Coming Up Next: A New Year

I've dived into the deep end this year... Somebody should remind me to look next time! This year will probably be hectic, and interesting. I'm not sure yet if interesting is a good thing or a bad thing, but give me a few weeks and I'll see if I can't figure it out.

I have two new roles this year at my school: autism resource & team-taught history. My school has had some success integrating the principals of Universal Design into science classes, and so now they would like to try history. Its not exactly a secret that I have a laptop welded to my back while at school, but I wasn't aware anybody knew about my secret passion for non-fiction documentary-style books and movies, especially 20th Century history. Or that I worked at a Renaissance Faire, and minored in history in college. Guess I need to hide that weakness a little better...
The autism resource is also really not a surprise: I worked as an autism teacher for an extended school year program when I started teaching, have always had at least one student in my classes who had an autism spectrum disability, and spent 3 years working at place known for their work with kids with autism.

School opens for students on Tuesday, and so I've been creating materials for Basic Skills this weekend, and trying to help the general education teachers I'm teaming with adapt materials for history. The students who have had me for Basic Skills before know that I like to do projects... This has not changed. Our first project will have them invent a product, research a real version of the product using Wikipedia. Side note: Do NOT twit at me about using Wikipedia in school; if we don't show the students how to use it properly, how will they ever learn? Just like we need to teach students about advertising, we need to teach how to use other media resources! The last part will have them create a commercial for their product. Originally, I was going to have them make a commercial of themselves, but decided to do the group thing. And, while I have access to a video camera, I'm not sure if doing that first thing in the school year is a good idea... Thanks to the UD Tech Toolkit I found a cool site called Animoto. There is a version of Animoto for schools to use, but I created this in about 5 minutes using the regular site. Very, very cool. So, I may use this for their commercials. It is a lot more structured, and much easier to use than actually creating a video themselves.

Donor's Choose

Donor's Choose is a website that lets teachers post needs for their classroom and request funding. Its kind of like a mini-grant application and social networking all rolled into one. The website was started in 2000 by a teacher from New York City; at first, only schools in NYC were eligible to participate. I've kept it on my radar, but really didn't have anything that would fit the bill until last year. I've always done pretty well with grants for technology, and purchased or created most of my own instructional materials. And that would be why I'm paying for a storage locker because of all the functional materials... I really should try to sell some of them, but then what if I need them? Ah, the mantra of a teacher. I think most teachers are closet hoarders. Anyway...
Last year I went looking to see if I could do anything about transportation for the service club I co-sponsor, but discovered that you can't do a field trip request as your first action on Donor's Choose. I reluctantly shelved the idea, because I didn't really need things for my classroom at that time. One of the nice things about doing a lot of functional teaching is that I have not had to buy things for awhile.
But, this is a new year with a new classroom (more about that in another post). I'll be teaching kids with autism. My room is rather bright and echo-y: cinder block, linoleum, and fluorescent lights. Not exactly the ideal setting for kids with autism spectrum disabilities. And I remembered Donor's Choose!
In a very few minutes, I was able to find a decent sized rug, some floor lamps and light bulbs. I wrote up my request, and we were on the way! The project went live yesterday, and a dear friend has already contributed toward the request. No, this is not an advertisement for my project (but I won't object if you'd like to help fund it!), but Donor's Choose is a great idea. Check it out!

What I Learned...

If I had to sum up what I discovered while reading teacher blogs, and really, other blogs, is that blogging isn't always easy. Its hard to keep it fresh and interesting. If you do not post often, people won't read your blog. In fact, they make become actively annoyed if it isn't updated regularly.
I see the lack of updating often on other Red Cross chapter blogs, and when we started blogging for the chapter, I had to promise our Chapter Exec that we would have at least one post per week. In the beginning, it was a struggle... My partner and I have a list of "back up blogs" should there be a week when nothing is happening at the chapter. The topics are like our very first blog post which was an "interview" with the chapter and include ideas like favorite disaster books or movies, disaster foods, etc. The same is true of Twitter: I try very hard to tweet at least one update daily from the chapter's account.
Last week, we used mobile Read/Write Web tools to post about our trip to Kings Dominion. Every hour or so, I used TwitPic to send a picture taken with my cell phone's camera... the links to the photos were posted to Twitter & our Facebook status. I was truly surprised at the number of comments we received when I got home later. People really wanted to see this stuff!!!
I must admit that I'm having trouble coming up with a specific unit, mostly because I know that I can't blog with my students... I'm thinking about doing something with community service/service learning, maybe. I know I want to encourage writing, but beyond that? I don't know.

