New Math Software Claims to Close Achievement Gaps in Algebra Proficiency

I have not personally tried this software but want to share the information that I received from an eSchool News email that I received. It may be worth a look!

The I CAN Learn®Program:

Is scientifically proven at-scale to close the Achievement Gap in Algebra proficiency
Improves student test scores on states high-stakes tests
Is proven as a cost effective means of improving student performance
Earned both the coveted “++” recognition and “Positive Effects” rating from the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse
Meets ARRA Title 1 and IDEA Spending Guidelines
Meets all aspects of RTI Criteria
Over 14 years of scientifically based research prove the effectiveness of the I CAN Learn®Program. The program’s flexibility and scope fit well within the purview of the ARRA Title I and IDEA spending guidelines, especially for Summer School Algebra Readiness and online IEP aligned to state standards. The large lesson bank makes alignment with your core curriculum a breeze. As a longitudinal data system, the I CAN Learn®Program provides new opportunities for Title I schoolwide programs seeking online courseware as “Supplemental Learning Materials” for meeting mathematics requirements. The program also establishes fiscally sustainable extended learning opportunities for students in targeted assistance programs, as its “Online” configuration can be used anytime, day or night. This makes it an especially useful intervention for bringing students up to grade level. The self-paced feature makes it effective for students of all abilities, from remedial to gifted. Specific program configurations also meet the following aspects of RTI criteria: Universal Screening, Scientifically Based Intervention, Progress Monitoring, Data Driven Decision Making, and Professional Development.

To learn more visit us today at I Can Learn.com, or give us a call at 504.263.1380.

Response to Intervention – Math – Should Focus on Basics

Those of you who work with students who struggle with math or whose own children have difficulty with math should pay heed to the recommendations in the newly issued federal What Works Clearinghouse guide!

The following quote was taken from the Council for Exceptional Children’s July 17, 2009 SmartBrief.

“Response to Intervention may be more difficult in math, special educators say, but a newly issued federal What Works Clearinghouse guide offers recommendations for success. Remediation for elementary-school students should focus on whole numbers, while older students can move on to more-advanced arithmetic concepts. But all students should also review basics.”

Are the Days of Raising Your Hand in Class Over?

Are the Days of Raising Your Hand in Class Over? Quite possibly! While I have not used any of  Qwizdom’s hardware or software personally – I do find possible uses of this technology intriguing and would love to hear from anyone who has used it.

Qwizdom is a student response system that turns the everyday, run-of-the-mill powerpoint presentation into an interactive activity.

“Qwizdom’s Award Winning Technology is designed to engage everyone in the classroom, whether you are a student or the teacher. Watch as your students become inspired, engaged, and motivated while using Qwizdom’s Software, Data Collection Tools, and RF handheld remote systems.

The benefits of using Qwizdom equipment for interactive assessments and voting:

• Combines response system interactivity, customized presentations, formative assessments, and online reporting into one complete solution.
• Engage, motivate, and empower each individual student
• Choice of remote types; including rechargeable and ability for text input
• Each durable remote displays instant right/wrong feedback.
• Student can discreetly ask for assistance
• Engage through the use of Qwizdom’s interactive learning games “

Check it out at: http://www.qwizdom.com/education/index.php

Center for Implementing Technology in Education

I have discovered another great resource for teachers – CITED!  http://www.cited.org/index.aspx

It is “a technical assistance center funded by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs, is a cooperative effort of the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), and the Education Development Center (EDC).”

The website offers an online course, “Differentiating Instruction Through Technology”. Along with the course you get a toolkit of tools, strategies, and resources that will help you differentiate planning, instruction, management and student assessment.

What I find really exciting is that the website contains a link to a ”powerful” tool called, the TechMatrix (www.techmatrix.org). This tool is designed to help educators and families find the best learning and assistive technology tools for students with special needs.

The website also contains a Learn Center, an Action Center, and a Research Center whose focus is on technology in education. It truly has a lot to offer.

