Jott - Improve Productivity

Introducing your very own personal assistant. No, you don't need to hire anyone. Instead sign up for a free account at Jott. Use your voice to help you remember things, to make lists and to organize your life. Why write things down anymore, especially if you are on the go most of the day. Pickup your cellphone and start jotting!

Added thought: There is always a student that struggles with copying down the homework. It never seems to get into the agenda book before the bell rings. Items may be missing due to visual motor challenges. Why not have the student send themselves a jott, using their voice to record the daily homework? It gets sent as a text message or email. Problem solved!

Connection to occupational therapy: modifying the task

Qipit - Camera Click and Share

Take a digital image (from your cellphone camera or digital camera) and turn it into a sharable document.

- Scribbled ideas on napkins
- White board teacher notes
- Handwritten notes from a meeting




Check out qipit...it's free. Their blog provides all sorts of tips and suggestions.

VoiceThread - Create, Comment and Connect!

My New Favorite Tool! Why?
It's Simple (the less clicks it requires, the more we are apt to use it)
It's adaptable (can be used in may different ways)
It's free for everyone (and the Pro version is free for K-12 educators)
It's just plain cool!

VoiceThread is a program to upload images (photos, documents, powerpoints, videos, etc.). But it's better than that. You can add your voice to comment about what is on the screen. Others can add their voices to keep the conversation going. To see a fun example, watch this voice thread of an old family photo.



Browse the examples under presentations, travel, family and classroom. We can use voice threads for social stories, how-to demos, digital story telling, skill practice, monitoring students' reading progress...I could go on and on. Families can document events in their lives and share with relatives and friends.

After showing this to a group of special educators here at Hosmer, I instantly got examples emailed back to me. The creativity is contagious. Go try it!

Life Long Learners

John Schinker from Taste of Tech wrote this post on being responsible for your own learning. Daily we are faced with new technologies to learn and integrate into our practice. We cannot wait for others to take our hand and show us. We must dive in, experiment and try things out. I love this quote he included:

“The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler

Stay tuned for some programs I have discovered recently....

Photo Citation: Ben Werdmuller

Russ Hoyt Talking on Siblings

Come to the Watertown Special Education Parent Advisory Council meeting on Wed., Nov. 14, 2007, 7:00pm
Lowell Elementary School Library, 175 Orchard St, Watertown, MA.
Childcare will be available.

RUSS HOYT ON SIBLINGS
Come listen to Russ Hoyt, early childhood director for the Groton-Dunstable Regional School District (or Mr. Russ as he is known to the children in the Boutwell Early Childhood Center). In addition to his professional career, Mr. Hoyt has a personal connection to Special Education. Russ’s oldest brother, Rick, was born with cerebral palsy and cannot walk, talk, feed or care for himself without assistance. However, Rick has run the Boston Marathon 26 times, completed the Ironman Triathlon 5 times as a team with his father, and he graduated from Boston University. Russ will share with us the story of his family, his relationships with both of his brothers, and to pass on some ideas and some research findings on how to support healthy sibling relationships. All are welcome.

If you are not familiar with Russ's brother and father, watch this four minute movie on their endeavors...quite inspirational!
What can you imagine?

Close Your Dictionary

Tagging - the act of labeling your luggage for quick identification at the airport carousel
Wiki - short for wiki sticks, those waxed pieces of string that allow you to create shapes, letters or just about anything
RSS - IM speak for something (I'll have to ask my daughter); much like POS, standing for "parent over shoulder"
Blog - an extreme of "bog", as in "I got really blogged down by this project"
Podcast - a fly fishing technique
Social networking - what goes on in the teachers' room around the copy machine
YouTube - "No, I'm not jumping in this cold river with my inner tube...it was your idea so you tube!"

Welcome to Web 2.0. Go directly to Atomic Learning to update your definitions. This tutorial by Vickie Davis from CoolCatTeacher is free for the month of November. Hurry on over!

