Teaching with software tools, multimedia and hypermedia

One of the most successful strategies I have used in my middle school classrooms as well as my high school classrooms is the LCD projector hooked up to my desktop. The Internet site availability is very limited in my school district, even to teachers. I was able to locate and access a few interactive sites for American Government, Mathematics and the ISBE even had an ISAT interactive that worked well. Most of my students are struggling, hence the need for their IEPs. The greatest asset of the technology we used was student engagement. Even the kids that seemed to “check out” on a daily basis participated.
I often use test, reading passage and math practice generators. These have been valuable for use in differentiated instruction and /or modifications. When I was instructing in Pre-Algebra and Algebra we had a very nice, all encompassing curriculum called Carnegie Learning. It consisted of a consumable workbook with group activities, problem solving practice and an online component that had good tutorials, instructional games and some drill and practice. I also consisted of a productivity tool for teachers to follow student learning through the computer assessed student work. It generated reports from data collection and analysis, which was used for informing where student needed more support. For the majority of my students the challenge with this program and really many other types of technology is the difficulty of the any reading that is included or necessary for full functional use.
As I’ve commented in a previous blog reflection, even my high school students had difficulty navigating a computer keyboard not to mention the visual overload and frustration level vocabulary on much of the Internet and some programs they were expected to use at a certain grade level. I want to investigate if there are such things as hi/lo web pages much like the books and reading passages I try to find for my struggling readers. I’ve dabble in online lesson plan templates, nothing outstanding yet. Our district uses electronic gradebooks and I love it! It is the same company package that is used for IEPs. The efficiency between the electronic gradebook and the IEP generator is like night and day.
The fact that I use an IEP generator does not particularly seem like an enhancement to achievement or an accommodation of a learning need. Our IEP program is aggravating to use; way too time consuming instead of efficient.