 I want to share the amazing story of Juno and Lucas. Click on the link below to find out more. Also, check out the video! Yes, I do realize this is the story on my homepage but it is so powerful I want to share it once again. Bringing people and animals closer together through love and training. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46168614/ns/today-today_pets_and_animals/t/lucas-juno-special-bond-rescue-dog-dying-boy/#.UGS0603A8R8
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 Who is a man's best friend? Most will reply with, "a dog." The people who usually reply with this answer have a dog. I know, from experience, that my dog is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Service dogs provide for anyone with a disability. These dogs prvides things like, opening doors, retrieving items (such as medicines), calling attention to emergencies (such as seizures before they happen), balance and support, among many other things. Many veterans have dogs and or service dogs to provide stability from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The ADA (Americans with Disabilites Act) states that any venue may not ask for papers to determine the dogs eligibility for being a service dog. Most dogs wear vests or some have a card stating that their dog is in deed a service dog. For more info on this, check this site out http://www.iaadp.org/psd_tasks.html. Also, http://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm. PTSD is on the rise for veterans. More and more veterans are diagnosed and they are eligible to have a service dog. Some veterans have a dog just to help with stability, technically not a service dog. This story will enlighten you, it is about David Shape who is suffering from PTSD who says his rescued Pit bull saved his life. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW. At times, people have confusion, or may not understand the role of a service dog. This story is about a veteran who was experiencing major difficulties at the airport with service dog. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW. Educate yourself! These animals are amazing and deserve to be treated with respect.  My research through Grad School has made me become very passionate about this topic. Why, you ask? It could be that my love of children and animals has come together and I couldn't find a better reason to live than to help animals and children. Last semester, I completed a research paper that was about therapy dogs. I was interested in the topic because my dog (Hogan) has been training to become a therapy dog. My research led me to many different types of service dogs. I learned so much! I found websites like http://www.tdi-dog.org/ and http://www.therapydogs.com/. These websites have so much information. They are great for parents, educators, and anyone that would be interested in training their dog for therapy. Next blog, I will discuss Service dogs! Check out my links to my research paper and my PowerPoint!!! 
 A very cool digital tool for teachers to use is a website called todaysmeet.com. This website reminds me of twitter. It gives the students a chance to check and make sure what you are saying is valid. This technology can allow anybody to check credibility. I would use this is my classroom if I were lecturing. I like this because students can discuss and ask questions without interrupting the teacher. When you type a question another student can answer, it's pretty cool! This would be great for those shy or slow to warm-up students!  Another website that I absolutely loved was voki. Voki is a website that allows you to build a character. You make up the entire character from scratch. From the nose to the hair, to the voice, and it lets you choose a background. I really want to use this in my classroom. My students would love this. Especially the different accents that are available. I think I will use voki to introduce a new topic during our class meeting. It will give the students something different to look at and listen to, instead hearing and seeing me all the time. I believe my students will respond well to this because they are young and would love to watch a new character that they have never seen before.  As I look back at all of the things I have learned from this class I have to laugh because I really didn't know that much about technology and how to use it in the classroom. When I first started this class I gave myself a 9 on a scale of 1-10 of how proficient I was about technology and how I used it in my classroom. Yeah right! Even now, after taking this class, I would give myself a 7.5-8.