Image citation: jrtcollector

Living Sensationally

How do you respond to sensations around you? Are you someone who seeks input, someone who does not notice, someone who avoids it or someone who is too sensitive? Although you have a predominant way of reacting to sensory information, you may have characteristics of all these. Understanding how we are alike and different in our sensory world promotes acceptance and tolerance of each other's behaviors and reactions.
It is part of being human.
Take a moment to think about how you feel riding the subway downtown.
Do you love the experience of sight, sound and movement...or do you cringe at the thought of someone standing next to you?
Does shutting out the experience altogether by plugging into your ipod seem like a great solution to you?
Do you love the jerky bumpy ride with frequent stops...or do you leave the train frazzled and racing to get above ground again?
Perhaps you are oblivious to the activity going on around you and even miss your stop.

I'm still waiting for my copy of Winnie Dunn's book, Living Sensationally, to come in the mail. If you want to get a taste of the book, read this review from the Times.

photo citation

Become Involved...Your Child Will Benefit!

Hear Ye Hear Ye: Parent Volunteers Needed in Hosmer School Library



Parents can volunteer during their children’s classes and would be able to see what the children checkout. In addition to checkout/checkin responsibilities, volunteers will shelve books and complete various library projects to make our library a better place.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me at: kschwartz@watertown.k12.ma.us

Kara Schwartz
Hosmer School Librarian

What an opportunity! Why do it?

The research overwhelmingly demonstrates that parent involvement in children's learning is positively related to achievement. Further, the research shows that the more intensively parents are involved in their children's learning, the more beneficial are the achievement effects. This holds true for all types of parent involvement in children's learning and for all types and ages of students.children perform better in school when parents get involved in their education, and volunteering is a great way to get involved.

Check out this site to read more.

Need more information? The Harvard Family Research Project from the Harvard Graduate School of Education shows the relationship of family involvement with child outcomes as seen in their figure below.
We would love to see you in the library...and your child will benefit from your involvement!

Clip art from Discovery Education

A New Way to Look at Time

WE WON! What a great ending to the baseball season...if you are a Red Sox fan. Do you feel like it was all a blur? Check back on the season as a whole through this animated time line that lets you see who is leading throughout the season.

It was designed to bring a historical season to life more than mere standings or graphs. With BaseballRace.com, you can experience an entire season "live." The data goes back to 1901, and includes every game of every season up through yesterday (10/29/2007).

Don't stop there. For a historical perspective, check out past seasons as well.

World Series Here We Come!

Just Happy...We're in!

"World Series week indicates that baseball is one of America's major disturbances." - Bugs Baer

Everyone in the Red Sox Nation is looking towards a week of late nights and emotional exhaustion. School function will definitely be affected. Remember October 2004?

What a great opportunity to bring the passion of baseball into the classroom. To read more about World Series history, check out this link.

Add a little geography by going to Google Earth to see the locations of past winners. Someone from the Google Earth community produced a collection of placemarks showing the winners of Major League Baseball's World Series from 1903 through 2005. By clicking on the team logo you can go directly to the stadium. This post from the Google Earth Blog will get you there.

Here's a math activity your students may enjoy. Click on World Series Winners under the worksheet collection. Most of all, enjoy the ride!

Transitions...Can You See It?

I look around at my environment to help me transition to the fall season. Frankly, it is not working. Just this week on a bike ride along the Charles River, I noticed a group of trees with spring blossoms. It is still mostly green around here in Massachusetts. Today was warm and humid requiring shorts and tank shirts. I like it but I am confused.

This reminds me of the importance of visual information. The visual information I am getting from my environment is not helping me make the transition from summer to autumn! Make sure the visuals we provide students are clear and meaningful. Karen Janowski's post on Less is More is worth reading and reflecting. The point that "Seeing is Understanding" is helpful not only to many of us, but essential to those individuals with autism. Let's look at situations and see if we can add visuals that will provide just the information our students need.