Summer Classes

This summer, I decided to take two on-line classes that explore using digital portfolios and Web 2.0 (Read/Write Web) tools. Arguably, I'm already using Web 2.0 in my classroom, but I am hoping there are some positive suggestions on how I can incorporate the tools in a more structured fashion. The students enjoy doing it, but I think the quality of some of their projects leaves a bit to be desired. I'd also like to be able to use the tools without feeling like I'm being sneaky. Logically, I know that I'm not doing anything wrong as long as we don't publish anything, but still... It seems a shame that my students can post and get feedback.
I'm not talking SecondLife here, or Facebook, but blogging would be really nice. So many of my students need to work on writing, and they hate it. I might get more response to vocabulary activities or summaries or resumes or job research if the students could post to a blog and then get feedback.

I've also become heavily involved in my Red Cross chapter's social media efforts, and regularly blog about events the chapter has participated in. We have everything connected through Facebook, and I have another volunteer & friend helping with the tools. We also have a volunteer that goes to the scenes and takes photographs for us to include. I see this as a good way to show the citizens of our county what the chapter does, and how we provide services. I'd like to step it up a bit, too, though, add a little spice to some of the posts.

And, of course, coming up with a way to incorporate the digital portfolios. I really think these would be a fantastic way for my students to have input at their IEP meetings, but the goal of most of the meetings is to get done as soon as possible. I have some problems with that, although I do understand why getting them done & over is important. But I really bought into the self-determination thing when I was in grad school for transition planning.

Ideas are, as always, welcome!

Flat Stanley: Flying Back

Dear Friends,

I had to get up very early this morning (and it was tough because we were at Disney until 1:00 a.m.!) to catch our plane back to Baltimore. I almost got left behind at the hotel, but fortunately one of the teachers with the group found me. It would have been a very long walk from Orlando to Baltimore.

It was cold this morning in Florida. Our flight left Orlando very late, and so we missed our connection in Atlanta. We did not get back to Baltimore until after 4:00 p.m., so everybody was very tired by the time the Red Cross picked us up at BWI. We saw snow flurries on the way back (and its APRIL!).

When we made it back to the high school, the group had a present for the Red Cross staff that picked us up: a Mickey Mouse light saber. How cool! It even lights up in rainbow colors.

As soon as the teachers have all the pictures of me done, they are going to send me home. I can't wait!

Flat Stanley: Walt Disney World

Dear Friends:

Today, we went to Walt Disney World Resort. Walt Disney World has many different parks to visit. My group went to Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom. The other students also went to Typhoon Lagoon, which is a water park.

At Magic Kingdom, we went on a lot of rides. We went on Space Mountain, and the Tea Cup ride. We also took pictures of the fireworks and Cinderella's Castle at night.

At Animal Kingdom, we went on the safari and saw lots of animals, including a tiger, hippopotamus, and an ostrich.

We ate dinner at Hollywood Studios at the Vine restaurant, and then went on Terror of Terror, and shopped at the Star Wars store to get a Jedi Mickey light saber for a friend.

The students who went to Typhoon Lagoon went on the lazy river, lots of water slides, and the wave pool. They also snorkeled with sharks.

Flat Stanley: Fondue!

Dear Friends:

Tonight, I went to dinner with the students from Extra Mile. They went to a fondue restaurant. This is a restaurant where you cook your food at your table. They started with cheese fondue. You dip bread, apples or vegetables in the melted cheese. Or, I guess anything you might want, but the restaurant gave us bread, apples and vegetables. Then, we got hot broth to cook the main dish in. One girl at my table only eats vegetables, so I got to try eggplant, and spinach tortellini, along with steak and shrimp. The last course was chocolate fondue with marshmallows, brownies and cheesecake to dip in the chocolate.

After dinner, we took a group picture around the fountain, and headed for Downtown Disney to visit DisneyQuest and
do some shopping. We are going to Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios tomorrow. I am not going to Typhoon Lagoon with the group because I don't like water very much.