Welcome to the Class!

Welcome to Mrs. Bennett's Classroom. Here is a link to our classroom website. This blog will be used to inform parents of upcoming events and showcase work that the students will be completing in class. Each student will bring home a permission slip for their parent or guardian to sign, giving permission for their photos and art work to be displayed on the website and blog. I will also be posting information relevant to the Early Childhood/ Special Education field as well as articles or websites that parents might enjoy. I look forward to meeting everyone and beginning our school year!

Interesting Tidbits I Learned at CEC

This past weekend I attended the 2010 CEC Convention and Expo (Council for Exceptional Children). Aside from the intriguing assistive technology devices, I learned how one group of teachers used technology to reach their special needs preschool students. I attended the "Visual Strategies and Assistive Technology to Support Students with Autism and Developmental Delays" lecture presented by Jennifer Simonaitis and Jen Bartelli. In this lecture they discussed various visual strategies that work well with children with autism or developmental delays. One of the proven interventions is the use of social stories to teach children how to play with toys or prepare for a special event. While these stories have been proven valid by research, the children were not paying attention to them, so they were not learning from them. Because the children are so TV, video game, and computer immersed, or brainwashed, they did not know how to listen to a book being read to them. The teachers decided to take photographs of the pages of the books, record their voices reading the text, and complied them into a video using Windows Movie Maker. The children immediately took to the videos. The children responded to the videos so well that they have began making videos for everything that they do, and even make videos for the parents if the child will be experience something new at home. These teachers recognized that a proven strategy was not working for their students and used technology to make it more meaningful and beneficial to them. This is not only a trait of a great special education teacher, but also a teacher that is capable of integrating technolgy into the classroom.

Tips and Ideas for Teachers

I discovered a wonderful resource for teachers called Teachers Helping Teachers. This website has been operating since 1995 and contains tips and ideas that cover all spans of teaching, such as classroom management, science, math, and special education. Teachers can use any of the material on the site for their classroom and are encouraged to contribute their ideas and lesson plans. The website is updated weekly during the school year.

In addition to lesson plan ideas, the website also has lists of education resources for teachers divided into content section. Each week the website has a new topic by the creator (Dr. Scott Mandel), a poem of the week, book review submitted by a contributor, and stress relievers for teachers.

I think this website will be very useful to me in the future and I wish I had found it when we were doing our wiki projects!

Effects of Technology

I found this interesting article from the National Institute of Early Education Research. This article discusses the benefits throughout the years from technology use with young children, as well as some concerns about how preschoolers today are immersed in technology almost from birth. The article states that research discovered "that children who were exposed to television in the 1950's and 1960's had the same or slightly higher test scores than those who did not have a television. Positive results were more pronounced where the household was nonwhite, English was a second language, or the mother had less than a high school education."

The article also pointed out concerns about the educational quality of the technology that is typically being presented to preschool children in their homes- such as video games.

Like Buckleitner, Traylor is pro-technology when it comes to education applications. Yet he is suspicious of bombarding 3- and 4-year-olds with technology when the educational merits of the products are not known. His rule of thumb: "I try to think, 'What would Mr. Rogers do?'"

Sharapan also recognizes the limitations of the technology. "My child development background says to me that there's something very different about building with blocks that are three-dimensional, that I can touch and that I'm balancing in my hand, than manipulating something onscreen. We need children to have real experiences with objects and then the virtual experiences can give them another level of understanding," she says. Or as Fred Rogers was fond of saying, "A computer can help you know how to spell hug, but it can't help you get those feelings."

Once again, the usage of technology with very young children is still slightly controversial and needs to be researched further to uncover the best way to use these resources in an educational and developmentally appropriate way.

Profile of a Technology Literate Kid

I found this information from FamilyEducation.com interesting. According to the International Society for Technology in Education, prior to completion of second grade, your child should be able to:

• Demonstrate proficient mouse skills.

• Start up and shut down a computer system.

• Use instructional software in various content areas.

• Recognize and use basic computer vocabulary.

• Operate commonly used media devices (e.g., puzzles, logical-thinking programs, writing tools, digital cameras, drawing tools).

• Use input devices to navigate the graphic interface on multimedia learning resources.

• Use printers to produce hard copy of student products.

Majority of the items on this list I believe that children who are in second grade should be able to do, such as operate a mouse and print a document. If taught properly, these children should also be able to shut down a computer the correct way, not just by pushing the buttons. In this time period it is reasonable to assume that children will know basic computer terminology and how to use certain software programs by age 7.

I guess one of the parts that kinda caught me off guard is knowing how to operate a digital camera. Are we talking just point, click, and view the picture, or do they mean actually be able to adjust the settings, upload the image, crop it, etc? I have issues using my camera sometimes, I can't imagine 7 and 8 year-olds being able to operate more than a basic digital camera. Also, I am glad I am choosing to teach preschoolers, because I needed a translation on what "Use input devices to navigate the graphic interface on multimedia learning resources" means! (Once my husband explained it as basically operating a video game I understood it better.)

Throughout this course I have learned that children are capable of more technological feats than I could ever imagine. Because of the new developments in technology and the increasing amount of technology savvy preschoolers and elementary students, I realize that I need to step it up as a teacher and learn creative ways to integrate technology into my preschool classroom so my students are prepared for what the future holds.

Digital Movie

This week our assignment was to create a digital story. I chose to focus my digital story on the flower project my partner and I did last Spring with the children from UT's Early Learning Center. Once my teacher pointed me in the right direction of how to re-size images on my home computer, it was fairly easy to get all of the images together and in the correct format. I also found it was easy to use Windows Movie Maker to create the video once I got it started. While arranging and editing the images was time consuming, it was fairly easy to do. The part of the assignment that I found difficult was trying to format the document to save it to the specific requirements. I also had several issues trying to get the video to upload to my blog. I really wish the department would have an option to read instructions for a Mac or for a PC. Some of the Mac instructions followed closely to how the PC's programs worked, but others are very different. It's really frustrating going between the two systems, especially when you are having technical difficulties.

Technology with Young Preschoolers- A Useful Tool or a Curse?

Today I came across this article by Lorrie Jackson from Education World. http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech215.shtml This article discusses the role technology plays in preschoolers' lives and how we as educators and parents should use technology with these young children.

The article states that, according to the National Education Technology Plan, 90% of children ages 5-7 use computers, 97% of kindergartners have computers at home and/or at school, and 72% of first graders use a home computer during the summer. These statistics are beginning to surprise me less and less as I learn more about technology use with young children. However, this article does address my main concern with using technology with young children- that children are being babysat by technology tools and are not experiencing the natural world.


Toddlers and preschoolers learn by doing -- playing in the mud, dressing up, playing house, and participating in other hands-on activities. The National Association for the Education of Young Children advises, therefore, that "computers supplement, and do not replace, highly valued early childhood activities and materials, such as art, blocks, sand, water, books, exploration with writing materials, and dramatic play."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 2 years old not be permitted to watch TV and children over the age of 2 years be limited to one to two hours of screen time a day. This recommendation is often translated to include computer usage as well. The first two years of your child’s life are especially important in the growth and development of her brain. During this time, children need positive interaction with other children and adults. This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important.

All too often I have encountered children who could operate my cell phone better than I can or beat me in every computer game that we played, but look completely dumbfound when you try to get them to play outside or use materials such as blocks and cars to play instead of TV and video games. This generation of children is being raised immersed in technology which definitely has its perks. However, are the benefits worth it at the expense of children knowing the feeling of sand under their feet, paint all over their hands, or the joy of dressing up in Mom's old clothes and jewelry?