Adaptive Technologies

Adaptive Technologies
1. It is very important to keep the students learning styles in mind when planning instruction. Some students are visual learners while others learn better when they hear something. Every student has their own mind and their way of thinking. With Oscar having difficulty seeing, Marilyn could have assigned him to something that he could listen to on tape with his report. Oscar is probably stronger at listening then he is seeing something considering it being hard for him to read. Also something that could be useful for the students to learn is to find a video that relates to the topic that the teacher is discussing.
2. Marilyn wanted to incorporate some yearlong learning results so that she could evaluate each student’s progress. An idea would be to keep a copy of each story that the child wrote for that year and at the end of the year put it in a folder for them to take home and share with their parents. The teacher, parents, and even the students will be able to see the progress of their writing from the first story of the year to the last story. I loved the way that she wanted to incorporate picture books. This is also a great idea because even though some students can read it might be hard for them to comprehend what they are saying so by using picture books it helps them to see what they are actually reading.
3. Marilyn thought that it would be a great idea for the children to create their own “Eric Carle” and each child would have a “moral of the story”. I think that having a “moral of the story” is an excellent idea because it will help the students have respect for themselves and others. She read the book out loud to the students so that together they could discuss the characters, setting, problem, solution, and virtue exhibited by the characters. When the teacher does a class discussion and all of the students get a chance to answer then it gets all of the students’ minds running with ideas.
4. When I visit a website I like for the website to be very eye catching. Webquest such as CPS was not very eye catching so it was hard for me to be interested in it. I also like for a website to be user friendly and I did not find CPS to be very user friendly. I had to click on several different links just to find what I was looking for. Maybe if I had found a different Webquest to go to then I would have liked it more.
5. There were three benefits that the students gained from being included in Oscar’s small group. They learned how to map out the graphic organizer with each story that they read and Oscar’s conception was right there with the other students. The students used the whisper-reading that they were taught and found that it was useful for reading out loud, and the speech synthesis also seemed to be a great success.
6. I think by working with Juanita it helped him a greatly, but there is so much technology being used for students just like Oscar. Oscar found it very helpful by having one on one time and that does help students when the teacher takes time away from everyone else and focuses on that one student. I think that even though Oscar has a hard time seeing he will understand and grasp the concepts.
7. Marilyn shared with the class the video to help them to see and visualize. She then let the students finger paint colored papers with texture on newsprint. Finally the students resulted in iMovies of books created, written, illustrated, and read by them. By using the video it helped the visual learners. The finger paint was a great way for the students to use hands on to help them learn and by letting the students create iMovies it helped their brains to explore and to learn.