Learning and Technology - in That Order

Great Job, Mary Jane

lifeinthefastbrain — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:57:21 +0000

The future…

lifeinthefastbrain — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:28:09 +0000

I want to create an online course for college students with learning disabilities, Developing your own AT Toolbox, from free web 2.0 tools so they will know what is available and which app works best for them. I am not encouraged by Landmark to ever adopt the course but think that it would be valuable somewhere or tweaked a little toward educators. Removing barriers to education for those who learn differently is a passion of mine so I will get it done. Since the “teaching” I do at Landmark is one to one instruction on file conversion and finding accessible coursework, I can tell the students I work with about the course even if it they find out about it close to the end of their time at Landmark. If they took it as a self paced class on their own, I really need to pay attention feedback and self assessment tools so they will know what they have learned and what needs to be revisited.

Technology Overload?

lifeinthefastbrain — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:03:13 +0000

I don’t think I’m having technology overload, more idea overload; now that I’ve decided to use wordpress for the website and put the WQ into a course. I thought that I had the site map fairly well tacked down until I realized that the map was great for only one course and thought that it was not really planning ahead…so I’ve made some more changes and hoping for the best. It works for two courses and will probably find out the hard way when I hit another barrier. When I get to the place where I can’t remember where the wiki is located, I get lost in either flickr or photoshop fooling around with images. I am feeling exhausted but that might be related to the extreme heat as well as the energy fired up by the tech possibilities. In terms of relating my need to escape into a visual reality when feeling like I can’t take in any more information to how I will deal with my students in future semesters; I think I need to remember to put time limits on practice time and having them get up and do something for a few minutes before resuming and ending the time with a short reflection, even if it were only a brief verbal check in.

Webquest and Essential Questions

lifeinthefastbrain — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:35:13 +0000

I needed to narrow down the topic of assistive technology down to a specific ? appropriate for either students or educators. I did find an excellent WQ for future educators but I think that it would be great for special ed teachers who have been teaching for a long time and might not be aware of the ever growing number of free AT that could augment their students’ learning potential. The question that pulls the hardest on my heart is;

What free AT is going to be most helpful for my learning style? The product produced would be one of a variety of formats: it could be a Glogster poster, a powerpoint, an essay describing the process of software selection, an iMovie, a podcast,a screencast, or a magazine article. I would collect all of the finished products and create a Glogster poster or a video to be posted on the class website.

What is it called? TMI or OMG

lifeinthefastbrain — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:39:56 +0000

Yikes, day 1 and my brain is flowing over and I still can’t decide on what tool to use for the class website. I like Yola, but could not figure out how to change the titles of the pages on the actual pages- I could edit the name but when you clicked on the new name, the name of the page was “index” or “gallery” or whatever the template said. I am very familiar with Moodle and WordPress but not as web pages – Moodle is out and the learning curve for WordPress is a little steep. Hopefully, sleeping on it will help. If what I learned in a UDL workshop last week, that you need to get to REM sleep for the part of your brain to process the day’s information from working memory to short term memory. Here’s hoping. I need to find the place where I can upload some photos that are on this computer… alas not my laptop.

CopyRight or Wrong

lifeinthefastbrain — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:50:09 +0000

Since I became a part time student as well as a full time worker, I have not really paid much attention to the news other than briefly looking at the newspapers every morning while I put out the 4 papers in the library. I haven’t had TV forever, and I listen to books on tape instead of the radio. (I do stream some news events from my computer when I find or hear something that is important to me.) So I had no idea that the Hope poster was having copyright issues and from the brief articles we read, I could not find any problems – from my limited knowledge of media copyright. For sure, the Andy Warhol, “Marilyn” series came to mind and I didn’t remember any problems from either the “art” world or the “copyright” world which probably did much to make me wonder about the problem: was someone making a mountain from a molehill? was the issue that the poster was profit? isn’t someone’s face in the public domain? was using only a portion of the photograph considered fair use?

I hate to admit that I thought that if you took only a portion of an image on the web and made obvious changes to the portion, you were not violating copyright but it was in an educational setting not creating income for yourself.