Sensory Summer - Looking Back

I started each day this summer with a barefoot run on the beach. What a sensory delight. The sand was freshly raked by tractors in the predawn hours each morning. I joined them as they were finishing their task, believing it was prepared just for me!

How do you start your day? What sensory activities do you have in place to make your day go smoothly? Now think of your children and students. What could they do to give their day a boost? Perhaps your child would benefit from a walk to school, a romp on the playground or a quiet moment listening to music. Sensory preferences vary just as our fingerprints do. There is no one sensory plan or sensory diet that works for everyone. We are all individuals with unique sensory preferences.

To read more about the variety of sensory preferences in everyday life, read Winnie Dunn's new book, Living Sensationally. It is hot off the press this month. I am waiting for mine to come in the mail. You can send for yours through Amazon. Click on the book image below.

End of Summer and Back to Blogging

It has taken me a while, but I finally have to say goodbye to summer. It makes me realize that transitions can be hard. I think of the students we work with and the challenges they face at the beginning of the school year. How has the transition been for you and your students?

Ice Cream in a Bag

The last day of school is here. Why not celebrate with this fun activity? The movement required to make it may offset the calories in the ice cream!

What You Need:

• 1 tablespoon Sugar
• 1/2 cup Milk or half & half
• 1/4 teaspoon Vanilla
• 6 tablespoons Rock salt
• 1 pint-size Ziploc plastic bag
• 1 gallon-size Ziploc plastic bag
• Ice cubes

How To Make It

1. Fill the large bag half full of ice, and add the rock salt. Seal the bag.
2. Put milk, vanilla, and sugar into the small bag, and seal it.
3. Place the small bag inside the large one and seal again carefully.
4. Shake until mixture is ice cream, about 5 minutes.
5. Wipe off top of small bag, then open carefully and enjoy!

Thanks to Robyn Lee for her photos posted on flickr.

Know Thyself

How often do we evaluate students and never share the results with them?

"Kids need to know themselves, and they need to know what to work on to help themselves."

from A Mind at a Time, Dr. Mel Levine.

Read the All Kinds of Minds June newsletter on Demystification. Have conversations with students about their learning differences and their strengths.

Wiki Wondering and Collaboration

Blogs,Wikis, RSS, Message Boards...is your head spinning yet? There are so many new technology tools we could use if we just knew what they were! Karen Janowski from Teaching Every Student shared this video on her blog recently. It is called Wiki's in Plain English produced by The Common Craft Show, sense-making for the masses.

We have been doing more and more collaboration in the schools: writing progress notes together, teaming up to develop student goals and joining forces during evaluations. If you asked anyone, they would say email has been a good way to share and plan. That may be true in some cases, but watching this will make you rethink that notion. The video is under four minutes long, which is not even close to the time you will save when you start to use this technology tool with your colleagues.

Visual Tools

I watched the finals of the National Spelling Bee last night. After the seventh round, only one girl was left, Isabel A. Jacobson, a 14-year old from Madison, Wisconsin. She was wearing every bracelet she owned on one arm...25 and counting. They were described as her good luck charms, but I think they were more than that. As Isabel explained, "I don't know why it works. Maybe it's because looking at sparkling things keeps me calm."

Visual tools often help students focus and attend. We see this in the classroom as kids use a variety of items to keep alert by gazing at them. What appears to be a potential distraction may in fact be a very useful thing!

Work With Wings

The Hosmer student blog, Work With Wings, is a place where students can share their ideas, interests and creations. Take a look at what these kids find interesting as they give their work wings to share with the world.

Please add a comment about their work...they love to read them!

Photo by gadjoboy/scott from flickr

Mashing Letters

An entire zoo made from letter forms and punctuation marks? A must see! Check out this interactive picture book called Bembo's Zoo by Roberto De Vicq DeCumptich.

Creating Comics as Story Writing

Do you want to get you students excited about writing? Here is a great free resource mentioned by the tech chicks in their recent podcast. It is an online educational comic generator called makebeliefscomix.com.

