Technology: Man's New Best Friend

If what I'm about to describe isn't you, then pretend like it is:

     Imagine you are paralyzed from the neck down. You are in middle school and need to type an essay for history class. You wheel over to your wheelchair accessible desk, you speak to your computer to open up Microsoft Word, and you say your essay out loud like a performance for your computer and it is all translated into text in a document. 

Is this magic? No! It's a reality for many people. Adaptive technologies are making lives so much easier for people with all sorts of disabilities. The one I described uses a software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking Software, that allows a person to use voice command to access the internet, e-mail, Microsoft software, and so much more.
It's beyond amazing, "it's the best thing since sliced bread." So many people now can accomplish things they thought their disability would never allow them to do.
Can we all just take one moment to truly praise how far technology has come? Go ahead, close your eyes and take a second because things like Adaptive Technology really show technology as man's new best friend.

Web 2.0 for the 2.011 Year and Beyond

It's important for students to have motivation in school. What better motivation than telling them they can publish their assignments to a website on-line for not only their teacher but peers (and possibly others, depending on the privacy setting) to see? They can get feedback from their teacher and peers, edit and resubmit their work, and have their own site to take charge of (they can use web applications like blogs to journal their thoughts, exactly like what I'm doing right this moment). These tools empower to our youth today.

So besides empowering our youth, which is an extremely important task, we must empower ourselves! I was introduced to a site called www.delicious.com (please check it out, it's a very easy website to navigate). Del.icio.us is a web application that allows you to collect all of your favorite sites, tag them in a way so you can remember (as well as staying organized; for example, if you tag several sites as "Contemporary poetry" you can click on that tag and see all of your sites that fall under that specific tag. Genius, right?), and share them with others. What a fantastic tool!

So go ahead, make a Del.icio.us account, collect your favorite sites, tag them, and go back and see how easy to use and wonderfully organized it truly is!

How can a spreadsheet make my life easier as a teacher?

I remember my teachers maintaining grades in a grading book, and as I got older I was required to maintain my own grade by keeping a "Record of Progress." But we live in the 21st century, and today's teachers use technology to maintain grades rather than an old-fashion booklet and pen.


Microsoft Excel spreadsheets help not only to save time but to keep every student's grade perfectly organized (so long as you enter the correct formulas). A teacher can create a spreadsheet for individual tests while also maintaining overall grades. A teacher can find the average grade on an exam or current standing in the class, can see which questions on an exam most students answered incorrectly, and can create charts of these grades for visual aides (be it for the students, parents, or the teacher). Isn't technology wonderful?


By using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets in the classroom a teacher isn't only making life easier but keeping the classroom organized by clearly understanding through visuals how each student is performing and what areas the student(s) are struggling in. With this information the next day's lesson plan can be tweaked in order to make sure all the students are understanding the material. The teacher can use the information of which students are struggling and which ones are successful in order to provide material that targets students with specific needs (be it a deeper exploration of the material or re-circling the material in a different way). Spreadsheets help make this a much easier task.


If you are a teacher and welcome the use of technology then trust me when I say Microsoft Excel spreadsheets will become one of your new best friends... that is, of course, if it's not already!