Deaf Ed Project

Interview Presentation on Prezi

I was using this to keep track of my project just incase it didn't work in class I had it on my blog! But I learned how to do this from this class...so I figured that I would keep it up here! This was my second time doing this and it keeps getting easier. I has some problems with how to get it started in class but that maybe because it was on a computer that I am not used to using?! 

Extra Credit - SmileBox

I decided to use SmileBox instead of Animoto, because I think 30 seconds is too short of a time for the movie. I want to work with elementary school kids and this would be a great activity to make about their family. This can help them develop family vocabulary. They can take pictures of everyone and then put the words with them when we print it out, we can also add pictures of the signs so they can see them over and over. We can make a classroom scrapbook with posts like this of different things that we have learned. This allows the students to be creative and use technology and learn.

Here is one of mine of random pictures from this summer, I have some of my dad and my mom and my friends and at the Capital back home!! Things that are important to me. That would also be a great introduction activity for the students to learn about each other and things that they like. This can help as an ice breaker and create new friendships for things they didn't know they had in common.  This can also be neat to show parents on back to school night as a collection of our work. We can make them for field trips and then type up different stories of what the children saw or experienced. That can help with writing.

This picture collage generated with Smilebox

Here is another one!! that I did on Camp Koinonia 2010! and my cabin group :) The Me Hearties!!! This shows about the different activities that we did and how we dressed up. I really LOVE LOVE LOVE this web 2.0 tool!! I am going to use this myself!! I think that I am going to ask my parents to pay for this for me so that I can print them or save them on a disk and take them to CVS and get them printed out and framed!! I think I am going to use this for Christmas cards this year too :) 


I really like how when you preview them off the blog, you can have music and then you can click on the individual pictures to in large them. 

ABC Scavenger Hunt- Prezi

I haven't ever done a Prezi so I decided this would be a good time to try one!!!

Our assignment was ABC Scavenger Hunt- we were looking around campus for the letters A-L. We first started to look for the actual letter, but then changed our photos to something that started with that letter. Here are what we found...

A- Amphitheater 

B- Bus

C- Car

D- Door 

E- Emergency 

F- Fire Hydrant

G- Gate

H- Hill

I- Intersection

J- Jeans

K- Khaki 

L- Leaves

After we collected them we came back and resized them in photo shop and then saved them onto our flash drives. Then we all made individual projects. Here is what mine looks like!

ABC Scavenger Hunt on Prezi

Since I am a deaf education major and will be working with students learning sign language I added the letters of the ASL alphabet. This way the students can see the letters, the picture and the signs.

I love this idea, I could really see me using this with my classroom! Having them go out and look for things around the school and take pictures of them. To be honest I won't use Prezi anymore because I had a problem getting the embeded link to work...When I would post in on here it would only show what I copy and pasted, not the actual show. I think that if I were going to be doing this with my students I will probably have Google Presentations or Power Point so that we don't have that problem. I do like all the different ways that Prezi can move around the board and its not boring...but it was hard figuring out all the sizing and where to place thing.

I had never used photo shop before today and it was actually really easy to resize the image but it took awhile to do all of the pictures. It would be nice if we could resize one of them and then they all do it.

Overall this was a fun different activity that involved us using many different technology aspects we have been learning this year. :) 

My Classroom Website

I was worried about doing this activity...I have never made a website or had any desire to do it, but as I have been working on it I feel like I am turning into a pro! I figured out how to do the background and add one from the website that Ginny showed us in class (http://backgrounds.mysitemyway.com/). I have been playing with the font colors and adding different pictures to make it interesting. I feel like now I am more comfortable I am personalizing it so that my students and parents could really get to know me! 

I wish that my teacher had this when I was in school because this is a great way to have the students look  at assignments and have all the resources located in one spot. I will use this in my classroom- I am going to save all the websites that we have found on the wiki and I will have special activities listed, extra practice, maybe even an extra credit project (something fun like a scavenger hunt...) I could have a section where I could have an about me for the students so they can each write something in class, then we can edit it together and take a picture and post it on the website. This way the students can feel like it is their website! 

I could see this being really helpful in a general education school for the group of teachers to communicate with all the students and parents or even just with each other. I know in my elementary school we worked as a team even though we were in different teachers classrooms. We did major activities together, like "west-ward-ho" where we all build wagons and then packed them with items that we needed on the trip. Then we all dressed up and walked around the field at school like we were traveling west. The teachers could have used the website to communicate with parents what was needed, provide pictures and even some extra reading assignments. 

Now that I understand how to make a website and can do it for my classes and even for other school projects that I have to do!! This was one of the most beneficial projects that we have done so far. 

Oh yea!!-- Here is the link to my classroom website (https://sites.google.com/site/meredithsdeafclassroom/home) 

Picasa- Web Albums- Maryland!

