Wordle Fun

Image created using Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/

Read about Wordle on Tech & Learning online magazine and thought it was pretty cute. I used the 25 vocabulary words and 5 book titles that I targeted during my Action Research Project last Fall. I think that my students might enjoy creating a Wordle with their vocabulary or articulation words. However, since Wordle does not filter for inappropriate words, I'm betting that the school district blocks the site. While I do understand that, it's also frustrating. Oh well, add that to the list.

Interactive Multimedia ASL Vocabulary

I am keenly interested in vocabulary development for all students, but especially for those who have limited access to the informal language-learning opportunities commonly afforded most children through exposure to ordinary conversation in the home: deaf children. In looking for a way to make vocabulary aquisition motivating, meaningful, and permanent for my deaf
students, I created American Sign Language (ASL) multimedia storybooks and interactive game-like instructional activities based on popular children's literature.


My students interacted with the books for five weeks during speech therapy sessions. Not only did they improve their understanding of the words taught, transfer that learning to their everyday lexicon, and demonstrate understanding of the stories, but they also loved interacting with the words within the multimedia activities. Their excitement in learning words with technology was inspirational for this old lady!

Oxbow Redux

When Laurie and I visited Oxbow Meadows earlier this week, I found out about the 8 AM Saturday bird walks and planned to go. Maybe because of a stormy Friday evening...or possibly because 8:00 comes so darned early on Saturdays...Fife and I were the only visitors. We thoroughly enjoyed the leisurely walk down to the ponds with our gracious guide, Patricia. It was a beautiful day and she identified the birds I had actually seen on Wednesday -- cormorants (not turkey vultures), little blue herons (not great white egrets!!!), indigo buntings and blue grosbeaks (not painted buntings), as well as a few new ones (green heron, blue bird, wood duck, tree swallow, pine siskin, towhee, mockingbird, eastern phoebe)! We also saw the goldfinches that we had seen earlier in the week, but today they were brilliantly yellow. All were totally awesome to me.

As we were leaving the trail, Patricia spotted the adult Little Blue Herons wading in the water hyacinths. What I had mistakenly identified through the binoculars on Wednesday afternoon as great white egrets, were most likely immature Little Blues (white also).

Technology application of the day: definitely Picasa 3! It can be set to detect picture files. Although I did not use that feature, I easily imported pictures to one file, edited one or two, and could have imported them directly into this blog (Picasa and Blogger are Google aps). Instead I added a few captions, changed the font and background color, selected a transition style, imported a soundtrack, and let Picasa create a movie, which I easily embedded in the blog. I believe that even the youngest elementary-aged student could create a movie this way, with appropriate scaffolding. I can't wait to show this new feature of Picasa 3 to our teachers.


My non-SLR camera did not "capture the moment" well, but I at least had the color settings right today.

Nature: Meet Technology Integration

Following a dreary few days of rain, wind, and brrrrrrisk weather, my friend and fellow techie teacher, Laurie, and I visited Oxbow Meadows Learning Center just south of the school where we teach. We are collaborating on a science/social studies/literacy project that will integrate Georgia Performance Standards, Cornerstone literacy strategies, and speech/language goals in an exciting technology-enhanced, problem-based learning project for our students.

We picked a perfect day to visit: sunny, mild, cloudless, and almost visitor-free. Red-winged Blackbirds, Great White Egrets, Turkey Vultures, common finches, a pair of Canada Geese, one perfect Painted Bunting, a Mockingbird or two, and several snapping turtles enjoyed the day as well. Disappointed not to find a Great Blue Heron -- maybe next visit. We were delighted to chat with the knowledgeable workers and to borrow some excellent field glasses and field guide.

Red-winged Blackbird (Amazing what a little accessorizing does for a simple, little black dress.)


Great White Egret (Nimble, quick, and unexpectedly graceful on those ungainly looking legs.)



Turkey Vultures (Well, somebody's gotta appreciate 'em...they have a thankless job.)



Painted Bunting (SHAZAAM!!)



We took lots of pictures - a virtual field trip of sorts. I unintentionally used the color accent camera setting, so the greens look terrific, but everything else pales in comparison to the brilliance of the day. No matter, we'll be back, hopefully with kids in-tow.

Oxbow Meadows April 8, 2009

Click on the picture to link to the Picassa Web Album. View as a slideshow.

