Dyslexia and iPads

dys·lex·i·a

dəsˈleksēə/

noun

1. a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence.

   

   
   

Dyslexia makes it difficult for people to read. When their is difficulty reading it can lead to difficulty comprehending what is being read. It is a condition that affects the way the brain processes written and spoken language. It can be genetic. There is mild to severe dyslexia. Common traits of Dyslexia might include: student is bright but unable to read or read on their grade level, complain about dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading, confused by letters, words sequences and verbal explanations, zone out or day dream, trouble with vision (that might not show up on screenings), trouble comprehending. Dyslexia does not mean the person has trouble with seeing, (although it can be a contributing factor) it is more about manipulating and decoding letters and words. Dyslexia affects more than 1 in 5 people. As many as 17 percent of people show some form of reading problems. 

Check out more statistics on Dyslexia:

• 70-80% of people with poor reading skills, are likely dyslexic.
• One in five students, or 15-20% of the population, has a language based learning disability. Dyslexia is the most common of the language based learning disabilities.
• Nearly the same percentage of males and females have dyslexia.
• Nearly the same percentage of people from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds have dyslexia. 
• Percentages of children at risk for reading failure are much higher in high poverty, language-minority populations who attend ineffective schools.
• In minority and high poverty schools, 70-80% of children have inadequate reading skills.
• According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 38% of all fourth grade students are “below basic” reading skills. They are at or below the 40th percentile for their age group.
• Nationwide 20% of the elementary school population is struggling with reading. 
• National Center for Education statistics, 5% of all adults are “non-literate”.
• 20-25% of all adults can only read at the lowest level. 
• 62% of non readers dropped out of high school.
• 80% of children with an IEP have reading difficulty and 85% of those are Dyslexic.
• 30% of children with Dyslexia also have at least a mild form of AD/HD.

Some with dyslexia can fix their dyslexia and improve their reading. When using iPads in the classroom, it is important that you teach and guide students how to use the iPads effectively.See.Touch.Learn is an app that allows teachers to put their tests in the app and it gives the students picture clues as opposed to words to answer questions. Phonics Genius is free and is good for younger students. It is flash cards with vocabulary and high frequency words. The teacher can go in and add the words they are learning that week or words the student needs to review. The student can self check on pronouncing the word correctly. Dragon Dictation is free and is similar to the voice record app that comes on phones. The student can voice record their answers. For example, if there is a short answer or essay question on a test, the student can record their answer. This prevents the teacher from having to try to figure out what the student is writing. Read To Kids is 99 cents in the app store. The teacher records themselves reading the story and the kids can turn the page.  The kids can also record their own voices into the app and the teacher can check their fluency. Mod Math is a free app. It allows the students to do their math problems in the app and it can help them line up their numbers. This app is more for older students. They can print off or email the work to the teacher when they are finished. This is also a great assessment tool.

Learn more about Dyslexia here:

Google Cardboard in the Classroom

Google cardboard is an interactive pair of goggles that you can put on and it takes you to a virtual reality. You will need the google cardboard glasses which you can buy from the website or make your own cardboard goggles. You will need cardboard, velcro, and lenses. There are instructions you can download from the website. (https://vr.google.com/cardboard/)  You will need to buy the apps to use the goggles from the app store which is about 15 dollars. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-cardboard/id987962261?mt=8). There are various videos available online to make your own and assemble the ones they send you. One possible problem you might encounter is that the goggles are google based so there aren’t as many apps on IOS. Another downfall is that they are single user devices. You can ask for donations to classroom use in small group or centers. The uses for google cardboard in the classroom include you can go on virtual field trips. You can go basically anywhere around the world. This is great for students who haven’t been many places like the beach or somewhere you might discuss in class. It lets them experience what others have in a way. Some apps include Expeditions (Google Play), Discovery VR, and Guided Tour. In a video the group played they asked students where they would like to go and one student mentioned they would like to go to their homeland. The teachers mentioned letting the students experience the world outside their small community. It shows the students talking about The Great Wall of China in a lesson and then the students could visualize and follow along better with what the teacher was talking about by using the virtual reality goggles. She used the Expeditions app to do this. The goggles would also be great if you had a student from overseas and the other students could see where they came from and experience that. You can take a walk down any street or go to any mountain or ocean using the google maps. YouTube had their own page for 360 videos the students can watch or anyone that wants to experience it. The group mentioned experiencing the rain forest in 360. The camera can create your own 360 videos. You can narrate your videos. Another use is virtual simulations and exhibitions. You can explore 360 degree artifacts. For example, if you have a lesson of artifacts from the revolutionary war you can view those artifacts in 360. You can view organs and inside the human body in 360 like you are on Mrs. Frizzles magic school bus. You can have students design their own virtual reality. You can login to the google app and have them upload their own videos and pictures. Virtual reality can help students with autism or social skill problems. Students with autism have trouble communicating and they don’t receive information like we do. You can implement social stories in the virtual reality world. For example, you can have a video on talking to someone and practice looking people in the eye when carrying on a conversation in one video, you can practice asking the librarian for a book and making eye contact. They also can watch virtual reality videos to improve knowing the difference in an aggressive conversation and a friendly conversation. Researchers did a case study on two autistic students and the student that practiced using the virtual reality made more improvement on their social skills. The app is called Second Life. 

