Design Experiment 3

I will be honest, I have always associated Khan Academy with upper level middle grades and beyond. I have led my personal children to this site more than once. Therefore, I was blown away with what I found. I started by looking at the K-12 section (alarmed at that breakdown - what does Kindergarten have in common with seniors in high school?).  I then went to the counting section. Wow! Khan Academy has lessons on counting! There was a video, and a practice session. In addition, the practice session has a "hint" for each practice question. The scaffolding given to the learner is great. If you miss a question, the program suggests you watch the video. 

From a behaviorist standpoint, the program also gives points and badges. The points and badges allow you to build your character. The program also gives ideas and printables to help teachers to utilize the points in a reward system.

I love that Khan is proud of its status as a free resource and pledges to be so. I also appreciate teachers being able to track students. I will totally be utilizing this program in the future! The ability for my students who struggle to control their scaffolding and for me, as a teacher, to set up their learning, makes this a great asset. 

Design Experiment 2

I found Edmodo to be easy to use, but not as versatile as the Pearson Learning Studio. I was unable to find a audio recording ability on Edmodo, while I have used an audio recording system on Pearson. In honesty, I have become concerned about the far reaching control Pearson seems to have in education, it is hard to not defend it against other products. I know many groups of teachers have attempted to use Edmodo as a communication/idea sharing forum, but without an instructor to push the conversation, the forum went unused after the primary question/answer session. I appreciate the Pearson Learning Studio (used by the university) allows for easy a.udio and written responses and attachment and access to many other formats. This allows for the instructor to reach a variety of learning types, whether learners prefer writing, audio, or even drawn output, Pearson allows all of these formats to be turned in. These affordances support a variety of learning styles.

Design Experiment 1

Google Docs

Google Docs is an incredibly versatile tool. In addition to surveys and votes for staff, Google Docs allows special education teacher to create weekly information requests from their students' general education teachers that are quick to fill out, traceable, and automatically put into spreadsheet from. Tests can be created for your class, and automatically put into spreadsheet form. What a quick and easy formative assessment!

Google Hangouts

When I teach a group of teachers this summer, I feel this would be a great tool. While I am teaching, this could be an open forum for questions, comments, and concerns. In a classroom, some classrooms have a "parking lot" where students put questions for the end of class. In a tech-friendly classroom, this could be the equivalent...in a quick and easy format. This app could become the exit ticket of the future.

Google Earth

Many students seem to have a good grasp on the Social Studies concepts of neighborhood, city, state, and country, however, my students really struggle with this. The vocabulary word 'apartment'  came up recently. The student looked up the word in the dictionary and had looked up pictures on google images, but still did not understand. The perplexing thing is, this student lived in an apartment. So, using Google Earth, I pulled up this student's apartment. In a stroke of luck, his mother's SUV was parked in front. I was able to show him the apartment and the path he took each day to school. I could not have done this before Google Earth without planning, cost, and permission forms. This made the concept relevant and real to him.

eJournal 6

I will be using video, for one, based on affordances.  Instructing other teachers who hold the same position I do, makes me feel a need to show my classroom in action early in the presentation.  Anyone can state they are doing a great job or claim they have extensive knowledge in a subject area, but showing this expertise is much more effective.  Since it is not feasible for these teachers to see my classroom in action themselves (especially since the training is during the summer), video is the next best method.  

In addition, I am planning to use a real-time polling program (most likely polleverywhere) to quickly assess how comfortable my audience is prior to moving on.  I will also use a real-time response software for questions the audience is not comfortable asking aloud.   I have not previously utilized these types of programs, however since this is a one time, short time span class, I feel these would add value to the course.  

eJournal 5

I am fairly certain I have never had to list all of the instructional strategies I use in any given day.  This leads me to question if it is normal to plan for so many in a 2.5 hour class.  I find that most of my strategies overlap, so the list seems less excessive.  However, I still tilt my head at the length of the list.  So, here it is:

Intro:
Comparing similarities and differences (differentiation in general ed and special ed)
Connect to prior knowledge/learning (IDEA)

