week 15 assistive tech

This time we went over assistive technology, technology meant to assist students with exceptionalities. We were responsible for finding technology for three students, one only had one arm, one couldn't speak, and the third was blind. There were a great number of technologies which could be used for assisting these students, and each was a fairly interesting insight into what a school administrator has to do, between balancing a budget, and ensuring that students are able to get their comprehensive education.

weeks 13 and 14 double the fun

This was a roller coaster pair of weeks, the first week I had found out a major assignment from a different class wasn't going to work, so i was majorly displeases, to say the least. the next week, I found out that it would work on a different computer, so I was joyous, and able to help a classmate. the assignment, or at least the major assignment, was to make a video using some not so complex editing tools, and it was fun.

week 12, free stuff

This week, we went over copyright and fair use guidelines. class was canceled and we made a brochure based on fair use guidelines and copyright laws. There's not much more I could write about this class, as there wasn't a class.

week 11, spreadsheets

In today's class we made a grade book using Microsoft excel, and explored some other functionality within excel, making an activity based off of it. The activity I chose to do was something I experienced as part of my Field Experience class, a Battleship style game, where students learn the terms horizontal, vertical, and cell, then put them to practice by trying to sink my ships.

fun stuff, week 10

this past week, we used microsoft excel to create a grade book, while this isn't a new concept to me, i think it's cool that excel can be used in such a way. our second activity was to create a second spreadsheet based activity, for which i chose to make a battleship based game, it was a fun little activity

catching up, week 9

this week we used graphic organizers to create a newsletter, i based my newsletter around my hobby, making chainmail. i think that the fact that technology comparable to inspiration exists for free on the internet is fairly useful.besides that there's not a whole lot i can say about the activities tonight, as neither of them is really a new concept to me, as i've been using inspiration, and graphical organizers for most of my life, and have been exposed to newsletters for almost all of my student career.

caught up: week seven

this will mark the end of my starting late series of blog posts, and usher in the period of time when (hopefully) i can stay caught up with the monster blogs, and not have to stay up late to crunch five or so blogs in one night to relieve my stress...in any case, this past week (yesterday) we went over using iGoogle...my first response on seeing this last semester was "Oh god, Apple corrupted Google..." which isn't actually the case (as i understand it) iGoogle is a useful tool that allows all kinds of useful (or distracting) Widgets to be applied and checked regularly. as a starter to iGoogle, our assignment was to find a few widgets to add to our hoard. we HAD to get Gmail, Google reader, Google Docs, and two more widgets of our choice...i chose a few widgets last year to use as well...my current widgets (at the time of writing) include a stock ticker where I keep track of Goggle stock, for entertainment value, and Disney stock, because I own [a piece of] Disney, i also have a few fun widgets, a pair of eyes that follow my mouse, a hamster that does the same thing, but can also run on his/her hamster wheel, i also have a family of penguins that can interact with the mouse and be dragged across the widget, these three are fairly distracting...i also have a simulation of newtons cradle...wicked fun stuff...we also reviewed a few google tools, the entire class got a crash course on Google Docs, and I chose to review Google Earth and Google Sketchup...bot are useful applications, and i forgot to mention, as part of my review, that google earth and google Sketchup can be interconnected, allowing you to import buildings from google earth, and edit them in sketchup, seeing dimensions and size comparisons. Spelling mistakes be cursed, i'm ending this here

Goodnight and good luck,
Neil