Check out this video on Google Cardboard!

The Flipped Classroom

There are four pillars of FLIP: 

Flexible environment, 

Learning culture,

Intentional content, 

Professional educator. 

What is a Flipped Classroom? The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.

In flipped teaching, the students can read ahead on the topic on their own at home and watch videos and read at home. They can practice and go into detail once they get to class. This helps students work at their own pace at home. It also allows teachers to target students that really need help. The teacher can focus more on individual students and groups. Children with helpful parents, older siblings, and tutors have a greater advantage at the flipped classroom setting. It repurposes class time for application and discussion. It enhances teacher student interactions and fosters student engagement. Appeals to millennials due to the technology that is incorporated into the flipped classroom. It helps students understand their learning style. It keeps students accountable. This was introduced in the 70s but the students only had books to go home to learn from. This was a disadvantage to struggling readers. Technology helps students so they can listen to the lesson instead. This promotes collaboration between the students. They learn how to think about learning. This also levels the playfields. Students that struggle can keep replaying the lesson until they understand what is being taught. Students can take control of their own learning. The cons are that not all students have access to technology, there are unmotivated students that won’t do the work, less people interaction, it is overwhelming for some students, it required a lot of teacher preparation, and not all students are engaged and challenged. The flipped classroom can help provide differentiation for all student needs. Ask3 turns your iPad into a guided whiteboard. The students and teacher can ask and answer questions, you can draw pictures, provide feedback, and assess. GoClass helps teachers create lessons. The students can work on the lesson at their own pace. On Google classroom, the teacher can upload files, videos, and assignments. It is similar to blackboard. It is free for the schools using google apps for education. How can you hold students accountable? Have the students take notes, copy down definitions, etc. This allows the teacher to quickly tell who has done their homework and who hasn’t. The students that do not do the homework can be sent to a back computer to do their homework. The students that might halfway do their homework, they can learn a lot from their peers through collaboration and peer teaching. The flipped classroom can be incorporated to any grade. This helps the parents see what their kids are learning in school and can better help their child with application. 

Check out this short video all about the flipped classroom setting!

STEM in the Classroom

What is STEM?

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.

[Science]“[Science] is more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world..."

— President Barack Obama

STEM came from Judith A Ramaley , who coined the term STEM. STEM corresponds to the growth of the economy. Through the collaboration of iPad you can integrate STEM in the classroom. All grades and age groups can do it! Stem needs to happen all throughout school and starting in the early grade so they can be prepared to get jobs in the workforce. 

STEM BINS:

“STEM Bins are plastic school boxes filled with an engineering manipulative of your choice, such as Legos, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, unifix cubes, toothpicks and playdough, or popsicle sticks with velcro on the ends.  The boxes also contain small sets of task cards on metal rings that picture a variety of basic engineering structures.  STEM Bins can be placed on an easily accessible shelf in the classroom or inside a classroom Maker Space area.  When students’ regular classwork is complete, they can take one STEM Bin at a time, either to their seat or a more quiet carpet area so as not to distract other students who are working, and get a quiet moment to engineer.  They use the materials in the box to construct as many different structures on the cards as they can.  And instead of being just “busy,” students are engaged in creative, complex tasks and are encouraged to think like inventors.  Kinesthetic learners, spatial learners, and logical learners will love exploring the different possibilities for the building materials as they try to construct more challenging structures.” –teachers outside the box.

Check out her blog for great STEM bin idea!  

http://teachoutsidethebox.com/2016/08/stem-bins-hands-solutions-early-finishers/

Great for:

• ·      Early finishers
• ·      Centers
• ·      Morning work
• ·      Behavior inceptives
• ·      Fine motor skills

Each box has manipulatives such as baseten blocks, popsicle sticks with Velcro, leggos

The boxes have books inside and it contains pictues. The students recreate the pictures for example if the picture is a house the students will create a house. They can work in groups or individually. You can use the Seesaw app which is a digital portfolio and the students can take pictures of their structures and upload them. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seesaw-the-learning-journal/id930565184?mt=8) The parents can be connected to their seesaw and see what they are doing in class.

