7 PowerPoint, Adaptive Technology, and Web Design

The levels of Bloom's Taxonomy are evaluation, synthesis, analysis, application, comprehension, and knowledge. A person could use the Microsoft Office application PowerPoint to support student learning at each level. For every level, PowerPoint is a great platform to display information. By displaying information you find, you can show what theories you have assessed, compose information in creative way, organize your ideas, apply your knowledge, summarize information, and recall information in a PowerPoint presentation. Powerpoint covers all the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Assistive, or adaptive, technology is  outlined on page 70 of the textbook as "hardware and software that is designed or can be used to support the needs of exceptional students". These technologies can be reading tools, like recorded books or text-to-speech software. The book and the podcast outline several tools. For computer use there are alternative mouse and keyboard devices, keyboard labels, and screen readers. For composing papers, there are word prediction softwares and talking spell checkers. One of my middle schooler teachers had a daughter who was blind. She had a very large braille typewriter to take notes during class. She wrote her papers on speech to text software as well. The typewriter was very loud when she pressed the keys and many students expressed that it was a distraction. I think it is so important to incorporate ESE students into the classes they can mainstream into. I also think at a certain point the assistive technologies that come along with that can be distracting to "regular" students, like the braille typewriter. Some of the other assistive technologies involve speaking or listening to someone speaking. This could also be distracting. Instead of not mainstreaming the students, I would like to find assistive technologies that do the same job without distracting the "regular" students.

At first I was very confused on how to use Weebly. In the classroom setting the website was not reacting to my commands and it was quite frustrating. At home, the website worked well and I finished the project easily. I learned how to organize a class website and also design websites using the Weebly platform. I will be able to make aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and informational class websites for my future students and their guardians.