Ed. Tech. Journal # 7

As a special education inclusion teacher I am responsible for implementing the individual education plan for each of my students on a daily basis.  I travel from classroom to classroom and I assist the students on their work and I also help teach the concepts to the students.  However, because I do not share a common planning period or conference with any of my co-teachers it is difficult for me to be involved in the lesson planning.  However, I do help teach and present the lessons each week.  When I present a lesson on a brand new concept that we are studying in class I like to use powerpoint.  3 weeks ago I learned how to insert an instructional video from discovery education into powerpoint.  I was so excited that I decided to integrate that into a lesson that I presented to my 6th grade S.S. class on European Exploration.  The video was only about a minute long but it really animated what explorers looked like during Columbus’ day and it was perfect for the presentation. 
       
We have an amazing technology facilitator on our campus who has set up a wiki for all of the teachers at our school.  We take turns going in and editing or adding pages that we find interesting.  I finally learned how to edit a wiki and so I added one of my favorite educational software websites called Sheppard Software.  One of the Science teachers that I worked together with the technology facilitator of our school to create a technology based lesson from a website called Big Huge Labs.   We took the students into the computer lab and they created informational flash cards with their science vocabulary.  My special education students really benefited from this assignment because they were able to learn a definition, put it into their own words, and then find a picture that goes with it.  It helped them learn the concept in three different ways.

I also found out from our technology facilitator that we can use that same Big Huge Labs website to create our own project to receive district technology credit.  Between what I am learning in this class and also what I am learning from our technology facilitator I feel that I am making huge improvements in my own skills as a technology educator.  I am thankful for all the wonderful things I am learning and hope to be able to share all this knowledge with everyone else in our school!