Gotta Chance to Teach Students Again

On Friday I was able to visit a few Middle School classrooms and a few Elementary classrooms, and I even had the chance in a 3rd grade classroom to teach the students again.
I first had the chance to show some assistive devices to a legally blind student's associate to better help him stay on track with the information, ideas and handouts his teacher was providing to the rest of the class.  I am still trying to figure out the braille printer but I was able to download Natural Reader to provide the student and his associate an opportunity to highlight words from reproduced worksheets and have them read to him.  Hopefully this better helps the student, as I am still in search of finding more assistive devices to better help accommodate his needs.
I then got a chance to work with a small group of Middle School students to help assist them in getting logged onto the laptops and into Skills Tutor which is a part of Skills Iowa that provides the students with extended activities to keep them on track and/or to advance them.
In the afternoon I was able to work with a 3rd grade classroom and actually taught the group of students, with the use of the laptops on the laptop cart, how to use BookFlix, which is a reading web site that is a part of the IowaAEAOnline web sites.  It was awesome getting to know the students in the classroom, seeing how excited their faces were when I introduced the web site to them, and how eager they were to be able to use and explore the web site on their own.  Once I finished showcasing BookFlix and allowed them to work with BookFlix on their own for about 15 minutes, the students were as quiet as a mouse and focused on reading a book online to themselves or better yet having the book read to them while they followed along with the highlighted words from the story.
To finish out the day I was able to watch HS students in a WebPage Development class showcase their web pages through the use of iWeb.  The students had a few requirements they had to fill and you could see their passion with using the WebPage Development application and their passion with the information they were showcasing through the iWeb web pages.

Having a chance to explore all of theses opportunities really exhibits to me the excitement and dedication the teachers have in providing the students with the possibilities of exploring technology.