I remember wanting to learn more about "useful" interactive websites. I know so many That i can use for myself and for my students. I really liked Diigo, wordle, and Voki. I can really use these websites in my class. I also thought that I had taken this course while getting my bachelor's but it was entirely different. This course was very useful, it should be required for every teacher to take. The instructor for this course was very knowlegeable, he always had answers to my questions. He inspired me to use multiple technologies in the classroom, something I would have never done if it wasn't for this instructor or for this class. I feel more comfortable with technology and I can't wait to show my students what we can do!  I chose to do my lesson on a fifth grade Early Indian Civilization project. The students have 2 weeks to complete this project. They will be divided into groups. Each group will have subtopics that are assigned to the individual student. Each student will need to write 3 paragraphs for per subtopic. The students are to write their paragraphs in google docs. They are required to have at least one image and at least one video with their wiki post. Students are also to make a power point presentation with their images and videos and they are to post it to the classroom wiki. The theme of the project is: Regions and People of the Western Hemisphere The students are to write about:Early Indian civilizations (Maya, Inca, Aztec, Mississippian) existed in the Western Hemisphere prior to the arrival of Europeans. These civilizations had developed unique governments, social structures, religions, technologies, and agricultural practices and products. I think before this class I would have never done a wiki. I wouldn't have done a wiki because I was not educated on how to do one with my class. Where as now, I really like the wiki and find it easier to grade than papers. I would have had students get into cooperative learning groups and write their rough draft on paper with the students later typing their papers on the in Word. My planning has changed because everything is done online. It is so much more accessible for me and my students. It cuts down on printing out paper which is a big issue at my school. My thinking has changed because I know students love the computer and why not work with that instead of against it. I am always looking for new ways to educate my students especially when it involves something they are familiar with and something they like. The benefits of both of lessons would be that the students are collaborating, organizing, and learning. When adding more technology into the students' project it allows a sense of ease. Organizing the paper becomes easier with the google docs. The collaboration becomes less of a face to face situation which can be terrifying for some students. The learning becomes more involved because students respond different to computer text than they do to book written text. I would rather work with the student rather than against them. Technology is what these students really like doing and I like implementing it in my classroom. Personally, I really like using the wiki. It helps me stay organized, everything is online which is easier to keep track of and carry with me. It allows my students and I to be more involved and creative together.  I learned about wordle.net last week in class. I find that I really have a use for this in my classroom. This week I am using it for rhyming words because we are studying Dr. Suess (since his birthday is this week). When you go to wordle.net you can type in or paste in any words of your choice and they will be put into a cluster for you, as my words are to the left. I actually used this in class and my students had to tell me all the rhyming that they see. Then they had to write them down in their journals. The advanced students had to put them in alphabetically order.
Bubbl.us is a great website for brainstorming and building any kind of web. It allows you to add color and any text of your choice. This of course, is a great tool to use for the visual learners in my classroom. After I read a story aloud to my students I will pull up the bubble web that I have made to focus on comprehension. Kidspiration is software that a school district can buy for classroom teachers. My school district does have it. It is not being used as much as it should be but we do have it. My class gets to go to the computer lab once a week to use Kidspiration. They love it! Especially my learner who are on the slower side. It makes learning fun and interactive. If you do not have Kidspiration speak with your schoo  ISTE states that as teachers, we should meet these five standards: 1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning 2. Design and Develop Digital Age Learning 3. Model Digital Age Work and Learning 4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility 5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership Not to mention the four performance indicators that follow each standard. Basically, students should be involved in some type of technology everyday and perhaps most of the day to meet all of these standards and indicators. This may sound like too much technology but if you think about it a lot of us are on the computer, cell phones, ipads, mp3 players, etc......for most of our day anyway. So why are we punishing students for having these devices in school? It should be a tool to get them involved in learning. Ohio Technology Standards The Ohio standards seem a little more basic than the ISTE standards. I teach Kindergarten so the standards seemed very basic for me. In my class the computers are used often, some of my students even know how to change the background. I think many of the standards can be implemented in the classroom right now. For my standards I need to make sure that my students are aware of the different kinds of technology, how they have changed, and make sure they know where to find information. The hardest thing for me to accomplish in my classroom is making sure that everyone get enough computer time because there are only 4 computers in my class and sometimes not all of them are working properly. The other difficult obstacle I have is when the students go to the computer lab for their special they mostly play online games and I want them learning other things, games are good during free time only. Netiquette The word "netiquette" means Internet etiquette. This is very important for students to learn about especially with online bullying becoming a problem. According to Virginia Shea, here are 10 rules for everyone to follow. Click on "Rule 1" and it will take you to see the rules in further detail. TOPIC FIVE: Copyright The most important thing I learned about copyright is that you can NOT show a movie to your students. For example, when my class earns a certain number of popsicle sticks they recieve a movie day. Well, come to find out this is illegal and many teachers violate this copyright law. A clip of the movie may be shown for up to 3 minutes in length if it is related to the topic of the lesson. My students will be sad to know that we will not have anymore movie days but I will make sure that another reward is set in place.  Google Docs is a wonderful tool to know about. It's great for students, educators, and other professionals that use microsoft office. Google docs is basically microsoft office online. I personally really like it because i dont have to pay for microsoft and it saves everything automatically. All you need is a google account to get started. And guess what? It's free! Google docs allows you to share documents and work on them at the same time as your co-workers, group members, etc. This is the new way to build and share information. Check out what i have made below! Feel free to take my quiz, i guarantee you'll pass! | AuthorMy name is Heidi Fisher and I am currently obtaining my Master's degree in Special Education and ABA. I am a huge animal lover and I truly enjoy working with children! 
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