The Gateway to Success

              In today’s society each and every individual has the ability to become equally successful. It was evident in the video, Enabling Dreams, that some individuals need the appropriate tools to help them seek those abilities. Technology has become extremely advanced, where anything is possible, even for a child with multiple disabilities. Moreover, for the majority of these children their disabilities do not exist to hinder them, but to enable them in seeing a brighter future. With the reality of assistive technology, teachers now have a better idea of how to successfully accommodate children with specific disabilities in the classroom.

             Before creating a lesson plan a teacher must always take into consideration the abilities of the students rather than their disabilities. This may not always be an easy task, considering that the different accommodations may serve as an ongoing trial. Not all accommodations will work for the students and that is when assistive technology comes into the picture. Examples of ways teachers can implement assistive technology in the classroom are when reading a story, incorporate the usage of media to demonstrate pictures for students to use as a visual learning tool, which highlights Standard 1 under Educational Technology in Guam DOE’s Content Standards (GDOE, 2011).  An example In the video was the band student who used assistive technology together with his trumpet to successfully participate in band performances and lessons in the classroom. This goes to show how assistive technology can truly bring out the creative side of each student with disabilities, which highlights one of the NET standards for students (NETS 2007).

            During the process of creating a lesson plan with specific accommodations, a teacher must always involve the parents of the children. This is one of the steps needed in order to take on the responsibility of revising a lesson plan. The teacher must also do his or her own part in researching various accommodations for that child’s disability. For example, if a student has physical disabilities and he or she needs assistance making their way around the classroom, the teacher must take charge and find a means of providing the child with a wheel chair. If a child has a specific learning disability, the teacher can make accommodations by granting the child more time to complete the assignment or by allowing the usage of laptops in the classroom as writing tools.

            Ways teachers can assess whether or not their accommodations are appropriate in the classroom is by observing through trials. Another way is by communicating with the principal of the school, who can also help to revise the lesson plan. All that should matter is if the child is benefiting from the accommodation and if the child is comfortable with those specific accommodations. These matters should guarantee learning success in the classroom for everyone and not just the children with disabilities.

Enabling Dreams

           

Guam Department of Education, 2011

https://sites.google.com/a/gdoe.net/curriculum-and-instruction/content-standards-1

Net standards

http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx

The Math Engine: Educational Online Game Reflection

In today’s society, technology continues to grace the world with its everyday advances. One of the advances being, educational online games, that can be beneficial for students and teachers. Even if this is the case, not all of these games meet the criteria needed to serve as a valid resource in the classroom. For this reason, finding online games that have the ability to keep students engaged, while effectively teaching the lesson, can be difficult. 

During the process of evaluating various educational games, a rubric was created in order to properly assess them. The creation of the rubric was fairly complicated, only because it needed to fit the standards of both the teachers and the students. Teacher concerns surrounded the educational aspects of the game and whether or not the game targeted key concepts in their classrooms. Meanwhile, student concerns surrounded the fun, colorful, and musical aspects of the games. Moreover, a combination of all these criteria was needed in the rubric. The group took into consideration all of the different subjects covered in the classroom, and then narrowed it down to the subject of math. With math being one of the subjects that does not easily maintain the attention of the students, the group figured that a math game was the perfect option.

The math estimation game called, “Ice, Ice Maybe”, managed to engage the group, while allowing each person to brush up on their math skills. The game used animals as tools to motivate the students to move on to the next level and the colorful aspects of the game also played a motivational role. The incorporation of addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions, and percentages as well as providing levels for the students to choose from, showed the games ability to reach out to different age levels and students struggling in a particular category of math.

“Ice, Ice Maybe,” is a game that teachers should consider using in their classrooms. Not only is it fun, it provides students with the opportunity to use their critical thinking skills with the provided math categories to chose from, problem solving skills, through the process of estimation while being timed, and sufficient decision making in order to move on to the next level (NETS, 2007). For those reasons, teachers could clearly identify the game to meet one of the net standards for students, as well as meet various curriculum standards for math in the classroom (NCTM, 2011). With a game that has the ability to meet student standards as well as teacher standards, students will eventually learn to love math.

Ice, Ice Maybe: http://www.mangahigh.com/en/games/iceicemaybe - atid=6&reload=true

International Society for Technology in Education. (2007) NET Standards for Students.

http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students.aspx

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2011) National Math Curriculum Standards

http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=7564