Blog Post # 12

Watching the videos assigned for this blog post reinforced what I learned in EDU400. EDU400 is a special education course. This course is designed to teach you the inner workings of a special education classroom. The understood message was that these "special" kids need to have adequate learning too. During my class visitation I was able to observe many different technologies that help the students. These technologies ranged anywhere from what they called a "talker", which is an iPad set up for the students to select an audio command, to simple, plastic, colored objects that teach them sorting skills. It was also amazing to see how much the teachers accomplished and how dedicated they were.

My two technologies of choice are audio books and proofreading programs. The reason I chose these two is because they can really be used in any type of classroom. I like audio books myself, not because I need them, but I could see where if the student was having a hard time keeping up with the lesson, for any reason, they could go back and listen to the lesson as they are doing homework. Proofreading programs can replace or compliment audio books. One way that they could replace them is that if a student is taking notes, the program could correct any mistakes which would allow the student to maintain pace with the teacher. Proofreading programs can compliment the audio books for the same reason it could replace them. Say the student got behind in lecture, he or she still could get the correct notes but would still be a little lost. Then all he or she would have to do is go back with the correct notes and listen to the audio book at a slower preferred pace. One good site that explains the benefits of audio books and give a couple of places to purchase them is www.greatschools.org. A great program for proofreading is found here www.ghotit.com, this program uses an audio function so that you can hear and make better corrections.