I really enjoyed doing this project! I like being able to have a choice and create something that shows who I am. I chose to do an album based off my home state, Maryland!!! I was born in D.C. but moved to Maryland when I was four, and lived there till I was 18 and moved to college. We had to find five images, one from a digital camera, one that we scanned in, one that we found from a free website, one screen shot, and one from the big box of art. This was my first time using Picasa, it was really easy. You just upload an image and then you can edit it and go to Picnik and it will save it back on the album for you. I only played with one of them in Picnik (the one that is the screen shot of my house I did a border).






I think that in a classroom I would use this at the beginning with the students and have them show me a few things about themselves. I don't think that I would make them find images from different places, I would let them bring in pictures and we could scan them in or I can bring in my camera and we can take pictures. This way they can introduce themselves and start to learn about their classmates. I could also use this with children that don't know many signs and take pictures of me doing the signs or from a book or even teach the kids the signs and take pictures of them doing it. This way they can have a reminder of the signs if they forget and can practice. I can also use this with different lesson plans, for example mine was on parasitism, mutualism and commensalism- I could take the pictures and make one to introduce the different topics, or with the activity instead of having them print out pictures they can make a slide show to put on the classroom website that shows the different symbiotic relationships. 


The only thing that I really had a hard time doing was picking what images I wanted! There were so many I wanted to choose and I had to limit that to the few that I did. I could go on and on about home especially in a creative way like this! 

Completed Lesson Plans

SO- I made a mistake and didn't do the lesson plan research based and had to start over. Starting over I went for the subject that I really wanted to teach - science! I want to be in elementary school and I have been working at the deaf school with fifth grade. In the fifth grade curriculum there are some really tough topics to cover. 


The lesson I chose to cover is under the fifth grade standard two, interdependence. Here are the standards that are listed on the Tennessee State Curriculum. 

Conceptual Strand 2

All life is interdependent and interacts with the environment.

Guiding Question 2

How do living things interact with one another and with the non-living elements of their environment?

Grade Level Expectations:

GLE 0507.2.2 Explain how organisms interact through symbiotic, commensal, and parasitic relationships.

Check for Understanding:

␣0507.2.2 Classify interspecific relationships within an ecosystem as mutualism, commensalism, or parasitism.

␣0507.2.3 Create a simple model illustrating the interspecific relationships within an ecosystem.

State Preformance Indicators:

SPI 0507.2.2 Distinguish among symbiotic, commensal, and parasitic relationships.

With this I talked about mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Mutualism is a symbiotic relationship between two organisms where they both benefit. Commensalism is a symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits and the other is unaffected. Parasitism is a symbiotic relationship where one (the parasite) benefits and one organism (the host) is harmed.

In my new activity I have the students go to Fact Monster- Science. They have to find the page I want them to read, but I give them directions on how to find it. This way they get used to using the search aspect on a website. They will then follow the worksheet and fill in the different information they have learned. Next the go to the National Geographic website and look at pictures. They should find one example of each of the three topics. Then as a class they will put them on the correct poster and explain what the picture is and then why it belongs in that category.

This was a hard activity for me because I guess I didn't understand that it had to be more research based then just an online activity. I don't know if that was because I wasn't listening or because the information got thrown off because of the change of teacher? Not sure :)

I am also used to doing lesson plans a different way so this was hard to break my old habit and change to this one. In the end I think this one is not as hard as the other one that I am used to, so it worked out in the end.

I wish there was a way with Google Docs to connect all the pages together...like if there was a "staple" button that you could click and it would "staple" all the pages you want together. I feel that would make me stress out less about someone not seeing all of the pages that I have going together and count me off or miss something.

I think that I like wiki better because you can keep things all in one place. I really do like how multiple people can edit on one document at one time and wish that could be done on wiki. There are good and bad on both.. if we could combine them it would be perfect!

Overall this wasn't one of my favorite activities that we have done but it wasn't too bad and helped me realize how to do research based lesson plans for my classroom.

Lesson Plans

This is my first time working with someone else on creating a lesson plan. It has been an interesting experience, I am lucky that I have a partner that I work well with. We are good at bouncing ideas off of each other and making our ideas better.


I haven't worked in google docs much before this class and I like the fact that you can view and edit at the same time. I was used to working in wiki and not wanting to be rude and steal peoples locks but this we were working at the same time and could watch the other changes being made. I liked being able to sit next to her in class and be able to talk and then do the work, not just hover over one computer. We could also work on other parts at the same time.


This is the first time that I have really used websites in my lesson plans, so it was hard to find some that really worked with what we wanted to do. As a deaf education teacher one of the problems that is common is learning English grammar. If the students were only exposed to American Sign Language they do not have grammar like be verbs and past or future tenses. When we are teaching English it can take time for the student to grasp the concept of AM, IS, ARE, WAS and WERE.


We decided to focus on this we found some game sites that used graphics and games to understand the different be verbs. We found a grammar and writing book in the textbook lab and found some pages that we want to use. We are still working on the rest of the details.


So far I think that this activity is giving me great insight on working collaboratively with another future teacher and find resources that I can use in my classroom! I hope that the rest of the activity goes as smoothly as this has! Fingers crossed! 

A screen shot of the Google Docs that we have started for this project!