Thing 23

WOW! How do you sum up all that I have explored and learned in a simple blog? I started this course feeling fairly knowledgeable about the web and what it had to offer. I was quickly handed a hefty dose of "humble pie" as I muddled my way through this course. I realized I was only skimming the surface of all that is out there to help me on a personal basis but even more on a professional one. Working with special needs students leads me to constantly looking for new and exciting ways to meet their individual needs. I will never look at lesson plans the same! :) I only wish this course would have been stretched out a little longer to allow more time to explore the "things"
I am so grateful for all the time and work that has been put into this course. I look forward to using these tools in my classroom.

Thing 22

The 2 Web 2.0 tools I chose to explore were Tadalist.com and Da Font. The Tadalist allowed me to actually make Brayden's daily schedule as a check off list. He loves the computer and would much rather use it to mark off his daily activities as opposed to the pictures we are currently using. It would be a wonderful incentive to get him to complete his work as well. The Da Font web site has fonts of all shapes and sizes. The ones that caught my eye made me think of the PBS show WordWall. The font actually looks like the word as in the word Catcus. This was very helpful to my students in the past and would be a great benefit in the classroom.

5d

I loved the story I found on my About.Com link for Special Needs Children. The title is "A Whole New Kid? No Thanks" Terri Mauro talks about the new found desire for many parents to have "A Whole New Kid." So much that many books are out there promoting this idea. Mauro goes on to say that she doesn't want a new kid and how she is perfectly content with the ones she has devoted so much of her life to. I loved how she said that as parents, we all have that time where we know our children, whether they voice it or not want different parents and how hurtful it is to us. Just imagine how children must feel when they see these books and hear about it on talk shows. It makes you stop and think. No, my children are not perfect, as a matter of fact, they are far from it, but they are mine!!

Thing 21

Pageflakes are very useful and helpful to busy individuals like myself. One page can cover so many different things. You can see your daily schedule,a To-Do list, the weather, and other helpful things to keep you organized.
I can also see it being used as a tool in the classroom to benefit the parents. Each flake could be used to create the classroom newsletter. You could have the calendar, the upcoming events, letter of the week, PTO news, songs for the students and many other things. The parents would be able to log on to get the information as opposed to having it lost between school and home. Of course, you would also need to take into consideration those who do not have access to the Internet and provide a hard copy when needed. My pageflake is titled PNelson.

Thing 19

Creating my podcast was far more extensive than I realized. Once I saw the time that it took, I had to rethink my application of this Web 2.0 tool in my classroom. I'm sure with practice comes speed and the ability to navigate from page to page quicker than I was able to today. I still think podcast will be a great asset in the Special Education spectrum. Working in a self-contained classroom has me dealing with many different academic levels and podcast would be awesome to alleviate the competition I often see when students are not "keeping up" with their peers.
The first thing I would create in a podcast would be a students spelling words for them to use to take "practice test". This individual attention would alleviate the issues that come up when students have a "modified" list of words.

Thing 18

I think Podcast will be an awesome tool for my classroom. I subscribed to Georgia's Podcast through The Education Podcast Network. I enjoyed a podcast on weather and enjoyed the child's explanation and pride in their work. Podcast will be a valuable tool for me because my students are on many different academic levels. I can create podcast to suit each child's individual needs. The students that I have with autism will probably benefit the most from podcast.

Thing 17

I was very excited to explore Classroom 2.0 and found some very interesting topics.
I thought I would enjoy the Microblogging experience seeing as I am an avid fan of text messaging, but for my students and the needs in my classroom, I was not impressed. Just another beauty of Web 2.0!! So many things out there to meet so many different needs.