Blog Post #3

Peer Editing

I learned in the Peer Editing video that Peer Editing is actually "working with someone your own age to help improve, revise, and edit his/her writing." when you are peer editing it is very important to stay positive so that your peer will be more acceptable to the mistakes he/she has made. The followings steps are essential in peer editing: compliments, suggestions, and corrections. You want to be positive when editing someones work because nobody wants to hear how poorly they did; tearing someone's confidence down isn't going to help anybody, which is the whole point. You should focus on how to make their grammar, organization, sentence structure, word choice, etc. better.

It is important to stay positive, be specific, and complete the three steps of peer editing while reviewing someone's paper. Peer editing can be useful for people of all ages if you know the correct way to do it. You need to be specific while being kind to your peer, or they will not know what to correct and not care that they need to. It is also important for a person that is getting their work edited to stay open minded and try not to be offended by the mistakes their peer pointed out.

The Mountbatten

The Mountbatten video taught me about this device that blind students can use to type with in the classroom. The machine tells the child what they are typing while they are typing it. It also prints out what they typed so they can tell what all they have written. This device also can save and send the child's work to another computer. This device would allow a teacher that did not know braille or sign language the ability to communicate with the student. It would also allow the child to be able to communicate with other students. I think it is awesome; I would definitely use the device in my classroom.

Deaf/Blind Awareness

It is important that deaf and blind kids receive the same knowledge that every other kid receives. The problem with keeping deaf and blind kids on the same track as a kid that doesn't have these disabilities, is that they have trouble communicating or interpreting the way other students do. Now we use technology as if our life depends on it to obtain knowledge; it is important for deaf and blind kids to use the same technology available to other kids. It is very important that we keep making advancements in the technology for deaf and blind kids to use because I imagine it is tough enough doing basic things, much less doing things electronically.

In my class, if I have a deaf or a blind kid I will do everything I can to see that that kid receives the same education as the rest of the students. The device in the Mountbatten video would be very helpful for a blind kid or even a deaf kid to use; it would make giving and turning in assignments so much easier. Blind kids could use an iPad to read the assigned books that they needed to with the help of the voice control option. I am sure there are many other helpful tools i could use to help these students as well.

Digital Smarts

The teacher, Vicki Davis, reminds me of Mr. Strange in the video Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts. They believe that you don't have to be told everything in order to learn something. Vicki expected her students to look things up instead of asking her things every time they had a question which forces them to actually LEARN something. I thought it was really cool how she assigned them something that she didn't even know how to do, and three day later her students were teaching her something that she assigned that she had no idea how to do.

As a teacher, I would love to implement some of the techniques that Vicki Davis uses in her classroom. I want my students to have to think and use their own minds so they will remember how to do stuff instead of me constantly having to repeat myself. I expect to give my students assignments where I will have to learn from them and them learn from me as well.