May Monthly Field-based Activities 2011

This was a light month again on my internship. Two hours were earned interviewing the business manger through email and the technology director also. I desired to learn about the information system that our district was moving to over the summer and the advantages claimed for this program. I am looking forward to better teacher / parent communication as a result of the change. I also shared a physics ebook with the science teachers at our Middle School. This website developed by MIT allows students to visually see on the page the changes within a reaction or change in an object. Very interesting! http://web.mit.edu/viz/EM/flash/E&M_Master/E&M.swf

Reflection on making an eBook 5364

Before starting my eBook, my group had met on Skype and decided what topics each person would cover in their individual UDL and what learning challenge their lesson would address. I was assigned the task of preparing a lesson on weathering, so I emailed the fifth grade science teacher at my son’s school and asked to borrow materials. She gladly sent me the Activities Integrating Math, Science & Technology Education Foundation’s (AIMS) earth science book. It is filled with hands-on activities and booklets. I chose one of the booklets on weathering and used the text for my book. It had cartoon drawings in it and I decided to change it a little and have my sons’ contribute drawings. I recorded myself reading the text using Audacity to give an alternative to the computer reader. I also put the text into a speaking box for one of the helpers “Monty”, so students could have the text read in Spanish. In the book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning, the authors state, “providing multiple representations of patterns through a variety of media, formats, organizations, levels of detail, and degree of depth includes more learners by offering both choice and redundancy.” (Rose & Meyer, 2002) My weathering eBook works to do this through cartoon drawings, photos, and text in English and Spanish with an encouraging penguin along the way.

AIMS Education Foundations. (2008). Earth science: Texas 5th grade. Fresno, CA: AIMS Education Foundation.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved February 28, 2011 from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

NETS/ISTE Standards: II.A., II.B., III.A., III.D., III.E., V.B., VI.B., & VIII.A.
ELCC Standards: 2.2, 2.3, 6.1, 6.2, & 6.3
TExES Standards: Competencies 2 & 6

eBook on Weathering

http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view.php?op=share&book=d2e22bc963ca51c70a8387c931049deb&sid=3987.