My Youtube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQwuvzK_wC4&utm_source=trigger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=you_tube_ready

Week 5 article and questions

http://www.ldonline.org/article/35792

My article discusses using technology for literacy instruction for students with learning disabilities.
1. Have you ever used technology to implement differentiated instruction?
2. Are there any technology tools mentioned in the article that you would consider trying with your students?

Ways to use Second Life in for ELA instruction.

Collaboration: You can contact people of the same field of interest from around the world.
Interactivity:  You can use videos, presentations, images and weblinks at the same time in one place.

On an elementary level, students can explore the virtual worlds in Second Life and use the experience as a writing prompt.  On the secondary level, students can explore different genre (Shakespeare, poetry, etc) and interact within those "islands".

Multimodal Article

I found this article to be quite interesting and incredibly pertinent to my present teaching and field work experience.  I am a picture book lover and collector.  In early childhood education, I think that a great picture book collection is a teacher's most vital possession.  I loved this quote:  "if the children are not allowed to speak or interact during a book's reading, then they are less able to pick up all the different elements of the story."  When I read to my preschool class, my students are encouraged to interact with me and with the book.

The discussion about font was also very interesting.  I recently helped my 12 year old daughter as she put together a power point presentation for a class.  We were choosing a font, I suggested Comic Sans and my daughter responded, " Are you kidding me, Mom?  That font is so babyish."  The fact that she correlated a font to a maturity level was quite eye opening.

The "new" roles of the teacher were especially interesting...particularly:

Teacher as co constructor of knowledge—

Teacher and students explore and learn together

because the teacher acknowledges that

students sometimes know as much, if not more

about certain things

So true!   I'm off to amazon.com to purchase the Doughnut book.