reading. He had to have an assistant to read to him out loud in the hallway away from other classmates. But with the technology of the Ipod Touch's audio books, he is now able to be independent in silent reading, and he can be with his classmates. Other students use technology to talk, write, and read. Technology makes assignments fun and much easier for these students.

In my classroom, I can use the same technology she used and more to help the special education students. I can use the Ipod Touch for reading, Ipad apps to help students with writing, reading, numbers, and learning in general. I also think that technology can make these students more independent which is a great goal.

How IPad Works With Academic for Autism

In this video, it shows a about a child with autism and how he and his parents use the Ipad to help with his academic skills. I loved this video. It was really inspiring to watch him get so excited when he accomplished the skill.

In my classroom to help students with special needs, I would use an app called First Words Feelings. This app helps students to express themselves while identifying and understanding 38 common emotions and feelings. They are able to use pre-learning skills such as matching letters of the alphabet and spelling words. I think it would improve learning because they are able to connect common emotions and feelings with sounds, images, letters, and words while they think they are just playing a game. The teacher is also able to adjust the difficulty level for the needs of the child.

Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

This video is about a teacher, Vicki Davis, whose classroom is very similar to our class EDM 310. Mrs. Davis has a blog in which the students follow. In her class, she teaches the students how to use technology effectively, just like EDM 310. Her students learn about trends all around the world and how to be active in using it. Her class assignments are set up to be custom to the type of students she has.

Vicki Davis said a very insightful bit of information for future teachers, " You as a teacher do not need to know everything about a subject before you teach it." I think that is a very important bit of information because the students can discover something new, teach it to the teacher,and the teacher knows the students have really learned about the task. Also, the teacher is able to learn right along with the students.