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!

Austin, Texas & RMC

Last week, I spent some time doing training for the Red Cross. Before I left, my students asked me if I would take pictures for them the way I did in Seattle, and send them. I did, but unfortunately, only managed to get one set of pictures into the slide show and sent off. I've put the whole thing together now, so I thought I would share it with everybody. The bulk of the pictures are from our tour of the Response Maintenance Center. The RMC is where all of the technology that the Red Cross deploys for a disaster assignment come from, and go back to. We have satellite dishes, satphones, antennas, and more radios than you'd ever want to know about! See... I can make EVERYTHING into technology! We're also going to play "guess the soundtrack song". If you know it, leave a comment. :)

RCT 3

Two of my students have started working on RCT 3 parks with me, and one student is using RCT 2 on his own. The parks in RCT 3 are working very well, although I am controlling the mouse in order to reduce the possibilities of information overload. As I said, the hardest part is getting the paths laid correctly. One student has made it all the way to the Tycoon level challenge in Vanilla Fields (the starter park), and another has made it to that section in the Splash-Water Park expansion. I asked the one student do to Splash because his research is on Sea World. We've also had some trouble connecting the slides to the pool complexes, but I don't know why. I think it might be the terrain being uneven. We'll keep working at it.
I will post some screen shots of the parks in a week or so; I neglected to bring the CD home with me this weekend, so I can't run the game.

Technology to Make the Job Easier

I have Mary Poppins singing "A Spoonful of Sugar" going through my head right now. Last week, the job coach that works with a lot of our students had the idea to label the shelves in the cafeteria kitchen so that the students could be sent to get something when they are working. She wondered if we could do it on the computer. And, as I mentioned, my duty this year is to provide tech support to the special education department. We looked at different label templates available in Word, and then the job coach and a student went back over to measure the front of the shelf.
The next day, the student came down with a list of items they had found by inventorying the shelves. I set up the template for him, and he started typing. The student already knew how to find clip art, and digital pictures, so only needed minimal assistance for that. In fact, he was able to get about 15 done in the period, with pictures, and ready to print. He only needed help when the picture wasn't clear.
The benefit to this, beyond the students being more independent, is that a lot of our cafeteria staff are not native English speakers. It will also help keep things organized on the shelves. Oh... and the student also learned a very valuable skill which he is starting to generalize to other areas.