Math the other four letter word.. and other musings

I had the opportunity to attend the Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resource System (FDLRS) Region 2's Summer Institute that featured Judi Sweeney as the speaker, she is the founder of Onion Mountain Technology a firm that specializes in assistive technology for all students. Her workshop on this day was about Math and Technology. First off, I want to go on record to say that Math is not my favorite subject and have yet to meet a teacher with whom I work that gets real excited about teaching this subject to their students. Math is a four letter word that I tend to avoid if possible...The only thing Math it is good for is helping me balance my check book which is by no means an easy task.

Anyway, I digress back to Judi's workshop. Siting there freezing, in dread , and afraid she was going to talk about quadratic equations or the Pythagorean  Theorem ,  I found myself fascinated by her presentation. She didn't focus on the M-word  and the national standards all that much but instead on the different types of learning styles, eye movements and how we process information...Brain based learning.It was so interesting and it applied to some of what I do when administering a Learning Media Assessment that determines how a student access information be it visual, auditory or kinesthetic/tactile(tactically for the Brailler reader). Did you know that 50% of people are are hardwired to be  visual learners, 20%  of the people are auditory and 30% of the people are kinesthetic/tactile  learners. I find this fascinating since I work with children who are blind or visually impaired and many of the children are visual learners.

She also discussed the various types of low tech devices to assist a student in math. I think sometimes, I forget and think that if it is technology then it has to be "high"tech and expensive-the bigger the better! Not true as I have found out this past school year a simple pencil and a piece of paper can be technology. Oh, I also found out from this workshop that I am a visual symbolic learner...I should be good at...yes, you guess it,  Math!

I have also been working with my braille note taker The Braille Sense. At the recommendation of the LATS, I managed to get a computer monitor to hook up to my device. Again, visual learner here and I need all the help I can get with learning how to use the Braille Sense... The monitor made all the difference and has made it so much easier to navigate the different menus, create documents and even check my emails or surf the web. Look out facebook here I come via the Braille Sense!!  This device is helping me refresh and remember Braille.

With my I pad, I also made a couple of i movies. I am still waiting to down load  my movie debut "Eye Heart the Ipad 2: Embracing Technology . When making this short film, I discovered how to laid down some music tracks, a voice track, some sound effects and take screen shots to use  for images in the film. Sure the short film is "campy" but it was fun to make and helped me understand just how use this tool. My second attempt at the movie was even better"Mainland 2.0" and even more "campy". I can't wait to show some of the teachers how to use this with their students

Well as summer wraps up, more and more people are on campus everyday. Most of our team is back and is getting ready for the school year. In a few short weeks, we will be all over the place.