Tech for the Behavior Needs Classroom

Thank you to everyone for attending my session this morning at #ice12! You can view my powerpoint from this session here. 

If you have any questions from the session please feel free to contact me!

10 Thoughts From #ICE12 on Thursday Morning

Ten things I've learned, thought about, been inspired by, or need to keep in mind since being at #ice12 this morning:

1. Thought from keynote speaker Peter H. Reynolds, "Don't ask people what they do, ask them what their mission is."
2. You can be taught at any time of your life and learn.
3. $10.00 for a lunch? Not even a homemade cookie...boo.
4. Like the teacher who framed the picture of the dot, recognize all the accomplishments of students as the start of something great. You aren't hanging up art- you are displaying the possibilities.
5. Ask your friends to search "Egypt" on Google and compare the results. You may not see it but you aren't getting the same results. Google is, in a way, controlling what we learn.
6. According to a recent French study comprehension reading an iPad vs. a traditional newspaper is 20% less.
7. Sites want people to click on things. Clicks equal money- not better learning opportunities. Your brain has to decide what to do when it comes to a click opportunity, which distracts from real content comprehension.
8. Do you want your students to be able to find stuff or do you want them to be able to think?
9. No matter how much you pre-plan what sessions you are going to attend, you change your mind. It's nice to have a good mix of heavy philosophy sessions and fun web 2.0 tech. 
10. A lot of people

Welcome to #ICE12. This Year's Conference is Underway!

Good morning internet world and welcome to this year's Illinois Computing Educator's Conference, better known this year as #ice12. I'm here presenting two sessions, "Edmodo in the Special Needs Behavior Classroom" and "Tech for the Behavior Needs Classroom."  After the conference I'll be sharing my notes on this website. Stay tuned for additional information!

Kozzi Photo Site

Here is another great site to add to your list of places students can find free photos for projects.

Kozzi earns revenue for the advertisements placed on its page. This allows them to provide their professional photo images free. I stumbled upon this site today and found it to be an incredibly rich resource for finding pictures. Using a simple copy/paste was much easier than downloading the images from the lightbox.

Lessons on the Presidents

http://lessonsonamericanpresidents.com/ seems to have some great lessons on presidents! Worth checking out!

Mouth Power- Fun Game About Brushing

Mouth Power (http://www.mouthpower.org) can be done individually by students in a lab, but would be better on an interactive board as a class. Users take a trip through a lab to learn about dental hygiene and work through activities to earn teeth for their smile. The activity goes beyond the basics of telling students to brush and shows how to brush and the correct way to floss. It also has a neat time lapse feature to show what happens when you don't take care of your teeth.

Cons: There isn't voice audio on everything, so non-readers will need assistance.

Inspirational Blog Post

Check out http://blogush.edublogs.org/2012/01/24/20/, an insipirational blog post from Paul Bogush about giving students 20% of their time for free learning and exploration. I may consider doing something like this next year!

SMART Training Notes

Tonight I participated in our local Regional Office of Education's SMART Board Intermediate Training- Session1. My notes from the training are below, both for my own reference and for anyone else to see some ideas I learned! 

New things I learned:
~Using the keyboard to read the words that are typed or written.
~You can change your pens to be defaulted to a different color/font.
~The color of the box changes for objects that are infinitely cloned.
~You can lock an object so that it can be moved but the size won't change, or you can lock it so you can move and rotate (but the size won't change).
~You can layer multi-colored text to give a 3D effect.
~Transparency layer lets you use the tools over the internet (or other software) and record some notes. Is there a unique use for this?
~You can change the default colors of the caligraphy pens just like the other pens.
~You can double click on a shape box and automatically type into the shape! Then you can drag the box smaller and hide the text.
~Use the "Groups" button on the tabs menu to organize slides into different categories. 
~You can add visuals to your "My Content" folder (specific to your computer)- just by dragging and dropping.
~Use the page recording feature to record directions to have students go follow. (save the file and it will save the recording)
~Looked at Lesson Activity Toolkit to see awesome ideas (Anagram- used to arrange letters for spelling, Sentence Arrangement- put phrases/sentences into the correct order- although beware the color never changes and kids catch on to that-, Hot Spots- has a neat human body checker!, Timeline editor is great for students to make timelines, the maps work by letting you drag the states or countries into the map on the correct spot.)

Things to look up or follow up on:
~teq.com - "free learning objects" (neat garbage can she showed us)

Ideas for use:
~Using table with table shade for vocabulary or review questions.
~Creating a Presidential Technology lesson, where students have to match up which president would have used which technology for communication.
~Use the "Category sort (image)" on the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 to have students put ideas into order (maybe PC troubleshooting tips!)
~I really like adding the question mark ? information button from the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0
~Use the memory game tool to match pictures of famous "techies" with their names.

What I still have questions on:
~What's the point of "pinning" a page?
~Unit 5 has it set so that the "My Content" travels with the teacher's logins (so any computer you use with SMART notebook you can access your content)- this is really cool, can it be done at my school?
~Where is that US Map?
~How do I make the hidden tunnel?

Visual.ly Lets You Search Infographics

Visual.ly is a search engine for looking up infographics across various websites. With a quick search for "government" yielded about twenty results. According to their site they are working on a feature to let you create your own infographics, but you can currently upload yours to add to their collection. 

While doesn't make my top list of resources yet, it is definitely one worth checking out and keeping an eye on.