Ed Tech In the SpEd Classroom

Using Technology to Help Bridge the Learning Gap

Woosah…

September12

Woosah

This pretty much sums up my day.  How many times can things go wrong? Let me count the ways…

Again, let me start at the beginning and what was SUPPOSED to happen.  They were going to come in, grab their laptops, and I was going to guide them in bookmarking the websites we will be using the most this year.  It started off fine, until two of the laptops froze.  The students had to shut down and get two other laptops from the cart.  And of course, the login process took forever.  Then we got to the Tech Packets, which was embedded as a MentorMob playlist on Edmodo.  For some *expletive* reason, it gave the students an error telling them that the videos were not available.  One student could view them.  The rest couldn’t.  As I went from student to student, trying to figure out what was going on, I finally told them to watch it on their laptops.  Of course, Internet Explorer didn’t update properly on all of them, regardless of me trying to update them the day before.  As a last resort, I directed them to YouTube on their iPads and searched for “Edmodo Scavenger Hunt”.  That worked, but the videos were in jumbled order, so once they finished a video, they had to go back and search for the next numbered video, and hit play.

Then the kids were confused because we were looking at the revamped version of Edmodo and the tutorial videos were recorded with the old version. To top it all off, one of my student’s laptops just randomly logged him out completely out of the blue, so he had to log back in, wait for the whole startup time, then log back into Edmodo, then re-play the video.

What. A. Mess.

Conclusions: 1.The school laptops suck. 2. The MentorMob playlist won’t work; I’ll have to create YouTube playlists. 3. We may have to skip some of the Scavenger Hunt steps since it’s taking forever to move just a skosh. 4. Next year, I will need to create my own, condensed version of the Scavenger Hunt.  In that order.  I’m worried that the constant tech issues/problems are frustrating the students and if they lose motivation, their buy-in is gone.

But wait! My day gets better!*

One of my students decided he didn’t want to do anything today and grew agitated from the fact that I had the audacity to ask him to work.  So I was the lucky recipient of his verbal insults and assurances that he wasn’t going to do jack for me ever. It was a consistent flow of annoyances done purposely to get under my skin until he became so disruptive in class that I had to call security to have him escorted out.  Wonderful. Thank God I downloaded the Pocket Pond app for stress relief purposes.  I love my job, I love my job, I love my job…..

Woosah.

 

*by better I mean exponentially worse

Intro to Tech Packets

September10

I was really excited this weekend about getting the students started on their Tech Packets.  I had them all ready to go (well, the Edmodo Scavenger Hunt ready, that is) and was anxious to get it started.  The plan for today was to review the FITCH procedures (thank you, Crystal Kirch!), hand out the worksheet they would be using as a checklist, and then log into edmodo and get started on the scavenger hunt.

I should know by now things never go as planned.

I could tell it was going to be a Manic Monday right off the bat when I logged into my school laptop and went to go pull up the checklist to print off.  My laptop told me it wasn’t happening.  For some reason, I could save it to my desktop and the computer realized it was there, but when I tried to open it, an error popped up telling me it couldn’t be opened.  After my panic mode, I uploaded it into my Google Drive, then printed it off from there.  After another 5 minutes of trying to figure out why my printer wasn’t showing on my laptop, I was able to print off my sheets.  That was a good 15 minutes wasted on just getting my document printed.  Once that happened, though, I breathed a sigh of relief and felt ok about everything once again and knew it was going to be ok.

Wrong-ola.

Before I get into that whole fiasco, let me explain something I used for their warm up today for the first time.  Their first objective was to finish their Science homework from the day before.  I had two students work on that.  For the rest of the class, I had them go to Wonderopolis and use that as their writing prompt.  If you’ve never used Wonderopolis before, I highly recommend it.  Again, I have learning disabled 8th graders who often struggle with writing and lack the motivation to do it.  Wonderopolis  provides a daily question (different every day) with a video, which gets students to think about the topic and then answer it in their journals.  The videos are short and while they range from a wide variety of topics, it helps the students acquire some background knowledge for future use.  Those students who went onto the site seemed to take it in well.

A student using FITCH procedures correctly while watching a video and writing about the given Wonderopolis prompt about wild horses.

Well, we did end up going over FITCH procedures and I explained to them what we were doing.  I even showed them the PowToons video I created to intro the Tech Packets.  You can see that here.  The plus side of that was the kids really seemed to enjoy the video clip, especially when they saw my avatar.  It was a good way to get them motivated about their objective, which was to familiarize themselves with all the edmodo components.  They clicked on the link……..and nothing.

All of their laptops displayed an error that said Internet Explorer was not up to date.  Son of a *****.  I don’t know why I thought the laptops would work fine being that they were district laptops.  If anything, that itself should’ve been the red flag. I was beyond upset, but tried to maintain with the students still in the classroom.  Finally, I told them to just keep their laptops as-is so I could go around after they left class and update their internet for them.  As soon as they left, two things happened: 1. a slew of curse words may or may not have flown out of my mouth and 2. I had a “duh” moment.  They could watch the Scavenger Hunt video playlist on their iPads and do the actual tasks on their laptops.  Problem solved.  For now.  Tomorrow’s another day.  I hope to God things go a little more smoothly tomorrow.  It seems as if it’s just one thing after another going wrong.  I felt as if I had this great idea mapped out just right and that my students’ grades/motivation increase because of it.  But it’s almost impossible for the students to get into the whole storyline/game if the technology doesn’t work.  Everything is based on technology. Again, very frustrating.  Please keep your fingers crossed that tomorrow goes well.  I need all the luck I can get at this point…

The Rivas Show

September3

I have performed a self-diagnnosis:  I am slightly OCD with a bad case of random freak-outs.

Ok, so maybe that’s not the technical term for it, but I am pretty much a kid in a grown-up’s body.  While this may seem annoying to some people (relatives, co-workers, my children), I think it gives me a pretty good idea of what can go through a middle schooler’s mind during the school day.  For example, I can’t sit still during staff meetings. It’s physically impossible for me.  In addition to this, silence can either drive me insane or it can be my best friend.  Music on when I’m with a group of people, everything off when I’m doing work.  If I’m in a professional development, I like to go at a faster pace, since I’m pretty decent at picking stuff up quickly.  It kills me when I have to sit and wait for others to catch up.  I’d rather they just give me a packet to read or video to watch and I can figure it out on my own.  Knowing this, I try to keep all these factors in mind when I create and give lessons.  WWAD?  What Would Angela Do?

Hence, this blog.  I was fortunate enough be given the opportunity to lead an iPad pilot program for my special ed students, which is a dream come true for me.  I wouldn’t consider myself a technology expert by any means, but it does facinate me (yes, I’m a nerd that way).  I know there are so many programs, apps, and strategies that can be used to help students, especially special ed students, succeed academically.  Who knows? If they improve academically, maybe they’ll improve behaviorally as well.

My plan is to use components of a flipped classroom and a gamified classroom in my Extended Core class (resource class).  This will be the first time ever trying this, and I’ve spent my whole summer researching, planning, and creating videos and blogs.  Do I have everything ready? God, no.  Do I have a general plan of how I would like for things to go? Of course.  Whether they actually go as planned is a whole other story, but let’s hope for the best, shall we? So grab your popcorn…it’s showtime….

 

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