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Check out this inspirational speech about the importance of failure. The video is especially valuable for educators, although I would also use it in an honors class or with any group of students exhibiting fear of risk.

Week 9 - This article by Leonore Ganschow and Elke Schneiderm provide an excellent description of students who struggle with learning a foreign language, yet they provide excellent strategies to assess and accomplish such task. The articles provides a summary of research findings with regards to at-risk students and foreign language learning, what administrators can do, and recommendations for the study of a foreign language. From the website: LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities, learning disorders and differences. Parents and teachers of learning disabled children will find authoritative guidance on attention deficit disorder, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, reading difficulties, speech and related disorders. LD OnLine works in association with Learning Disabilities Association of America, International Dyslexia Association, Council for Exceptional Children, Schwab Foundation for Learning, and the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities.

Why reinvent the wheel when making PowerPoint presentations? This online tool is used to upload and download PowerPoint presentations and visuals on all sorts of topics. Users may search for an already created PowerPoint on a subject they may teach and download it for their own teaching purposes. Although this online source is open to anyone, it can be used in any classroom content or subject area under discussion; however, a teacher may need to customize sample PowerPoint presentations to fit their classroom needs. For example, if a language arts teacher needed to give notes on grammar and parts of speech, they may search for a PowerPoint already made including that information. This tool saves teacher time and helps spark ideas!

The tool I posted is Slideshare, a presentation platform where users can post PowerPoint presentations they have created for their classrooms or even businesses. I have used this tool in the past in order to find ready made notes presentations I could present to my 6th grade language arts students. The great thing about about Slideshare is that I can use already created PPTs and customize them to fit my students needs. I definitely recommend this site for the teacher who just doesn't seem to have extra time to create all new notes presentations. Don't reinvent the wheel!

Samantha- Are the PPTs all Creative Commons then? You are free to use, and alter?

This article describes the report of a 4 week study of the English reading comprehension of struggling readers. The research used technology to decrease achievement gaps in reading. Thirty 4th-grade students read narrative and informational hypertexts that contained vocabulary, comprehension strategy supports, and text to speech read aloud features. In the process, vocabulary and comprehension achievement was observed in the students. The results in this article suggest that struggling readers and Spanish-speaking ELLs used technology and beneficiated by learning vocabulary and effectively applying reading comprehension strategies.

In reading this article it was quite interesting to me the successes that occurred when the school incorporated the use of a technology based universal digital literacy (UDL) tool. The digital text coupled with vocabulary support was instrumental in the success of these students. It is also important to note that the stories given to the students to study were a blend of folktales that represented many different cultures rather than strictly from the US. It is important to note that when ELL students and struggling readers are given text or material that is relevant to their own culture they are able to access prior knowledge to make connections to the new material. The supports utilized in the study were the initial discussion of "power words" that are prominent in the text. The mid reading strategy is a support to develop comprehension by prompting students at the end of each page to stop, reflect and summarize/predict then being prompted to give a written or recorded response. These activities are able to be tracked using the technology thus furthering a teachers ability to interpret student needs and supplement with various strategies in the classroom. An important element to this programs success was the training of the teachers on the UDL technology.