Final Reflection

I have learned everything that I hoped to and more in this class. I wanted to find out ways that I can use technology in my classroom to diversify my instruction, and I have definitely done so. I have not only learned about, but I have experienced many different types of programs that would be great to use with my special needs students. I really love the ease of a lot of the things that we discussed. I thought that things like this would be much more difficult, but now I know that my students will be able to do them with only minimal assistance. This means that I can use technology with them, still cover the curriculum that I must, and they will have fun! Before this class, I was a little unsure about using technology in my classroom, but now I know it will play a huge role in my instruction!

Storybird, Google Site

I thought that storybird was interesting and fun. I think that it would be a great way to students interested in writing! I also love the fact that it gives pictures as prompts for writing. This would be great for students who are lower functioning or who sometimes have a hard time getting started. I do think that the number of illustrations available might be distracting to students, though. They might spend more time picking out pictures to use than they spend writing. This could be fixed with careful classroom management, though.

I am excited about seeing the final product of my google site! I think that this project has been very relevant to my future career, and I can't wait to use one with my class. The only draw back I can see about using a google site in an area like I am from is that many of the students may not have access to the internet.

Spreadsheet

Above is a screenshot from a contractions quiz that I created using a spreadsheet. I thought that this activity was really fun and would be extremely useful in a classroom! Even using this program to assess students would be great for diverse learners and would be something interactive for students that they would have fun with.

 

Animoto

I thought that Animoto was interesting, but I can only think of a few things to do with it outside of the classroom. Although I can see how it would be useful for diverse learners and as an alternative assignment for students with disabilities, I do not like the fact that everyone who uses it has to create an account. It is an easy process, but I do not think that there would be enough instructional time in some classroom to accommodate the process. Despite this, if everyone in the class could access the website, this might be a wonderful thing to use for students to create history presentations.

Personally, I thought that the digital scrapbook is very creative and fun. I would love to create one to share with my family for the holidays. In a classroom, the teacher could create a digital scrapbook to document the classes' experiences during the year.

Google Forms

I think that google forms could be very useful in the classroom. Although it would not always be plausible, I think that it would be a good idea for differentiating your instruction. You could provide different students with different types of exams. For example, you might want to give the students in your inclusion classroom a multiple choice test with three options for each question. Simultaneously, you could provide four options or essay questions for the students in your honors classes. This would be really easy to do using this program. Also, because the text is online, taking tests like this would also be a great choice for students with disabilities. Text reading programs could be used to aid these diverse learners without taking any additional instruction time. You could just give them a set of headphones and let them take the test on the computer while the other students take it on paper.

My favorite thing about this, though, is that it can show you statistics. So, if your entire class was taking an exam, it would very easy to figure out if a large portion of the class was struggling with a single concept!

Inspiration