The slide show I first put together 3 weekk ago, was a great success at the school I am working at this year! Since then I have put together 2 more children's classic story books for the children and staff to use.
THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR and WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT.
The particular children we are aiming at, love the books on the big screen. At this stage we are struggling to get the responses we need so we can measure a response. They just seem to enjoy the experience!
Lou

The Voice Thread connection is to be found in my BLOG. It will not allow anyone to access it without my password. I have tried, several times to open it without my password; but have not succeeded. Have no idea; but it's a great 24 frame slide show.
Lou

I am uncertain as to why I have lost the description and questions for questions 1, 2 and 3. The message that I got at the completion of all 3 sections was that everything had recorded. Very frustrating. I was also not able to get back in the the system and verify anything.
Lou

These questions, or similar were posted in Q., 3 of my assignment. Some how they seem to have "got lost" somewhere.
SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO PONDER...
The children that I'm putting this together for range in age from 5 to 12 years of age. These children come under the general calssification of SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN. This is what the "experts" call them, not the classroom teachers.
1. What sort of animals, creatures capture the imagination of children?
2. Does colour play a role in holding attention?
3.What is the maxium attention span of these special needs children?
4. How do we measure what these children learn?
We have never done this sort of thing with these children and we are looking forward to trying to measure some response.
Cheers,
Lou

Description of 2nd assignment

Hi folks,
this is my description for my 2nd assignment. I am going to record, orally and visually the children's story book called, WHERE THE WIDE THINGS ARE. I am gearing this lesson to a small group of children that come under the general banner of SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN. The purpose of doing this activity is to investigate whether a virtual learning environment is a suitable means of teaching this small group of children. Thes children have very little oral skills and almost no written skills.
The classroom teachers have asked me to put together a lesson and a report as to whether this learning activity will enhance what they do in the classroom.
All of the instructions will need to be given to the children orally and I am relying very much on the striking visual character of this classic children's book as a prompt in capturing their attention. I am hoping the the use of a VLE program will help. I will be using VOICE THREAD and the written instructions, questions and evaluation, will be posted on my blog site.
Hope this is enough information,
Cheers,
Lou

How much is VLE

Just a few thaughts about how much do we need to do before we call a learning environment virtual. Can we use this technology,just a bit or can we get stuck into it.
At present, the VLE, at my school, encoumpasses about 30 minutes per/class/per/week. Some of the children I work with come under the heading of SPECIAL NEEDS. Some of these children find the VLE far to difficult in a class environment. Hence, the 2nd assignment is going to focus on some of these children. It will be intresting to see just what, if any benefit, these children get from this environment and how much we can do for these children with this technology.
It's going to be intresting!
What sort of games, programs and activities are suited SPECIAL NEEDS children?

Is podcasting the way to go

When looking at my 2nd assignment, the first thing that I looked at was using podcasting and did it fit into the school's VLE. I put this question to some senior teachers, i.e., teachers of grades 5 and 6 and they quickly told me, no. They argued that podcasting was a far to "wide" a tool for the children to use. They all thaught that it allowed the children to wonder far and wide and that the question of security came into play. They were not prepared to monitor their activities, as we have over 100 senior students. I selected Thread Voice as the principle means of view my 2nd assignment because of their concerns. Therefore, podcasting cannot be part of my PLE. My PLE, is dictated very much by the environment I work in. I think that people are restricted by the environment they work in.
Cheers,
Lou