The comment by L. Gartel is preposterous and takes the ideas of copyright so far out that it would be difficult to produce any digital art without infringing on someone’s rights, apparently by owning the idea, thank goodness he does say that ideas can not be copyright protected, we all owe him a piece of our own inspiration.

I think that Fairey has brought a lot of this “interpretation” of copyright laws and freedom of expression chaotic mess upon himself. I can’t find the article that I read, or think I read, where the AP made some kind of statement to Fairey and then Fairey decided to take the on the AP so the AP had to make a stand. If that is the case, it sounds like Fairey is pushing for something other than the right to express his art.

The Creative Sky is the Limit – GoogleLitTrips

lifeinthefastbrain — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:56:05 +0000

I wish I were an English teacher or had the time to play with this GoogleLitTrips. (http://www.googlelittrips.org/)

I am aching to create one of these for “The People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks.

A Different Way to Read Great Literature!

This site is an experiment in teaching great literature in a very different way. Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place… and so much more!

Helpful article with great links

lifeinthefastbrain — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:49:54 +0000

Several springs ago, I took a NELINET online course called, “23 Things” which was adapted from the “43 Things” Website. It was my real indoctrination into the world of web 2.0 and ignited a wildfire in my brain and heart about possibilities for all students especially those with learning disabilities. I was trying to find the source for a wiki I am referring to for a conference next week and found a this article written by one of the authors. Right now, I don’t have time to explore all of her resources and/or ideas but it is high on my to do list (after next week).

A Few New Things by Joyce Kasman Valenza

(http://www.linworth.com/pdf/lmc/reviews_and_articles/featured_articles/Kasman%20Valenza_April_May2008.pdf)

begins with:
In the beginning, there was a Web site called 43 Things
(http://www.43things.com/).
The site continues to ask folks about the things they want to do
with their lives, mostly the things they want to learn. The goal:
to make a list, to get inspired, to share your progress with others.
As you achieve a goal, you click on an “I’ve done this” button
and share a story about how you did it.

A post about technology

lifeinthefastbrain — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:30:00 +0000

I am frustrated by the response of higher ed to technological advances and how technology is creating a merger between academic study and the library. It feels like things are still very turf oriented; the faculty feel that tech people should not teach technology because they are the instructors, the tech people are frustrated by the faculty’s lack of motivation to learn new technologies, the library staff are often left holding the bag especially when it comes to doing research and are wondering who is going to train them. The students have the expectation that the faculty will use technology at some point in the semester. A simmering stew pot in a bad economy just waiting for the heat to be turned up just a little.

Homework week 2 tech4teachers

lifeinthefastbrain — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:02:25 +0000

Technology, especially since Web 2.0, and the explosion of information has changed the way I look at learning. Growing up in a time when the “stand and deliver” and the memorization of facts was the teaching norm and watching the various government programs directed at changing the education system come and go with very little to show for it, I am very interested in learning how other people use technology in the classroom. I want to learn the pedagogical reasons for using a particular piece of software and how (or if) others are using technology toward a more universally designed class. I don’t have anxiety about this type of tech course; however, it would be a totally different story if this were programming.

My love of technology has slowly developed over 10 years and I thought I would go berserk when I took a 23 Things online course from a library organization 2 winters ago. I could not believe how much was possible and that people freely contributed incredible tools; I could not stop talking about all of the cool things I found that could help our students (at Landmark College) especially if we could reframe out thinking about accommodations for the disabled. The tools could be helpful or enjoyable by every one who chose to investigate the feature.

Since I don’t have a place to teach students, especially those leaving Landmark with only a proprietary text reader installed on their laptops, how to convert and/or find digital information in the real world, I started a digital text blog a year and a half ago . I have found that it has required more time to do a really good job than I had planned and I’m only now really “getting” how to organize all of the information. WordPress is not especially user friendly, at least to me, but was Landmark’s choice, and currently I’m spending a lot time learning how to make page, anchor or jump links and getting images to be placed where I’d like them to go. It will get there.

I did set up a bloglines account to keep track of the edtech blogs I like to read or I don’t that I would remember to search for the specific blogs and would lose out on a lot of good information.