Wednesday, April 8, 2009

More spreadsheets

http://www.microsoft.com/Education/LessonPlans.mspx
Wow! Some already pre-made lesson plans to help enhance student learning through technology!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Spreadsheets

I chose to evaluate the Nutrition for Kids...and Astronauts project about how Ms. Peggy Hash and Ms. Connie Fugate used presentation software in their classroom. This was found on the Building Bridges with technology website at http://edtech.boisestate.edu/elearn/newbridges/tslessons.htm.
I am interested in teaching special education, and although there are a couple adaptions I would make, I think this kind of lesson could still be implemented. Students in the special education classroom will have a wide variety of skills, as well as different limitations. Especially for a collaborative project such as this, you could have students use the skills they currently posses, and possibly develop new ones. I think the nutrition subject would be great because it would be prevalent to the students lives, and wouldn't be too abstract of a subject. If the special education classroom combined with another classroom, as the second and fifth grade classes did, despite deficits in knowledge, and skills, there is greater chance for a complete, informative presentation. Some of the adaptations I could foresee are students who may not have computer skills, may be able to color pictures of certain kinds of food, which could then be scanned and put into the power point. It may also be possible to have students with limited motor ability use a speech to speech synthesizer to input information. In the case of the food guide pyramid, students could use a real model of one with Velcro strips on it to place their own 'food' items cut out from magazines or other sources in their appropriate group. Again, you would take pictures of this model to put into the power point later. All of these ways (and I'm sure there are others too) would be a great way to still get the special education students involved and enable them to have an impact in a group project.