First, you can choose the # of panels in your comic strip. The two panel option can represent a First-Then structure for younger students.




The three panel option can represent a beginning-middle-end structure. Older students can add more detail with the four panel option.





Next you choose the characters and their mood.








Finally, you write their words and thoughts. Each panel gives you a dialog prompt.

This is very easy to use. Click here, click there to drop characters into frames. Now you are ready to tell your story. There is even a list of story ideas to get started.

I love this because it is so flexible. It can be used to create a simple cause-effect story. At the same time, it can call on higher order thinking skills. The tech chicks suggested making a current event into a comic. This involves summarization, reframing, evaluation and making judgements.

Start now to tap into your students' creativity. To see a sample, check out the Hosmer student blog post, How to Appreciate Teachers.

How Can Grammar Be This Cool?

By now, I hope you have explored some free podcasts through the iTunes store. Perhaps you stumbled upon this one. Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips are short, informative and entertaining grammar tidbits that we all have wondered about. She discusses a range of topics, from the apostrophe catastrophe to sentence fragments running amuck. The episodes are an average of 5 minutes in length. There may be one you want to play for your students...or maybe there is an issue you want clarified.

This resource will have a positive effect on your students' writing...or is it affect? I'm going to listen to the episode titled "Grammar Affects Me" and I'll get back to you!

Listen While You Walk

While walking the Walk for Hunger this past weekend, I had a chance to listen to some podcasts on my ipod. Have you ever heard the Tech Chicks, two educators from Texas who broadcast episodes about using technology in the schools? You can subscribe to it free at the iTunes store and listen from your computer or upload to your mp3 player. Check out their website at techchicktips. They list some great resources, tips and tricks (and are especially fond of "free").

(photo by Wallula Junction)

Making a Mouse Manageable

No, I am not talking about the ones eating my son's computer cable at his house in Philly, shared with other City Year volunteers. I'm sure he would appreciate any rodent advice, but I am talking about the mice we use to navigate our computers.

Some of our younger students cannot control the mouse to move around the computer screen. Programs that require a simple click are appropriate to use with these youngsters. This usually requires an adult to physically hold the standard mouse in one spot so the child can respond. Why not encourage independence and adapt the tool instead? Introducing the "Mouse House." A regular mouse is placed inside a small notebook. Pressing on the surface of the notebook activates the mouse button. It works well with cause and effect software or to advance slides in a PowerPoint. This makes the child an active participant rather than a passive observer. How simple can this be to create your own? Check out the directions found on the Simplified Technology website by Linda Burkhart.

Thanks to Linda Einis at the Adaptive Activites Library for passing on this site.

Occupational Therapy - Skills For The Job of Living

Occupational therapy is skilled treatment that helps individuals achieve independence in all facets of their lives. Occupational therapy assists people in developing the "skills for the job of living" necessary for independent and satisfying lives.
In recognition of all the ways occupational therapy contributes to society's well-being, April has been designated as Occupational Therapy Month.

Nearly one third of all occupational therapists work in schools, promoting learning by all students.

Occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants use their unique experience to help children with disabilities be prepared for and perform important learning and school related activities and to fulfill their role as a student.

School-based occupational therapy assessment and intervention focuses on certain areas:

• Activities of daily living (caring for self-needs such as eating, dressing, and toilet habits)
• Education (achieving in the learning environment)
• Play (interacting with age-appropriate toys, games, equipment and activities)
• Social participation (developing appropriate relationships and engaging in behavior that doesn't interfere with learning or social relationships)
• Work (developing interests and skills necessary for transition to community life after graduation)

To find out more about occupational therapy and how it might help you, visit the American Occupational Therapy Association's Web site, www.aota.org.

More Autism Resources

Autism Spectrum Quarterly— the MAGAJOURNAL™ - a magazine for parents, teachers and clinicians that translates research into practice.

