Where is EVERYTHING???

Most people are winding down their school years right now.  This is the first year in ten years I am not working on a school schedule.  It is the strangest thing to me not to have summers off and set vacations.  I am not sure how I feel about it yet.

I am struggling to keep track of all of our assignments in LEO.  I find the system very confusing (because everything is in a different place) and hard to follow.  I am sure I have missed some assignment already.  I am doing my best.

I am excited to tackle this weeks assignment of creating a computer lab.  I am tasked with this assignment for my schools and this will give me a great opportunity to be well researched when I provide feedback to schools.  I am not sure where to start just yet but have a lot of research complete.  I have reached out to people I know who may use assistive technology for our interview assignment.  Both have come back that they don't use technology often.  However, my brother is a principal for a religious school and he says he uses technology to help his students who have disabilities.  I think it will interesting to see how assistive technology can be implemented outside of schools.

One thing these assignments make me think about is our teacher preparation programs.  I know there are a lot of conversations about Teach for America (and other programs like this) and teacher preparation programs.  Assistive technology is so specific that I wonder when teachers are actually given the instruction to be able to implement it successfully in the classroom.  From experience I know that Teach for America has a huge amount of supports for their Special Education teachers but I have never seen assistive technology specifically taught to the teachers.  In addition, I don't know if teacher preparation programs teach about technology unless you are a Special Education major.  May be both programs need to think about how to focus on technology and how it can be used to drive student achievement.

Exhausted...

These past few weeks have been very hectic for my family and I.  No reason in particular but we like to stay active when it is nice outside and be with people we love.  This has been struggle to keep up with grad school work.  Understanding what needs to be done and when is always a struggle and it can cause some stress.

This week our assignment was to think about technology and Special Education.  This made me think of my time at Syracuse University.  I really appreciate my student teaching placements there.  We had nine different placements and I got to see and experience all different kinds of classrooms.  My favorite placement was in an Inclusion classroom where the teachers had everything working so well.  No student in the room was excluded or singled out.  This example of what inclusion could be drove me to want to teach in a similar kind of classroom.  Technology played very little parts in the classroom.  Each classroom probably had a computer which students would sometimes use but it was the very beginning time of the internet.  I saw the most technology in my classroom that had students who had severe disabilities.  Teachers used technology to help students communicate when they did not have the ability to use speak or write.  Most of the technology was created and then printed out.  Times have changed so much.  It would be interesting how IPads and tablets have changed how teachers help students communicate.

Day 1 of Blogging

It was so easy to set up this blog for our class.  Blogger is an amazing site and so easy to use.  I have created a blog on this site for another class and I really like the set up.  It would be nice if there were some templates to help make it look "prettier" but I am sure I will find those over time.

I was at a conference today and the administrators were talking about the summer reading they assigned to their staff.  One suggestion for how to have a genuine conversation about the reading was to create a blog.  This would be an interesting way to keep in touch with what teachers are truly thinking about the books and not take away time from other professional development.

I could also see a blog being helpful in my position.  I am always looking for ways to publicize great resources for teachers that are available.  A blog might give me an easy way to do that.  I am not sure if I want to put in the work of updating it daily but I do think it is an easy way to share information quickly.