Digital Story

I searched in Google and found that Digital storytelling is a way of telling a story using electronic devices such as a video camera, pictures, music, and words. Most digital stories are short and range from personal experiences to historical facts. I also watched a video on youtube about digital storytelling. It was very informative and I learned more from the video than I did from the site.
My take on digital storytelling is that it's a chance for individuals to express themselves in a visually creative way. I think it makes for a great lesson in the classroom because it offers students the chance to be creative. It would also work well as an instructional tool for students who are visual learners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKZiXR5qUlQ
http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

21st Century Fluency Project

I read an article from the 21 Century Fluency Project. It was called " How Slang affects Students in the Classroom." The basis of the article is that text-speak(which is considered slang) influence students writing ability. Text-speak is a type of electronic communication that students use. Examples of Text-speak are IDK-I dont know or OMG (Oh my God). Students in today's world  use so much text-speak that their writing abilities are greatly declining.
Instead of placing blame on the students, the article recognizes that the problem is the adults. Adults need to be trained to communicate and show students how to communicate effectively. The article suggest that education needs to adapt to the changing times and adults should educate students to use varied communication. That means teaching students to see the difference between communicating with social peers and communicating with business pupils.
I really like this article because I see a lot of this in my friends and family. I agree that many students prefer to use slang to communicate, instead of writing formally. It would be a challenge for me as a educator to teach my students to write effectively so that they do not use slang when they are writing essays for college or jobs.

Global Education Communities

I found two sites that connects students and teachers from around the world. The first site is: http://www.thinkfinity.org/global-connections
This site has blogs from students and teachers around the world. You can communicate with them through their blogs and learn about them. It also has a a link called thinkfinitycommunity  (http://community.thinkfinity.org/index.jspa ) where you can view other educators/parent's blogs. This site offered a great start for educators who want to have a network with other teachers from around the world.
The second site that I visited was: http://www.epals.com/
I really like this site because it was not as confusing at the first site. If offered many resources for teacher under the Teacher Link. You can share your work and see other teachers work. You can also view online resources such as the skillbuilders library.For students it offered forums, videos, storytelling, and students work, which can be viewed by other students.
The really nice thing about this site is that you can search other classrooms by country or by project. I think it would be nice to do this with school age students as a multicultural school project. The students will have a chance to learn about other students from around the world by viewing other class's works. Students can start a project and then learn about other students projects. It it a great way for students to make epals with other students from other countries. I would love to do a project like this in my class.

Assistive Technology

I learned that Assistive Technology is a way for peoples with disabilities to use technology to aid them in performing tasks. There are numerous different technological tools that were created to help individuals with special needs.
Assistive Technology and Autism:

I had worked with children who have Autism before and wanted to explore the different assistive technologies that are available for these individuals. Autism is a disorder that effect an individuals social and communication skills. Most children who have autism have delayed speech or have trouble communicating. They are also unaware of the social rules, making it hard for them to socialize with other children. The technologies that I found to support children with Autism are few. There is a system called PECS, which is a CD that has millions of pictures representing words. children with Autism usually use these pictures to make a sentence indicating their needs. It works very well for them as I have seen many children go from non-verbal to verbal through using this system. The newest tool that supports children with Autism is an app that can be downloaded onto in iphone or ipad. This app is called the Grace App. Basically what it does is speak for a child who is unable to speak. A child has a wide range of pictures to choose from and when they click on that picture icon, it is then put into a sentence and voiced through the iphone or ipad. I heard from parents that this app is very useful and most say that is changed their lives and the way their communicate with their children.
After learning this, I know that I can easily incorporate this into my teaching. More and more children are being diagnosed with Autism and as a teacher, I need to be aware of these resources so that I can better teach my students and better my communication with them. Below is a prezi that I did on this topic( I"m still trying to figure out how to embed the prezi below so that you do not need to click on the link.)http://prezi.com/kk1c-mrqr3z2/assistive-technology/

Sites used to get this inofrmation:
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?109
http://www.specialed.us/autism/assist/asst10.htm
http://socialtimes.com/iphoneipad-app-helps-autistic-children-communicate_b10778

Prezi

 I experimented with Prezi. I loovveee it! I had heard about it before but never got the chance to do so. It's very similar to a powerpoint. Its much simplier because you can add pictures, videos, and other files easily. It was pretty easy to nagivate.I learned much about it within the first 10 minutes, but I spent the next hour creating a prezi. I did a sample prezi of my life. I will show it during class. I had a lot of fun doing prezi and I will for sure use it for future classes.  What I like about it is that it's all online. You dont have to download it or buy the program( you can if you want a better version, I did the free trail). I think that it is also a fun site for students-maybe the higher grade students because its fun and they get to be creative.
This is the link  to my prezi: http://prezi.com/5pmghnwvnasr/maykou/
http://prezi.com/5pmghnwvnasr/maykou/

21st Century Fluency Project Blog

 I followed the 21 century fluency project. I looked at the sardine blogs which had lists of latest news. The one I looked at was titled "Thought-Controlled Video Games Train Brain." This article talked about a company who is trying to create a video game that only requires brain waves to play it. Its goal is for people to relax their mind and become more focus. How it works is that the player will wear a headband with sensors on it to measure brain waves. Even though it is in the works right now, the blog suggested that it can be a potential treatment for people with ADD.
This article was very entertaining because it was hard for me to wrap my head around(a video game with no hand controllers but mind controllers?). It just seem so far out there. I hope that it does do its job if they are able to create this brain wave video game.

Sharing Common Craft Videos

I shared the common craft videos with my mother in law who is a director of a preschool. She really liked it because she did not know much about twitter or blogspot. The only one she is familiar with is FaceBook(loves to play farmville). She really liked the videos and found them very educational because she said she is not use to technology. The other person I shared it with was my finance who is also an educator(Manager at Rural Cap Head Start). He did not find them as cool because he is already very educated about these things. What he did find interesting was the video about twitter and Augmented Reality. The third person I shared the video with was my friend Stacey who is not an education major and does not work in the same field. She found them very entertaining and thought it was cool that there was such videos to even show you how to do these things. She liked the Augmented Reality because she has an iphone and is interested in what it can do for her.