A House Is a House: Language Lessons for Young Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students

I created the slideshow (embedded from slideshare) below for use with my young deaf/hard-of-hearing students. They enjoyed learning vocabulary words and answering WH questions forms (where and who) in an interactive format. Since slideshare only presents a screenshot of the slides, this version is not interactive. However, I did create notes on how to easily create the navigational structure for interaction. The notes are available on the slideshare site.

Note: (3/11/09) I have added instruction for possessive nouns and pronouns to this slideshow. Look for a revised version on slideshare later this month.

Language Lesson A House Is a House

View more presentations from ewhites. (tags: instruction animal)

Building Schema with Vocabulary and Vocabulary with Schema

| View | Upload your own

This PowerPoint is a very quickly thrown together example of an introductory language lesson that I use with my deaf/hard-of-hearing students. I like to use digital video animations of interesting children's storybooks for small group language lessons. These digital stories offer numerous opportunities to develop rich schema, vocabulary, word play, imagery, sequencing, syntax, narrative discourse, and comprehension strategies. I used this particular slide show to introduce the target vocabulary and concepts -- animal families, members of categories, and animal homes -- that would appear in the video.

The PowerPoint was very easy to put together and provided a nice, but static, foundation for the charming story, Over in the Meadow (Langstaff). That video can be found on the Scholastic DVD The Wheels on the Bus. My students enjoyed the very short video (less than ten minutes long)several times, and, as such, had multiple exposures to the new words and concepts.

To make the lessons more child-directed, dynamic, and powerful, I plan to video tape a sign language interpretation of the text and will then use Windows MovieMaker to create an ASL accessible video for my students. In addition, I will use either PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, or a Web site to create interactive game-like activities for them to practice associating word meaning with the new words. They have done this same activity with Good Night, Gorilla (Rathman). Besides being delighted to have the ASL interpretation which they could control, they paid rapt attention to the lessons and left the speech therapy sessions spontaneously using the new words. So, they went beyond acquiring meaning (receptive) to meaningfully using (expressive) the words in connected language.



While the PowerPoint does provide attractive graphics, text, animations, and sound effects, if used without the situated context of the storybook, I believe that my students' experience would have been rather flat and the effects transient.

Facilitating Technology Integration in a Resistant Environment

...thoughts in progress...

SLP Wiki Integration

A year ago I looked at adoption of innovations in the workplace for my RCA Theory project. I examined the Facilitative Conditions (as cited in Surry & Ely, 2007) that we had studied in ITED 8100 (Dr. Zahner) to look for patterns of workplace failures and successes, as cited by my peers and me.

Facilitative Conditions

(1) Dissatisfaction with Status Quo
(2) Knowledge and Skills Exist
(3) Availability of Resources
(4) Availability of Time
(5) Rewards and/ or Incentives
(6) Participation
(7) Commitment
(8) Leadership


I am revisiting my own comments to determine their accuracy, as I interpret the situation with the Wiki I created five months ago for our department. This is what I wrote in February, 2007.

Each of the three unsuccessful or partially successful projects lacked leadership, commitment, and participation of all stakeholders. If the organizational leadership is not committed to the innovation's successful implementation and does not value participation of all stakeholders, the other factors will most likely not be present to the necessary degree. If the remaining five factors are present without leadership, commitment, and participation, success may be present but limited, and institutionalization may not occur. Facilitating conditions should be present beginning with the design phase. Development, utilization, management, and evaluation will all be negatively affected by their omission in the earliest stage of the project.

I'm going to take the next few days to think about this. More later. Woops. I just read my original analysis again.

Facilitative Conditions - relative to the SLP Wiki

(1) Dissatisfaction with Status Quo -- YES
(2) Knowledge and Skills Exist -- 1/2 and 1/2
(3) Availability of Resources -- YES
(4) Availability of Time -- They don't believe this, but could be convinced somewhat easily
(5) Rewards and/ or Incentives - A good start with crucial forms provided on site; could do more
(6) Participation -- Somewhat
(7) Commitment -- meaning??? look it up
(8) Leadership -- NOPE

Shoulda. Coulda. Woulda. Blatantly obvious what is missing. Not so sure what to do about it. But I'm perking on it. Research Idea! hmmmmmmmmmm.


Surry, D. W., & Ely, D.P. (2007). Adoption, diffusion, implementation, and institutionalization of
instructional innovations. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional
design and technology (pp.104-111). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.