STEM CHALLENGES:

Check out this website for some awesome STEM challenges for Elementary students. Here are 28! http://www.teachjunkie.com/sciences/stem-challenges/

Green Screen Technology in the Classroom

Green Screen is a technology used in video editing to replace one image with another image. The technique is called Chroma Key. You will need a green sheet or screen, webcam, lights, and video editing software. For your set up to work effectively it is important to have good lighting. The best and safest is florescent lighting. It is important the lighting is even. Any digital camera will work as long as it can download digital images and video. It is best not to zoom in when you take photos and videos. The better the camera the better It will look. Tosh.O is a good example of someone who used the green screen on TV. A lot of movies use the green screen as well. The group showed a very imformative video on how movie producers use green screen in movies. Actors gave interviews on how hard it is to act like you are someone you really aren’t. You can use blue or green screens because those pigments are not in the human skin color. Some film producers mentioned they don’t like to use green screen becuae of how boring it is to film in an empty room. You have to really use your imagination when using the green screen. Why the color green? Green is used the most because digital scensors are more sensitive to that color. It is also easier to delete the backgounf of green because it doesn’t interferr with human skin tones. Green is also said to complement skin better. When using the green screen softwaire, keying out, means if makes anything green transparent. People can use green sheets that you can find cheap at the store. You want a jack on the back of the camera you use so you can plug in an external microphone. You can use the green screen in the classroom by using the app Green Screen by Do Ink. The app is $2.99. It is super simple and easy to use. You click on add, create a new project, and it will pull up options to take photos, videos, or upload. You can upload whatever background you want to be in and upload a photo of yourself in front of the green screen. The app will delete all the app and layer the two photos on top of each other. It will now look like you are anywhere in the world. There are serveral apps available and more complex but that app is user friendly for students. On some more advanced apps, you can use videos. One way to use the green screen is to create character, put them on green sticks, and have the students retell stories in front of the green screen and pick out their own backgrounds. Another great way to incorporate it in history is to summarize a war or anything in front of the green screen and put background images from that war or time in history. You can also do book talks in front of the green screen and select a backdrop that matches the book. This will get students engaged and wanting to read the book! 

Check out this video on green screen technology and how it is set up! 

Green Screen in the Classroom video:

EDPUZZLE and BLENDSPACE

EDPUZZLE

Edpuzzle is a free app and site. Edpuzzle is a video editing tool. Edpuzzle embeds assignments, you can use pieces of videos of whole videos, you can upload your own videos, you can use videos from any sites, and you can do voice overs on videos. Edpuzzle is free to download. A con about Edpuzzle is that you have to have Wi-Fi in order to access the software. You also have to have a desktop computer to edit the videos. The app (like on an iPad) does not allow for video editing. This is great for a flipped classroom (see my previous post about flipped classrooms!) where the students go home to learn the content and then practice the content in the classroom. Edpuzzle is super helpful when the teacher is out and there is a substitute in the classroom. The substitute can put on the videos for the students to watch. It is also a great way to formatively and summatively assess students. You can add open ended and multiple choice questions to the presentations so the students can interact while they watch. The students can put in a class code and it will allow the students to show up on the class list. You can upload the videos and presentations for the students to watch and you can see student responses and questions that they have. You can also assign projects for the students to create their own on the app. Here's a demo:

BLENDSPACE

Blendspace is an app for educators use to deliver presentations. The pros include: the app is engaging, promotes creativity, it is a great assessment tool for teachers, it is free, it is a great tool for using in a flipped classroom setting, it is good to use when the teacher is out and the substitute can put on the presentation the teacher previously created (like on Edpuzzle), it is also great for when a student is absent and needs to catch up on what is going on or they can view the presentation at home if they are sick in bed for instance so they do not fall behind.  Blendspace is project based learning. The teacher can create presentations as well as the students. Students can create presentations on topics and even teach the class. The app allows the teacher or students to comment directly on the presentation. So if the student has a question they can comment on which part they have a question about and the teacher can reply to them or help them with any misconceptions. The students can interact and ask and answer questions on the presentation they can also take quizzes from the presentation. The only con is that it requires internet access and some students don’t have that. It is easy to use. All you have to do is grab and drop what you want in the presentation once you are on the site. This is accessible for all grade and all subjects. You can even create social stories. For example one teacher created a presentation on procedures and rules about what to do on a field trip. There are a lot different recourses that you can add to the presentation such as videos, websites, links, etc. Here's a tutorial:

Mystery Skype

Mystery Skype

Mystery Skype is an education game, invented by teachers, played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions. Here is an example of questions the students can ask back and forth to their mystery Skype classroom to figure out their location. 

Here is some great information I found on how to get started with your first Mystery Skype! Thanks to https://pernillesripp.com/2011/10/25/so-you-want-to-do-mystery-skype/ , check out their blog!

