LD LIVE! Living with Learning Disabilities
Connecting Innovators, Ideas and Individuals in the Field of Education and Learning Disabilities! Melinda Pongrey, MSED, hosts a weekly conversation exploring learning, learning difficulties, and learning disabilities with featured leaders in the field of medicine, science, education, ADHD, and various learning disabilities, including dyslexia.
Excellent resources for teachers/administrators who are looking for support for special education, best practices and differentiation strategies. Podcasts, live shows and archive of previous shows. Melinda Pongrey is the weekly host.
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.
An article in last week's Education Week looks at the increasingly common practice of reading aloud to middle and high school students. In discussing the practice with Mary Ann Zehr (I'm quoted briefly in the piece) I made the point that while there is certainly nothing wrong with reading out loud to teenagers, it is symptomatic of what I call "literacy creep" - the tendency of elementary school-style instructional techniques to find their way deeper into K-12 education across all content areas.
One of the most powerful, misunderstood and under-utilized tools for teaching 21st century skills, is the Creative Commons. Besides providing access to hundreds of thousands of media works that can be used to augment the creative process, the Creative Commons offers a legitimate way for students to license their own creative works, be they audio, video, text or hybrid products.
I know wikis are as popular with some educators as Al-Qaeda is with the CIA, however sometimes these portals and schools on Wikimedia sites can contain some interesting and useful information. I think so, anyway.
A position which is bound to fire up educators, yet upon reading it I wondered if part of what they're saying isn't true? Perhaps it just sets up a simplistic binary that blinds teachers to the truth that we can be both interesting and effective as educators. Hard to tell.
Via @pcwoessner on Twitter. Great development of Digital Citizenship/Internet Safety resources. He has combined NETS-S, Ribble & Bailey's Digital Citizneship in Schools, iKeepSafe C3 Matrix, Microsoft's Digital Citizenship & Creative Content, and SimpleK12's Protecting Students in the 21st Century.
To help moms who have children with autism and to support Autism Awareness month, Momsfightingautism.com is offering a free virtual conference with 17 different presenters over two days on Saturday April 10th and Sunday April 11th. Attendees can listen and participate from anywhere in the world free.
Dear Educators,
With this webcasting tool, you can connect live face to face with anyone, anywhere, anytime.....family, friends, students, teachers, colleagues, administrative groups, principals meetings, etc. without having to travel.
You can even promote world peace by connecting with teachers and students in their classrooms worldwide and learning more about each other's country and culture
The tools for your use include the ability to have live video chat, make PowerPoint presentations, stream video, share your desktop, record and share your presentation, and much more.
Guests do not have to download any software. They simply click on the link to your conference that you send them, no cost, no travel and better yet, no wasted time.
This tool is affordable and easily fits into a classroom, school or administartive office budget.
As a former superintendent in the education system with more than 50 schools spread out 400 miles along a major highway, the ability to communicate with everyone in an efficient, effective and economical manner was essential.
Hope you find this helpful.
Best wishes,
Barry
The Extraordinary and the ordinary- the projected trajectories of current computer technologies and their application for sustained mind controlling outcomes. It's already here- we will be interacting with computers with our minds. Incredible applications for learning.