Survey's: How technology aids students with learning Disabilities

Please take these surveys accordingly to help me gather research for my project to show how technology aids students with learning disabilities. It is a known fact that students with learning disabilities learn completely different than the average student. I know form first hand experience. I would not say that I suffer from dyslexia but I grow everyday from my learning disability and intend to help other children see how a learning disability is not a disadvantage at life but an advantage. Most students who have dyslexia use different parts of their brain more than the others, for example I fail to use the part of my brain that helps me with my short term memory, comprehension, spelling, and writing. However other parts of my brain work really fast and well. I excel when it comes to creative wringing, sports,music, and building things. Being able to see things in different ways means that I learn and take in information in different ways. For me technology has always been a MAJOR outlet for me. It it were not for the speedy online dictionary I would not have made it though high school. My brothers and I were also privileged to use Dragon Speak which is a program that as you talk your way through your paper the computer program types what you say. These technologies have help my brothers and I (who both have dyslexia) to get through high school and many classes and over come out disability. If you would be so kind to participate in my survey below and help me acquire information for my project to show what schools and students are missing without technology and how it would be really beatifically if they had small things like Dragon Speak.
Below there are two different surveys the first one if for teachers and the second for students. Please take what ever one fits your situation because the questions are different. The survey is anonymous but your answers will be pulled into a final tally.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?PREVIEW_MODE=DO_NOT_USE_THIS_LINK_FOR_COLLECTION&sm=u3xqnuFvxRMeWBt2HPLtF8qS%2fgOwdqs532uKEV4Dljw%3d

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?PREVIEW_MODE=DO_NOT_USE_THIS_LINK_FOR_COLLECTION&sm=cpdcKDeMmCAJpvbKNN%2bRlxuHcOr4R5gDWfYnjXMuZQ8%3d

Fahrenheit 451

I just started reading Fahrenheit 451, I am really loving it. The main reason I love it is because it is a novel that has basically come true. The idea that we are going to be overwhelmed by technology and it is going to become the new way of reading for us has basically come true. I was just "googeling" the book because I am not that far into it and I wanted to know a little more about the author and I found a few short quotes that are really interesting.
"While the novel does tough on the dangers of censorship, Bradbury was adamant that this was not his focus. The novel is about the dangers of television, he said and his fears that such mindless entertainment would replace recreational free thinking."

To further prove this point here is an segment of a letter that Bradbury wrote to a fellow science fiction writer Richard Matheson:
"Radio has contributed to our 'growing lace of attention! [...] This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or , worse than that, a QUICK reading people."

This letter was written fifty years ago and now today we can make the connections that this is really coming true. I consider myself a quick reader now, I try not to be but sometimes you just have to be. I know watching my dad every morning read the paper when I was little he was never a quick read kind of guy. He would take almost two hours to read the paper cover to end. Now he goes to work with out reading the paper and just reads what articles he wants on the papers website.

I really am only three and two and a half chapters deep but I have heard a lot about this book and just decided to do some extra research. I also found the meaning of the title very cool. That 451 is the degree that books burn at, and the main character being a fireman.
The idea of cycles I can tell is going to be used a lot in this novel.
Till next time.

Post from Nice Net: Digital Writing Workshop& more...

In chapter six, there are the charts on pages 110-113 about effective writing. I find it so interesting that the old idea of Know, Need to know, and learn or Questions charts are still being taught and revised. I remember in the first grade, second grade maybe learning about KN charts. Know and Need to know charts. Its great to see how this old idea has evolved into such an extensive new idea in hicks writing. He gives so many helpful tips for writers to use as the prepare to write and what I think is interesting and NEW to the chart is the AFTER You Write topic heading. This is something that I wish I had read and been taught a long time ago. It makes you think about what big ideas we were taught in first and second grade that we could turn into new big ideas and elaborate on?
I also think it is interesting how Hicks suggest that as teachers we ask a student or our students to take us on a tour of their social network site and ask them to show us how they create a personal profile using text, pictures and videos. I find this interesting because first off this is something that you most likely would not be able to do in school because the school would probably block face book. But I do wonder how open some students would be with this project. How comfortable would you feel doing this project?
You know what is on your and your friends face book page...Would you want to see what is on your students?

Something that I find interesting about Hicks is that he can relate to a wide range of people. He reaches a lot of different levels in his text. As silly as it sounds, when I read sometimes I feel I am in certain moods were I am in still in the mind set of looking at things a student in a chair looking at the chalk board. Other times when I go back and read Hicks I fell I am reading with the mind set of a teacher and I am sitting at a desk with my balk to the chalk board, yet I can still relate to the text on a different level and gain full knowledge from his text.( that may just be my dyslexia kicking in lol)

A quote that I LOVE. is on page 7, "Teach the writer, then the writing." This quote seems to match my feelings about teaching writing. The way I take it is that you first have to teach the student how to write properly, until the student understands how to write correctly. Then you can correct their writing and form and morph it into what you would like it to be.