Hook:
Giving students examples (my classroom videos)
Use of media/videos (my classroom videos)

To best explain these needs in our classrooms:
Addressing student learning styles
Considering Multiple Intelligence
Differentiating Instruction

The rest of the time:
Active Participation
Checking for understanding
Cooperative Learning
Demonstration
Direct Instruction
Feedback to student
Formative Assessment
Guided Practice
Lecture/presentations
Nonlinguistic representations
Note taking by students
Use of technology
Use of visuals
Whole group instruction

Ending:
Summary/Closure

I am worried that since I have never presented to adults for this length of time (I have given a behavior presentation each year, for the past 4 years, during professional development to my school for about an hour.) I am overestimating the amount of information I can cover.  I do know that in any given 2.5 hour time, with 11 students (each with different goals and objectives) I probably use at least this many strategies, but don't know how that will relate to an adult presentation.

1) motivation: how will you engage and motivate your learners to learn?

I plan to use personal stories, videos of my classroom (yes, I will have parent permission), data showing the jumps in academics I have seen in testing, and videos of my students over time (I record students performing objectives prior to each ARD for their parents and have many students over years.).

2) prerequisite and subskills: what is that they will learn and in what order?

What differentiation looks like from an goals/objectives standpoint, in small groups, in large groups, and individually.

3) practice and feedback: how will you know that they have learned it? and how will you let learners know whether they’ve learned?

I will ask questions and receive feedback in real time (although only by percentage), I will have an open, real-time question/answer board that I can answer during breaks and small group time.  I will monitor small group work and answer individual questions.  I will provide take away materials to support the use of the instruction.

eJournal 4

I write a great deal of goals and objectives for my students, but I have never written goals and objectives for adult learners, or for a presentation that lasts for only a few hours.  I am not sure I am 100% happy with these yet, but here they are:

Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to describe and define differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms and demonstrate that knowledge by:

• providing the three important variables (what the student knows, what the student needs to know, and how the student learns best).    
• identifying the characteristics of the three basic learning styles by determining the learning styles of the people in their group.

Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to demonstrate steps necessary to successfully plan differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms by:

• accessing free assessment products online that could be used for summative assessment  OR identifying the summative assessment tool they currently use.
• demonstrating an understanding of the connection between summative assessment and goals/objectives by successfully creating at least one objective from a (provided) completed assessment.
• demonstrating an understanding of needs of students based on learning styles by correctly identifying the best types of activities for each learning style.

                                                                                     
Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to demonstrate steps necessary to successfully differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms by:

• creating a whole group differentiated lesson using a provided lesson plan and provided student profiles.
• creating a small group differentiated lesson using a provided lesson plan and provided student profiles.

eJournal 3

I thought after days of researching (and many, many articles printed) that I had learned nothing at all.  I will say I have learned a great deal, but nothing about the demographics of teachers in Texas who teach students who spend >60% of the day in special education (PEIMS 44).  With a number of different class names (Life Skills, Life Class, Functional Academics, Adapted Learning Environment, Moving Toward Independence are just a few I know of), it is difficult to search for this class type.  I had the best luck when using the PEIMS value of 44.  I have learned, at this point in time, the Federal Government has allowed states to determine the student:teacher ratio.  I have learned there are many terms for the statistic I am looking for - class size, caseload, workload and pupil-teacher ratio.  I have learned that Texas has decided to leave this ratio up to districts.  I have learned Region Service Centers across Texas have attempted to help determine a maximum value for special education classes, based on a number of values, including the PEIMS values of the students.  I have learned this is a recommendation, and not a binding value.  I have learned the fact that the state allows districts to determine the class size of students with a high percentage of time spent in special ed, districts do not have to report the value.  So, basically, other than what I have seen, I am unable to truly determine class sizes are getting larger.

Additionally, because all special education teachers are created equal (at least in terms of demographics in Texas), I am not able to gather accurate demographic data concerning age, number of years of experience, number of years in special education, or gender.  I am not 100% sure where to go from here.  If you have ideas, I will run with them.