Technology and Assessments – Modifications Made Easy

I recently discovered an online test creator called Easy Test Maker that would enable regular education and special education teachers to save time creating and modifying assessments. To quote their website

EasyTestMaker is a FREE online test generator to help you create your tests. With Easy Test Maker you can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections.

EasyTestMaker automatically generates alternate versions entirely randomized and master answer sheets with a single click! Just click the “Generate Alternate Versions” or “Print Answer Sheet” link when you are done creating your test. It’s that easy!

Upon reviewing the test maker I found that it would be very helpful not just to “regular education” teachers, but to special education teachers as well. As a special educator I often had to modify tests – individualize them for the students in the class who may have had a language, executive function, attention or visual disability. Often pressed for time as teachers are, I wouldn’t get to see the test (as it was literally just created) until the day of the test. This resulted in a lot of quick cutting and pasting, crossing out or marking on the test. Often it resulted in removing the student from their classroom so that I could help them navigate their test.

This program would allow a special educator to go into the teacher made electronically created test and make quick adjustments. They would be able to change font size, bold, highlight, underline or italicize words to draw attention to them or make them easier to read. They could insert a synonym for a word that they knew their students wouldn’t understand. They would be able to highlight words or phrases and save this modified test having modified it to meet the individualized needs of their students quite easily.

Also, If a teacher wanted to help prevent cheating they could generate multiple versions of the test with a click of the button – rearranging the questions randomly.

You can check out this free tool at: http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx

Atomic Learning – Definately Worth A Try

It’s been three weeks since I started my internship as an integrated technology specialist and I have to say everywhere I turn I have run into Atomic Learning. Both the school system that I am interning in as well as the University that I am attending have made Atomic Learning available for free to their staff and in the case of the University, their students as well. So far I have used it to learn about SmartBoard Notebooks, Excel 2007, and InspireData (which is a great spreadsheet program for kids). Just one word of advice – Atomic Learning works best with Firefox. Thus, if you use Internet Explorer as your Internet browser and have difficulties with Atomic Learning – now you know why! Firefox is free, easy to download, and will import your favorites, bookmarks, homepage, and cookies directly from Internet Explorer. Firefox can be downloaded from Mozilla’s website at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/.

Atomic Learning – Technology / Assistive Technology Training

I was reading through the eSchoolNews yesterday and discovered what appears to be a great resource for teachers, administrators, students, parents and technology personnel alike. What is it you ask?

 

It is a website called Atomic Learning. To quote their site: “Atomic Learning provides web-based software training for more than 110 applications students and educators use every day. Our short, easy-to-view-and-understand tutorials are an integral part of a professional development program, a valuable curriculum supplement, and an anytime/anywhere training resource.”

 

As if that wasn’t awesome enough; Atomic Learning has an assistive technology collection that: “includes short, show-and-tell video tutorials that empower educators to use and apply assistive technology. The foci of these tutorials are:

 

Special education software

Assistive technology devices

Software accessibility training tutorials

 

But wait that’s not all, for a limited time only they are offering a free 7 Steps to a Flat Classroom, online workshop that includes over 80 (I stopped counting) tutorials for well over 2 hours of free professional training.

 

BUT WAIT that’s still not all – if you act now you can use this incredible program for 14 days free. That’s right folks, you can enjoy 100% access to Atomic Learning – including the Technology Skills Collection of over 37,000 software training tutorials on more than 110 common applications and the Assistive Technology Collection featuring on-demand training for special education software, assistive technology devices and accessibility features – FREE for 14 days at: http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/7sfc_wb2

 

I wish I could say that you could get all of this for just $19.95 once the trial period was over, but alas, you can’t. A year’s subscription is $99.00 for the Technology Skills collection and $149.99 for the Assistive Technology collection. However, given the cost of attending workshops, conferences, or graduate level classes, overall, it seems to be a good deal.

 

I signed up for the 14 day free trial and will be checking out many of the assistive technology tutorials. I will be posting updates on what I discover.

Sound Off – The Pencil Sharpener

How many special education students does it take to sharpen a pencil? Sounds like a bad riddle huh? I suppose it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that it highlights one of the most absurd situations that I have encountered in a classroom.

