Compass Problems??

I have the great privilege of teaching high school geometry to special education students this year. As we were doing some preliminary learning about radius and diameter we began to draw circles with a compass. There were many of my students who struggled using these tools because of their weak fine motor skills. I think we are all familiar with the average hand writing of a special education student. Needless to say holding a sharp point down while trying to swing a pencil around without having a paper move or tear is not an easy task for them. I began searching the internet to find an alternative for them and stumbled across a tool I had not seen before. As an extra bonus it was very affordable at only $1.49 each. I ordered about 15 of them and many of my students love them, and best of all I don't have to hear them complaining about the compasses "not working".  Here is the link to buy them on Amazon.  I also found a great deal on these nice metal rulers for only a $1.50.

Class Moodle Photo Banner

One of my first posts on this blog was how to create a custom banner for your Moodle classes. The main reason doing this is that sets your class apart and helps students know for sure that they are in the correct class. The instructions can be found on this post. I created one today  for my World History class and wanted to share it on here to give an example of what can be done.

Back To School Inspiration

Well that summer went by fast! Between my DJ business and watching my boys all summer I didn't have much time to blog. Thought I would get back into the swing of things since tomorrow is the first day teachers report in my district. This is a very powerful and thought provoking video.  I plan on showing this to my students, but I may need to do some translating for them because of the heavy English accent.  I am also going to post a link to the Ashton Kutcher video that came out a few weeks ago that was very inspirational.

Teach Me How To Moodle

Will Teach Me How to Moodle become as big as Teach Me How To Dougie??  Probably not, but Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Moodle continue to become more popular in education. This may be hard for some to believe but there are those that are not drawn to technology and are not that adept when it comes to using it. With this in mind I am trying to create a resource where fellow teachers can slowly and incrementally learn how to use Moodle in my district or any other school. I know similar videos are all over the internet but I have not seen them put in a simple and sequential order to follow. I did a few trainings last week on each of these Moodle skills, but I wanted to create a resource for them to refer back to and inform those who could not make it. More videos will follow ,but I wanted to get these out there to get people started. Click here to be taken to the page.

PowToon: Put Some Swag In Your Presentation

PowToon is a very unique and interesting new way to present information to an audience. As the name suggests there are many cartoon animation options to put into your presentation. You have the option of making your presentation act like a regular PowerPoint where you click along for animations or new pages as you present, or you can set it up like a movie where you just click play. It took me about 10 minutes to catch on and understand how to best use the application. There is a bit of a learning curve with timing transitions and words appearing on the screen. Below is an example of a movie I made using PowToon to advertise the Intro to Moodle presentation I led at my school.

Scan Class Notes With Your Smart Phone

     Yesterday I had a teacher stop me in the hall and ask me about the best way to supply students with notes from class that were not typed already. Often times a special education student will have "notes supplied" as an accommodation on their IEP. Or perhaps a student missed class and wants the notes of a fellow student. With permission you could scan the notes of a top student with good penmanship.  This would allow you to keep a copy for other classes or even for the next year.  This can be done easily using any smart phone. Any Apple iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod) can use a free app called Genius Scan to get a very clear PDF of hand written notes. For some reason Genius Scan costs money on Android devices, but I have used and recommend the free app Cam Scanner for Android devices.  Once you have a PDF of your notes it can either be emailed or uploaded to your Google Drive, Evernote, or any number of cloud storage apps. 

3 Ways to Record Classroom Tests and Publish to Moodle

When a special education student needs a test read in a general education or co-taught classroom there is not a perfect way to handle it. If students leave the classroom to have it read, some students will turn down the accommodation because they don't want to stand out. Many teachers will give up their prep or stay after school to read it to them but that is not always possible or optimal. I think one of the best solutions is to have that teacher record it and then upload it to their Moodle site. This works best if you have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program at your school. If that is not possible some sort of mp3 or iPods in the classroom may be an alternative. I made this video for a PD I did at my school but hope others may find it beneficial. In this video I give a tutorial on how to record your tests on an 1. iPhone  2. An Apple Computer 3. An iPod nano. (Apple isn't paying me, but they should:)