Learning Disabilities workshop, technology, and other updates...

    It has been a busy week. I am happy to report that I have handed in all my paperwork for student teaching. I just have to wait to see what school and classroom I will be placed in. Yesterday, I attended a workshop on the best practices for working with students with learning differences (learning disabilities). The day was comprised of six different workshops on many different topics including teaching writing to students with and without writing disabilities, (Something that seems to be overlooked I think in public schools. At least it was when I was growing up.), study skills and note taking, successful transiting to college for students with learning disabilities, assistive technology, and other topics as well. There were some teachers and other educational professionals from schools for students with learning disabilities (the schools present were from North Carolina). These are private and very expensive schools that specialize in working in children with learning disabilities. They have class sizes of three to five students per class. If you are a high school student, these schools help you research colleges and they know all the best schools with programs for students with learning disabilities. I only knew of a couple when I was in high school, but they mentioned a few new ones yesterday including the SALT program at the University of Arizona  http://www.salt.arizona.edu/.  It makes me wonder how my education would have been different had I attended one of these schools when I was growing up. 

    Tonight, I have set aside some time for writing in my memoir. While I was on spring break, I did some research, and I want to insert some changes into a few chapters of my memoir (I need to write a section or chapter about my misdiagnosis of my learning disability as a child, which definitely impacted my education). I also have some data to enter. . 

    I learned some new websites and technology yesterday as well, one of which is below (well, I actually used two of them to create the below image).  The below image was created at http://www.wordle.net/.  This site allows you to enter any text you want and create different types of random word art. I just entered a few random words that helped describe me. I used a free program called JING to capture the image and save it to my computer and upload it here (I also learned about this yesterday) http://www.jingproject.com/. 

    That's all I have for now.  Check back in the next few days for more updates.  Hopefully, I will be able to make another update this weekend.