Lesson 3

Wow! What another interesting week. So much knowledge was gained this week from our Technology Explorations. I had no idea that there were so many text-to-speech programs available for teachers and students to use. Oh, and free as well! Each week I have been humbled a little bit as I realize that I am not "technologically savvy" teacher that I thought I was. These explorations have opened my eyes on how much more I could be doing with my students.

I learned that it is incredibly easy to convert text to speech using such programs as "Read TheWords" (www.readthewords.com). This program is incredible. It can read any type of DTP program as well as a website or RSS feed. I would like to use this program myself to help me focus and get through articles and reading assignments as a graduate student! But as a teacher, I imagine how much a tool like this can assist students with learning disabilities, or even language barriers.

In our blog assignment, we are asked to reflect upon differnt documents that we hand out to our students. I hand out a variety of things to my students. However, as a teacher of everyone in the entire school, I try to save paper in any way I can. Ever since my classroom was equipped with a Smartboard and projector, I use this to display assignments and lessons rather than on paper whenever possible. Of course, this allows me to make the assignment incredibly appealing to look at. The software program we use is called Smart Notebook and it comes with tons of graphics, animated graphics, graphic organizers, fonts, backgrounds, and much more.

I also create a program for each chorus concert I put on at our schoool. Our students perform two times per year for the entire school and parents as well. My first time making a flyer was a DISASTER. I was using Microsoft Publisher, and felt like I had to use the cheesy clip art that it came with. As time has gone by, I have "cleaned" the program up a bit to make it easier to read and get the information across. I also learned how to save an image a "Gif" file which allows me to overlap images to make them more attractive. Below I attached the handout that was sent home to parents for our Veteran's Day Program at our school. One of the worst habits I have is filling a flyer up too much with information, that it becomes information overload. I learned quickly that in some cases, less is more! Make the information simple and easy for parents and students to remember. After all, the point is to get them to the venue for the performance.