Blackboard Collaborate (virtual classroom)

            Today's class was very interesting.  I had never thought about how we know if a student's abdominal muscles are strong enough for writing.  The Occupational therapist in the video described some of the signs of weak abs. Such as, students who hook their feet around a chair leg may be compensating for weak core muscles, and students who lay on their desks, or hold their pencils too high or press down too hard. There are many devices, and exercises that can help to give students more control over their pencils. Pencil Olympics is a very useful exercise that I would recommend for all students.
            We also got to play with some very useful apps.  I loved the Clicker Sentences app. because you can reach students at so many levels. Then you can import learninggrids.com into Clicker Sentences and then you can have books broken into scrambled sentences. ClickerConnect even has pictures to help younger students and developmentally delayed students with forming sentences.  
           CoWriter can predict words by recognizing the words that children have tried to write, but are spelling incorrectly. It gives students a list of spelling suggestions. I was told that CoWriter now searches the internet to recognize the words, so you don't have to make a word bank. I think this app would be useful for so many students. Students struggle very much with Spelling.
            I was wondering if Spelling will be a lost skill. If the school has technology that allows us to speak into a program and it spells all words for you, then students may lose the skill of learning to spell..
         We had a rich discussion.  Lyndsey, Kate, Simon and I all talked about what the world will be like in the future. Lyndsey made the good point that, "it is not how students read or write, but how they access information that is important." We do need to use technology to optimize student learning. CoWriter can do amazing things to help students rid themselves of the barriers that once existed!  As long as we are prepared for long power outages, then we should be fine.

               Here is a video that just scratches the surface of how to motivate reluctant writers.  I agree with everything said, but I think to do this topic justice, I would have to give you a much longer video.