Blog Assignment 3

Technology in Special Education
This video is about how Ms. Cook uses technology to help her special education class find learning easier and more enjoyable. It really demonstrates just how much technology can help someone excel in their academics. One of her students use to have to have someone read to him outside in the hallway, but now, thanks to an ipod, he can listen to someone read him the story in his classroom where his other classmates are. Another one of her students can't speak well, so he can now type what he wants to say into his computer. She also has a student who can't see or write well. He has a program on his computer that magnifies the writing so that he can see it more easily, and the computer is also easier for him to write on. Technology has enabled Ms. Cook's class to be able to turn their assignments in on time, whereas they use to be late, and it helps them do it twice as fast. It has really made a tremendous impact in her classroom.

Technology has changed the way special needs students are taught in many of ways. They can now feel like other students in their classes because technology allows them to complete their assignments more quickly. They can also participate in projects and discussions now because they can use computers to say what they are thinking and feeling. I am eager to learn more about special education programs for my future students. I want them to be able to complete their math assignments with ease.

Educational Apps
After watching the video about the little boy with autism who uses the ipad to learn and visiting the apple website, I found an app called math bingo. I think this game would be both fun and educational. Students are given addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems and then once they figure out the problem, they look to see if they have it on their bingo cards. They collect bingo bugs for points and then get prizes. This game would allow all students to participate and strengthen their math skills.

Gary Hayes Social Media Count
Wow! Gary's Social Media Count is a real eye opener. The chart really puts into perspective just how important and much used technology has become today. There is an insane number of Youtube videos that are being watched every second, along with tweets on Twitter and iPhone apps being downloaded. Hours uploaded onto Youtube and new memberships on LinkedIn are the two lowest categories on the social media count, but they are still bringing in a lot of numbers every second or so.

Seeing this count means a lot to me as a future educator. I know that I am really going to have to stay up to date with technology so that I don't fall behind. This has also shown me the importance of technology regarding our society today; those astounding numbers show that a ton of people use technology for all sorts of things. I am going to try to incorporate and use technology in my classroom as much as possible.

Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today
 This video , by Micael Wesch was made at Kansas State University with the help of 200 students. It summarized the characteristics of students today. From their goals they want to reach to the kinds of experiences they will meet in their lives, they are all expressed in this powerful video. Students illustrated that they pay hundreds of dollars every semester for books that they will never open and they are assigned pages to read, but never read them. I, as a student myself, do get frustrated by the fact that we are suppose to buy all of these books for our classes, and most of the time, the most expensive book we buy is the one that we never use.

The students in the video showed that the majority of their time is spent either texting, eating, sleeping, or using technology in some kind of way. They do all of these more than they focus on their school work. We need to work technology into learning and into the classroom more. Technology is becoming a part of our everyday lives rather we like it or not. So, we need to embrace it and teach our students with it because technology is what they understand. They would probably be more interested in learning the material if technology was used too, because that is what they have become accustomed to.