1. Sign up – there are many places to sign up and some are even grade level based.  I signed up a couple of places but also tweeted it out; the response was immediate as a lot of people are doing this.  If you would like to sign up:
   1. 4th Chat Mystery Skype 
   2. 6th Chat Mystery Skype
   3. Mystery Country/Mystery State
   4. The Official Mystery Skype Community from Skype
2. Decide on a date and time – don’t forget to consider in timezones.
3. Prepare the kids
1. We wanted to know facts about our own state so that we would be ready for any question.  We therefore researched the following questions: climate, region, neighboring states, time zone, capital, famous landmarks, geographical location.  All of this gave the students a better grip of what they might be asked.
2. We also brainstormed questions to possibly ask.  We like the concept of the questions having to have yes or no answers as it makes the game a little harder and has the students work on their questioning skills.  Questions we came up with included whether they were in the United States, whether they were east of the Mississippi, Whether they were West of the Rocky Mountains, If they were in a specific region, whether they border other countries, whether they are landlocked etc.
3. Give jobs.  I think it is most fun when the kids all have jobs, so this was a list of our jobs:
1. Greeters – Say hello to the class and some cool facts about the class – without giving away the location.
2. Inquirers – these kids ask the questions and are the voice of the classroom.  They can  also be the ones that answer the questions.
3. Answerers – if you have a lot of kids it is nice to have designated question answerers – they should know their state facts pretty well.
4. Think tanks – I had students sit ina group and figure out the clues based on the information they knew.  Our $2 whiteboards came in handy for this.
5. Question keepers – these students typed all of the questions and answers for us to review later.
6. Google mappers – two students were on Google maps studying the terrain and piecing together clues.
7. Atlas mapper – two students used atlases and our pull down map to also piece together clues.
8. Clue keepers – worked closely with answerers and inquirers to help guide them in their questioning.
9. Runners – Students that runs from group to group relaying information.
10. Photographer – takes pictures during the call
11. Clue Markers – These students worked with puzzles of the United States and maps to remove any states that didn’t fit into the clues given.
12. Problem solver – this student helped students with any issues they may encounter during the call.
13. Closers – End the call in a nice manner after guesses have been given.

Heres another link to how to get started Mystery Skyping: https://blogs.skype.com/skype-classroom/2016/10/19/guide-getting-started-mystery-skype/ 


There are many benefits to a Mystery Skype that include: 

• Creates a global community of learners

• Critical Thinking

• Geography skills

• Listening and Speaking skills

• Student-Led

• Using Resources to find information

• Authentic purpose for research

• Collaboration

• Communication

• Challenge-Based Learning

• Creates partners for future projects

• Gets teachers to collaborate globally

Get started today! 

Students Led Conferences and Digital Portfolios

What are student led conferences? The basic concept: students lead the conferences about their academic progress. They take ownership of their learning experience, sitting at the table with parents and teachers. Older students generally share their body of work through portfolios and work samples. I would love to incorporate student led conferences into my classroom one day! I think student led conferences will allow students to take pride in their work and work harder in the long run. They will want to present good material when they talk about what they have been working on in class and show their parents their portfolios. More and more schools are hoping on the student led conference wagon.
How do they work? “Though the format may vary, these conferences differ from traditional conferences in that they place students at the helm of teacher-supported discussions with parents about student progress and learning. SLCs also often present opportunities for students to prepare, reflect on, and discuss evidence of their learning and growth by way of student portfolios. Schools that implement student-led conferences report that they:

• Encourage students to take responsibility and ownership for their learning by involving them in the goal-setting and assessment process.

• Engage families in richer, more transparent conversations about student progress." (edutopia)

Here is a short video on a student led conference:·       “Proper preparation is essential for successful student-led conferences. I prepare students by guiding them through a reflection of their work before the conferences. Through this reflection, students identify their strengths, determine areas for growth, and set actionable goals. The students also select examples of their work from portfolios to use as evidence during the conference while they discuss their identified strengths and areas for growth. Preparing work samples to use during the conference is so important because it grounds the meeting in evidence and it provides all participants, especially the students, with a tangible and accurate representation of academic progress. “ (Scholastic)

What are digital portfolios? An electronic portfolio (also known as an eportfolio, e-portfolio, digital portfolio, or online portfolio) is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web. Such electronic evidence may include input text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks. Digital portfolios are great for using during student led conferences. They key to using digital portfolios in strident led conferences is to have meaningful work in the portfolio that reflects student understanding like Creative Educator states, "When used as a student assessment tool, digital portfolios should demonstrate that “the student is involved in meaningful performance tasks; there are clear standards and criteria for excellence; there is an emphasis on metacognition and self-evaluation; the student produces quality products and performances; there is a positive interaction between assessor and assessee.” (Burke, 1999) The performances students include in their portfolios should be related to the curriculum and evidence their engagement in meaningful learning." (Creative Educator)

Here's how to create a digital portfolio using Google Drive: