Red Cross Convention

By now most anybody that actually reads this blog will realize that after teaching using technology, the other activity I delight in is volunteering with the Red Cross. I've said before that I've always considered myself lucky that my local chapters have been willing to accept my students along with me, because I haven't always been that fortunate with other volunteer organizations.
And, I am absolutely delighted to see that the Red Cross has joined the 21st Century during the 2008 National Convention. They are live blogging, posting updates via Twitter.

Best Buy Grant

I guess its probably time for me to make a blog entry about the Best Buy Grant. Back in September, I filled in the application, and figured "why not?". A lot of the grant was actually completed in the Seattle-Tacoma airport just before & on the flight back from the Microsoft Conference. I sent it in with mere hours to spare. The website said we'd hear in February....

Fast forward to Februrary, and I flew to Texas for the Red Cross training (see: Austin Texas-RMC. Due to weather, the flights landed considerably later than expected, and so I did not check my email until late that evening. I was sitting in the hotel lobby with a few other Red Cross folks and just squealed. Literally. One of the volunteers asked me what was wrong, and I read the email out loud. The next morning, I called my high school before we went into the session, and my supervising principal had just read the email as well.

We received a $2000 grant that will allow me to add audio, and digital video to the student projects that we've been doing all year. I'm still working on coming up with a buy list of hardware; we are definitely going to be purchasing some digital camcorders and digital voice recorders along with some consumable media (CDs, DVDs, etc). The rest is a bit up in the air... we were considering a computer station, but it turns out the school has an XP multimedia machine that we can have, and since they've installed the Promeathean Boards, I should be getting one of the now extra LCD projectors. Those were my two big ticket items, so we'll see. I wish Best Buy sold the interactive whiteboards... I would love to find one that would fit in my room!

If it's good for you, it's good for me-- -- Part Two

In the continuing saga of the issues with my wrist, I've discovered that it's nearly impossible to keep up on all of the teacher required paperwork. When you cannot type and you have trouble writing. Out of desperation, I stopped at Best Buy on Monday evening and purchase Dragon NaturallySpeaking preferred version 9. This was after spending most of Sunday trying to figure out how to use the built-in speech recognition that comes with Vista. Although others have managed to get Vista's speech recognition to work with many programs, all I was ever to able to do was use WordPad, Windows mail, and commands to navigate. I don't think it was my microphone, because the command features worked beautifully. Dragon, however, was not real fond of the microphone I used with Vista, either. Since getting Dragon on Monday. I have written an entire IEP(not without some frustration and not appropriate for public language), since many e-mails, and even managed to move some text boxes around in Microsoft Word. We still have several glitches to work out, but fortunately, I can mouse with my left hand. I don't think that I have the skill to do any kind of photo editing or graphic work, but we'll see later.
As I said in the other posts where I talked about using Word prediction to help my typing. I can definitely see some of the frustration that my students have when they have to use technology to help them. But they don't know how to use the technology yet. There is a definite learning curve when it comes to using these tools. I wonder if we would be better off teaching the students to use the tools before we expect them to use them for academic work?

Challenge Day

The Red Cross chapter that I volunteer with was invited to attend the local Fire & Rescue station's Challenge Day. I have been inside a burn building (a structure that the fire companies use for training; it is a building that typically won't burn down but still allows the firefighters to practice inside a building) when we piloted a different version of the disaster assessment class with another Red Cross chapter. But, this was an opportunity to see things as they unfolded. Despite the rain, and discovering that you really do need two hands (see: If it's good for you, it's good for me) to climb into a passenger van, and to take pictures, it was good to see. I wish I had been able to attend the whole event. Thanks to those that helped with the pictures!
If you would prefer to see just the pictures, they can be found on Flickr, here. We discovered that to see the different sizes, you do need a Flickr account, and the photos are too large to send via email.
Here's the slide show and, I don't think we need to play Guess the Theme Song this time; its probably obvious!

If it's good for you, it's good for me

As a teacher, I often find myself in the position of having to recommend tools that I think would make learning and work easier. And an equal number of times, the student complains, usually because the learning curve makes the learning temporarily more difficult since they are learning 2 new things instead of just 1.
Well, as it turns out, I have an opportunity to use a word prediction program. While I was in Texas, it seems that I broke my wrist. My right wrist.
The pluses: By using standard accessibility features in Windows, I have fewer problems. I am using Mouse Keys, and Sticky Keys. For typing I am getting some assistance from WordQ version 2. Its definitely not as fast as I usually am, but it does make things easier for longer writing, and my students were encouraged by seeing me use tools similar to what I recommend for them. It doesn't necessarily ease the learning curves, or the frustration of looking different, but it might help a little.

Iron Chef meets High School

Last week, not only did my school host a version of American Idol, complete with versions of Simon & Paula, but we engaged in a little Iron Chef action too. Each year the school hosts an award ceremony near Spring. It is a little different from many award ceremonies, in that teachers nominate 1 or 2 students, and then the students have the opportunity to nominate one teacher that has changed their life. Students can nominate a teacher from any grade, and school. If the school is part of our system, the teacher gets an email invitation. If not, the school makes reasonable effort to find the teacher. The evening also includes a multicultural dinner. Each grade brings a dish, having been assigned the type; IE, 9th grade brings a vegetable dish, while the 11th grade nominees bring an entree.
Each year, the students I teach make 1 dish, and a dessert. This year, we took pictures, and of course, made a movie!