I had just started working in a new school system and was in the process of organizing my classroom. I was a special needs teacher working with special needs students who received academic support. When I realized that I didn’t have a pencil sharpener in the room I searched about until I found one that was supposed to have been on the wall by the bulletin board at the back of the class.

I filled out the mandatory “request for work form” and gave it to the secretary who would in turn give it to the custodian in charge of work orders. As time passed and the pencil sharpener sat waiting, I found myself constantly apologizing to my students for the lack of pencil sharpener in the classroom. I gave out my pre-sharpened pencils until one day they ran out and so did the patience of my students. That’s when the two students who were currently in the classroom joined together to solve the problem, at least temporarily. One student held the barrel of the sharpener, I held the base of the sharpener, and the other student turned the crank as he sharpened his pencil. We all laughed at the absurdity of the moment and that was how the bad riddle was born.

The next day I brought in my own screwdriver and installed the pencil sharpener myself. Two weeks later I brought in a double A battery to fix the clock that had stopped working in my classroom. Had I had the authority, I would have also set up the three computers that had been sitting idle in my classroom for the first three months of school, waiting for the one technology support person that the school had, to set them up.

Why am I sharing this story? I do so at the risk of sounding whiny, to highlight one of the major issues that many, if not all, who work in public schools face – the need to do the work of two people. Teachers, administrators, support personnel, and custodians alike are all tasked with workloads so great that most of their time and energy is spent on “putting out fires”, thus leaving them with no time and little energy to plan ahead, try out new technologies, focus on preventative measures, or install a pencil sharpener.

So how many special education students does it take to sharpen a pencil? – Well in this case two, with the help of a teacher who couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all.

PBS Where We Stand, Schools in the 21st Century

Last night PBS premiered their new series; Where We Stand, Schools in the 21st Century. For those of you who missed this compelling show, you can view it in five segments on their website. Topics covered included: globalization and economics, recruiting and retaining excellent teachers, national achievement, No Child Left Behind, and School Finance.

Check out this informative program and other valuable resources at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wherewestand/

Virtual Desktops

In my attempts to stay on top of the current issues facing our public school systems I have found myself reading many articles that are focused on a similar theme, if we don’t reform our teaching instruction, the U.S. will fail. The reports, articles and firsthand accounts all speak to the need to help students garner the skills that they will need to enable them to remain competitive in a 21^st-century workplace.

 

Michael King, vice president of IBM’s global education industry, states that in order to accomplish true individualized learning, schools have to move beyond textbooks… “and the PC as it stands today is the wrong model for that”. “King points to the complexity of having thousands of computers throughout a school district. Between administering patches and software upgrades, implementing security updates, manually installing new applications, and simply managing the upkeep of those computers, the IT staff hours can mount sky high.” One possible solution is software virtualization and virtual desktops.

 

Having recently received an Intuos 3 Tablet for my birthday, installing it and Corel Painter Essentials 4 on my laptop, and then having to spend upwards to 16 hours; installing service packs, upgrading drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling software, upgrading software, doubling the amount of RAM on my laptop, only to continue to have difficulties opening and using some of my software programs (Grrrrrr Vista!); I completely understand where King is coming from!

 

To read more about software virtualization and virtual desktops the article mentioned above can be found at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/media/files/May08SprRpt.pdf

 

And if anyone has some insight as to why I may be having problems running Corel Painter Essentials 4, on a 2 gig laptop, running Vista Home Premium, please drop me a line!

Updated 09/17/08 – Someone from Corel – PR – contacted me to say that someone else would contact me with the contact information of a technical person who could help me with this problem. While I never did hear from that someone else with the contact information for the technical person I did, however, manage to fix the problem.

Given that I: updated all my drivers and software, added additional RAM, cleaned my disks and registry, defragged my computer, and followed the advice of a poster in a forum discussing similar issues, I can’t say for sure how I solved the problem. It only took 24 hours or so but my computer is running better than ever and Corel opens in 10 seconds versus the 5 minutes it took to start up previously.  Now imagine being the only technology support person in a school with hundreds of computers to manage. YIKES!