Visual Strategies - a website run by speech pathologist, Linda Hodgdon; highlights the importance of visual strategies when working with people with autism spectrum disorders (tips, products and some free resources..click on pictures)

Get Happy in the Next Hour

Gretchen Rubin has a blog, The Happiness Project, which is the title of her upcoming book dealing with the challenges of being happy. In her most recent post, she talks about seven tips for making yourself happier IN THE NEXT HOUR. They are well worth trying. I especially like the first tip, "Boost Your Energy". She states

...when people move faster, their metabolism speeds up, and the activity and sunlight are good for your focus, your mood, and the retention of information.

This is why recess is so important. It gives kids a boost that carries them through the rest of the day, better prepared for learning.

On the Hosmer student blog, Work With Wings, one student describes how he starts his day. I would say he walks to class a bit happier!

Thank you to Joe Shlabotnik for his photo shared on Flickr.

Social Stories

April is Autism Awareness Month. Visit the Gray Center for Social Understanding and Learning to read more. It is dedicated to improving the mutual understanding between individuals with autism and the people with whom they live and work.

One useful tool for improving social understanding and communication is the Social Story.

A Social Story™ describes a situation, skill, or concept in terms of relevant social cues, perspectives, and common responses in a specifically defined style and format. The goal of a Social Story™ is to share accurate social information in a patient and reassuring manner that is easily understood by its audience.

The goal of Social Stories is not to change behavior, but to improve understanding which in turn may lead to better responses. Although Social Stories were initially developed for children with autism, they have been successful with a variety of children.

It is my experience that Social Stories are used in response to a problem behavior. We probably don't write enough Stories reflecting what students are doing well. Carol Gray, the professional who developed Social Stories, says:

"Do keep in mind that at least 50% of all Stories developed for any person should congratulate of applaud current skills/abilities/personality traits/ or concepts that the person does well".

Why not write a social story about a child's accomplishment today! To get help on "how to", look here.

Good Search

Do your searching on GoodSearch, a Yahoo-powered search engine that donates money to your favorite charity or school each time you search the web. Under , type in "Hosmer School." It's that simple to start raising money for Hosmer. You can even click on the "Amount Raised" button to see how well we are doing. Granted, it is a small amount now but if everyone performs 2 - 3 searches a day, the amount will climb quickly.

To make it easier to use, install GoodSearch on your toolbar. The site shows you how here.

The Family Corner - Catch Your Child Reading

March is the Read-a-thon month here at Hosmer School. Catch your child or grandchild reading and send them an e-card created by award winning children's authors and illustrators. You can even include music with your card. What a nice way to motivate a kid!

Free Workshops

Therapro After School Series for Teachers, Therapists and Parents

Therapro's After School Series continues in April with a two-part seminar on April 12th and April 26th, 3:00PM to 5:00PM, entitled Managing Difficult Behaviors in the Classroom and at Home presented by Victoria Munroe, MAEd. This workshop will discuss the progressive new techniques from the Nurtured Heart Approach. The Nurtured Heart Approach consists of a set of strategies designed specifically for children with challenging behaviors to facilitate parenting and classroom success. These methods have helped thousands of families to transform their children from using their intensity in primarily negative ways to using their intensity in creative and constructive ways. This approach has also helped teachers and other school personnel to have a dramatically positive effect on all children. You are invited to attend one or both sessions.

Therapro Seminar Series

These are two hour presentation usually on Saturday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00 AM. Call ahead to reserve (800-257-5376).
April 14 - Karen Conrad, ScD, OTR/L and Victoria Munroe, MAEd. Developing Sensory Diets and Using Sensory Diets in the Classroom from an OT and Teacher Perspective will be offered at 2 times on this date. Please choose either the 9:00-11:00AM or 12:30-2:30PM seminar, when you reserve. Participants will receive 2 contact hours. We look forward to seeing you. Please refer to our News & Events section on the www.theraproducts.com website for future programs.

Thanks to Discovery School for the clipart.