Advantage:An assessment of "Enabling Dreams"

The video showed numerous people with disabilities that used laptops and other forms of computer related devices to do their school work or to communicate with people that did not need help communicating at all. One girl even said in the video that she would not be where she was without the type of special technology that she uses for school. What she uses technology for is she records her voice for her college courses even though she can still type. This enables her to keep up with college students as she is a sophomore in college. Another person who had a disability used a laptop to do his work in high school. Although laptops are very uncommon in high schools (especially in Guam), this student takes four advanced placement courses and is also the president of a student organization. One of the most remarkable stories about this video was about a student that had a disability that caused stiffness in his limbs. What is remarkable about this student is that he plays an instrument using a joy stick. As the story was being told about the student, there was an unfortunate incident that occurred where his instrument was stolen. However, by the help of the community the family was able to raise over $6,000 and buy a more efficient model of the same instrument.This is exactly the type of approach we need to take to address the needs of students with disabilities not only at the United States of America but everywhere else, including here on Guam. Guam is unique in itself in that I believe that students with disabilities do not get the same attention and therefore do not exactly have the same opportunities as people with disabilities do in the U.S.A. From what I have seen in the public schools on Guam is that there are no assistive technological devices to aid students with disabilities. There are barely even any computers for classrooms for students without disabilities. I think that once students with disabilities in the public schools on Guam can use the same type of devices as those students with disabilities in the U.S.A, then the students with disabilities here can achieve the same goals.

"Ending the Silence" by Diane Nelson Bryen, Ph.D.

The lecture today was about crimes against people with developmental disabilities. Dr. Bryen emphasized about the problem about the silence of crimes against people with disabilities. She showed that the biggest difference between a normal person being raped and a person with disabilities being raped is that when the person with disabilities is raped, it ends up going silent. She showed that this happens because many cannot report their offenders. She also stated that the alleged offenders are often tried and found not guilty. This really gave me a new view as to how difficult it is to live with a disability. What was more sad about this was the story that Dr. Bryen had told us. It was a story about a girl with a disability who was raped. It took a year for the parents to discover that their daughter had been raped because the girl herself did not even know what rape was. When the girl was being questioned and the offender was caught, he was given a lighter sentence because the police said that the family of the victim was leading her. Dr. Bryen pointed out that crimes against victims with disabilities is silent because of issues like communities covering it up or emphasis on other crimes. The shocking aspect of this lecture was the data that said that people with developmental disabilities are at four to ten times higher of a risk of becoming crime victims. She also showed that the offenders are often the caregivers themselves.
Dr. Bryen then talked about how we can "end the silence." One of those ways was to help people with developmental disabilities protect themselves by providing training with self-defense, a better vocabulary for those with disabilities, and more. We should also form some sort of partnership with the police and the justice system. People that are the victims themselves could help end the silence by telling their own stories.
Dr. Bryen then showed us a video about six people with disabilities that were sexually and physically abused. It was extremely depressing to hear these people talk about how they were abused by other people. One person was talking about how he had been abused at the age of ten and still at the age of forty-nine, he is still haunted by what happened.
After the video Dr. Bryen got into a discussion with us about how each of us can help "end this silence." We came up with seven ways being: 1. Educate future educators of this issue 2. Observe behaviors and find ways to "tell" it 3. Infuse this issue into training programs for counselors, therapist, and protective services. 4. Equal justice (crimes are crimes) 5. Improve access to the criminal justice system 6. Increase awareness 7. Incorporate, if needed, into self advocacy training.
I thought that this special lecture was one of the most informative and very well presented lectures that I have ever been to. Hopefully that there can be more lectures like this so that the silence can forever be ended.

The Civil War’s top ten costliest battles using the ASSURE model

Using the ASSURE model for my first digital spreadsheet lesson plan was a really interesting and enjoyable experience. I learned a lot about how to use the ASSURE model and loved how it guided me to make a lesson plan for the first time. The topic that I wanted to focus on was the Civil War’s top ten costliest battles. Therefore, by using the ASSURE model I was able to develop a concrete lesson plan that I hope to use when I become a teacher.

One standard from the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers that I feel could be applied to this assignment is standard 1a. NETS*T standard 1a is promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness. I feel that this lesson plan would help the students be creative in analyzing each battle and will describe what happened. This standard would also apply to this lesson plan because it promotes students to be creative when they use their Civil War data and graph it.

There are numerous things that I learned about lesson planning activities. The first would be that lesson planning takes time. Every time that I was typing anything that the students were supposed to be doing I had to sit back and look at it as if I was the student. I even tried setting up the graph with all the information I was instructing the students to take down in the lesson plan. The second thing that I learned about lesson planning activities is that I figured that I would have to make this fun and interesting. This is because if the lesson plan activity is boring, then my students will be bored as well. What I think would be the interesting factor about this lesson plan is for the students to wonder why so many soldiers were engaged during each battle and why so many had died. The third comes from a book that I read during my Adolescent Psychology course. According to John W. Santrock, Cognitive constructivist approaches emphasize the child’s active, cognitive construction of knowledge and understanding. They also state that it is the teacher’s role us to provide support for students to explore their world and develop understanding (Santrock, 2007). I believe this is truw for anyone who wants to become a teacher. With this lesson plan, I believe it will help students understand the world that they live in and the history of it. Once they learn about the mistakes of the past they can be prepared not to make the same or similar mistakes for the future. That is the power of history that I want my students to learn. The point of learning history is so they we do not repeat the same mistakes.

The new technology tool that I used to complete this assignment was Microsoft Excel 2007. Previous Microsoft Excel versions are able to do almost the same exact things as the 2007 version of Microsoft Excel. However, the difference with the past versions and the 2007 version is that the 2007 version is heavily more user friendly. I was so amazed at how easy it was to find things like inserting a chart or deleting a cell in Microsoft Excel 2007. Therefore, I believed it to be a must do to include Microsoft Excel 2007 into my lesson plan.

There is not much that I liked least about this assignment because it was a very enjoyable experience. This was enjoyable because I was seeing myself as a student and doing the assignment and thought it was an interesting idea. However, the only thing that I liked least about this assignment was that it took quite a while to come up with. I wanted to make this lesson plan fun and interesting for the students. Therefore, I had to be careful when I was drafting what it is I was expecting the students to do and what they were to learn.

What I liked the most of this assignment was that I was able to use technology and apply it to the Civil War which not that much students would consider interesting. I believe that students will have fun with this assignment and learn a great deal about the Civil War as well. This assignment has not only given me a great deal of insight of using Microsoft Excel in my lesson plan, but to include other programs as well. I plan to include not only Microsoft Excel in future lesson plans but also Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.

When I was a student throughout middle school and high school we never did this type of lesson activity. However, we are in an era that requires us as students and teachers to be technologically literate. Therefore, by doing this lesson plan I have learned to use my technology skills and apply it to a lesson plan to help my students learn the fun way.

References

Santrock, J. (2007). Schools: Approaches to educating students. In Adolescence

(pp. 345). New York: McGraw-Hill

Hafa Adai!!!

Hafa Adai,

Well USC is off to a great start but I'm more mad about how Virginia Tech lost in their season opener.