Inspiration

I guess when reading the story about Micheal Phelps the whole time I had been looking for inspiration for a goal that I no longer am trying to achieve. When I finished the book I realized that I found a new type of inspiration from this story. Growing up I faced many of the same struggles that Micheal did. He explains that he was always picked on for being really tall, picked on because he could not read, spell or write well. I found that having these same struggles and the same passion for swimming and hard work ethic that he does that we are alike in more ways the one. The main idea that I pulled from all this that I can connect to the classroom and my future classroom is that when it comes to students with learning disabilities sometimes it is not the best idea to single them out in front of everyone but to pull them aside and show them what is wrong with them but on top of that show them what skills they have that are outstanding. In Micheal's case it was swimming and sports. When most teachers (from personal experience I am saying this) deal with students like myself and Micheal they always forget to leave the kids with a positive note about themselves. That I find is most important. Kids who get picked on because of their disability are more apt to quit school or fall into a depression quicker than the average student. Both of my older brothers went to the Gow school, which is a boarding school for dyslexic boys.Being very involved with their lives there. I began to pick up at a very young age what many of the teachers were doing every day that made their students so successful. I actually got to have one on one first hand experience my self by going to their summer school there to hone in on my specific needs to prepare me for high school. What you find at a school like Gow is that the teachers sit right next to you in a class room with no more than 6 kids in it and help you one on one. And no matter what ever if you get the problem or question wrong you will be the one to fix your won mistake because you can. Not because your wrong and wont know the answer because you do not understand math. Modern teachers do not know, feel or understand what it is like to struggle with a disability. Until they have sat in a class room with students who are breaking down the problems and sentences their way. Who knows maybe if Micheal Phelps went to the Gow school he would be leading a whole different life right now because he would have gotten the help and attention he needed in high school growing up. He would not have just passed by. My inspiration that I now took from Micheal Phelps is to not go out there and swim for the gold but just to go out there and make it apparent that kids with learning disabilities no matter the strength of the disability learn 100% different than every other student in the class room and deserve a fair chance to get the grades the deserve and the help they deserve so they do not just pass by.

The Untold story of a Champion

I started reading the Untold Story of a Champion. It is the auto biography of Michael Phelps. Three summers ago I was introduced to his book No Limits and read and re-read it many of times before my senior swim season of high school. This book not only motivated me to finally kick my butt in to gear again for my last season of swim but kick my teams butt’s in gear so that we could all make it together. I was planning on making it to states that year and after reading about the struggles and triumphs that Michael went through to get to where he was now I was pretty damn sure I was going to get there. It was interesting to me that he started out just like any other kid taking swim lessons in a small town pool. I was so inspired that I brought my relay team to sectionals and I Was so well trained and determined that I made it to states that year. I made it all the way to states with that book in my bag. I do not know why but it is the only book that I have ever actually re- read more than 3 times. I can honestly say that a novel and not a poem, quote or lyric inspired me to get up and do something. So now I decided to read the auto biography. It’s the perfect time seeing as I have to read an auto biography and now that is three years later and I am in need of some new inspiration and a little follows up. As I read the first few pages of just simple background information about his family. I started to realize that our family is really what makes us or breaks us. Having only his mother to raise him and take him to and from practices while taking care of his sister and be a lot on a mom, especially when she does not know that she is raising an all-star Olympic swimmer. I am really looking forward to reading the rest of this novel and hopefully get the inspiration and follow up I need.

Back to The Hanging Tree

I took a break from the hanging tree becuase I got caught up with other books I was reading for diffrent classes and I finally picked this book back up and read a few more chapters and it is starting to get really slow.. unfortiounatley. SO there is really not much to blog about except that I am a little disapointed that the book is getting slow becuase I am getting less and less intrested and I just want to know what happend to Gracie and who Hung her or if she hung herself. So I am trying not to jump ahead but just read faster through the boring chapters that do not really give much excitment to the story but just meaning less fluff.

A Raisin in the Sun.

Recently (this weekend), I had the chance to read a Raisin in the Sun. I was always supposed to read this book but never had the drive or determination to read this book.  Until I needed to read it for Drama & Film. I was kinda on edge about reading this book just because I never wanted to read it and now I HAD too so I put my eyes to it and read it. After finishing this play I had the same feeling I did when I started it. Ha plain. I did't really feel a connection or an extreme intrest in this book but When I got to class we are reading the play with the movie Everything is Illuminated. Which we have not watched yet but I have heard really good things about so maybe this will brighten the play more for me and can create more connections for me but right now it is just a play about a man trying/dreaming to be wealthy and to me thats over done and it just seems like a play I have read over and over agian.It reminds me of another less mentaly crazy verzion of Death of a Salesman.