Scavenger Hunt

Question One: You have a budget of $500 for your classroom. What will you order? Why?

I ordered six movies for extra learning curriculum in my classroom. Also in History class you can learn so much from history movies or documentaries. The Six movie titles were: Lewis and Clark:The Journey of the Corps Discovery, Liberty! The American Revolution, Reporting America at War, The Sixties: The years that shaped a Generation, The Roman Empire in the First Century, and Maire Antoinette.

Question Two: Explore the assistive technology available on the laptops that Dr. Theresa will have. List three things you can do to help students with disabilities use the Mac.

I ended up choosing four instead of three technological things that I found that could be useful for students with disabilities while using a computer. The funny thing is, is that I have ended up using some of these features myself.

1. Sticky Keys; this is where you use one key at a time. So you can hit shift and then take your hand off the shift key and hit another letter to capitalize it. This can be helpful for students who do not have the motor skills to use the alternate keys to do specific things.
2. Program of the computer talking to you. This is helpful because for kids who don't have such great reading skills, whenever the mouse runs over words the computer will read them to the kid. This makes kids want to use the computer to learn more and use it for other skills, with little effort in reading the stuff they need to read on the computer.
3. Color Contrast. This helps students who need to have a different color scheme to be able to focus on things they are reading. Also the color contrast may help kids who are color blind. Personally I just think that the other color contrast looks really cool.
4. The Zoom Method. This is a really cool method on the computer that helps you be able to read the text on the screen in a bigger font. This helps kids who have weak eyes and are not able to read text unless it is very large.

Question three: Go to the Kalikow Center and look at the Educational Technology. Include low - tech items such as writing aids. Find three items to use in your classroom. Why?

1. Switches. Switches are used to help students with different mobility issues. It helps them to work with the switches, because they are able to train their motor skills so they can maybe someday use their motor skills the same ways of people without disabilities. I would use this in my classroom, if I were teaching elementary school, because even if kids don't have disabilities it helps any kid to work with switches, or anything that will help their motor skills.
2. Books on Tape. Books on tape are a useful tool in the classroom, because a lot of students are weak in their reading. So they can listen to the books and be able to get the reading in that they need to be reading for the class. Personally I even listen to books on tape while I'm driving or working out. It's something that even if you don't have a reading disability that can be enjoyed by everyone.
3. Giant Keyboard. The giant keyboard that I found in the Kalikow Center is another way in which the students can work on their typing skills, but the keys are bigger. So they won't misspell anything because there is no chance that the will hit the wrong key. I can see this being mainly used with little children so they can learn how to type at an early age, because with the way the techonolgy is present so much in the classroom it helps for the students to be able to be good typers by the time they are up in the high school level. However I can see using that in my classroom if I have a student with fine motor skills disabilities.