Tools of Choice

Wow I can't believe this is our last blog. This semester has just flown by.

What?

This week was a little bit of a mess. All last weekend I kept wishing that we had had class that week so that we would have had more time to work on our final. Then we came to class this week and the computers were all down. So we talked about what a news letter, brochure and flyer were. I wasn't sure how to start any of these but when Doc. Waters asked how we could go about doing these and Jeremy said to find templates on line my fear went away and I got excited.

So What?

I new I wanted to do a flyer and a brochure but I was afraid to do the brochure. I thought it looked way to complicated but it ended up being the easiest. The first thing I did was google free brochure templates. A lot of different sites came up so I went to a few of them and played around with them but then I realized I didn't know what I wanted this brochure to be about. I thought about all the different activities my son did this year and what I wish, as a parent, I had had more info on. That's when I decided on the wax museum. My son never brought home any information on this and then one night he said " Oh mom, I need a costume tomorrow for Freddy Fender for my museum. Oh and I need to make this poster." Did I forget to mention this was at around nine o'clock at night. If he did bring home something telling me about this it must have been very plain and shuffled into the never ending pile of papers that the kids bring home. Once I decided on the theme everything else fell into place. I decided to use a template I found at office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx - I decided on this one because it was the most user friendly that I played around with and it had a template that I really liked. It is called " Old Book". I thought this was fitting since the wax museum is a history project. I didn't run into a single snag.

When it came time to do my flyer I had a little trouble. I didn't like any of the templates on the last site I used so I gave google docs a try. I found one I really liked and made my flyer. I was pleased with the way it turned out but when I saved it as a PDF it changed all the alignments. I tried everything I could think of but couldn't get it to work. I deleted the whole thing and started over. What I realized was that the template was one big box. I deleted that box then using the box with a capital T in it I was able to create many smaller boxes that I could put my text and pictures in. This time it worked. I was really exited. Then I put everything into my uen page. After that I practised getting to it from my URL instead of through UEN. I really enjoyed this assignment.

Now What?

As a teacher I know I will use these tools all the time. I will have a weekly news letter, flyers about filled trips, human development class and any other activities, and I will use the brochure I made for the wax museum. I can also use these tools for family reunions, PTA, scouts, activities and neighborhood things. The great thing is, you don't have to print them up, you can publish them and invite people to see them or you could e-mail them to everyone.

Video:

I wasn't sure if we were suppose to do the video for tools of choice, final exam intro or final exam so I will talk about them all. The video for final exam review was a day in the life of special ed. My first year as a substitute teacher I mostly did special ed. I loved it but it is not with out it's challenges. I have been slapped, spit on, scratched, head butted and bit. But the rewards for out way the challenges. At one school they were getting ready for their Christmas program. A young boy with down syndrome loved to sing. It was so fun to see his smiley face as he sang for us. another school a boy that is in a wheel chair, can't talk, has very little muscle tone and a lot of other problems would remember me and was happy to see me. Some times he would get mad at me because he loved to "dance" but I would make him use his bad hand. It would tire him out but it helped make him stronger. I had a few people try to talk me out of going back to school becoming a special ed tech. Even though I love my time with the students it was hard on me because I have a son with Aspergers. It's hard to work with special ed all day then come home and do it some more. The men and women that work in special ed. are the most amazing people I have ever met and they deserve a big round of applause.

Who doesn't like school house rock. I grew up with it. Every Saturday morning different ones were on through out the cartoons. I learn better with music and these songs really helped me. My favorites were the Preamble, Bill, and Conjunction junction. It's fun to see these on YouTube so I can share them with my kids.