Katherine's Blog

For my final project I set out to develop an interactive tool to help students learn basic access skills for computer usage.  I wanted to develop something that could be used to teach students simple mouse skills using a variety of mice. It would be something that they could use with a standard mouse, or any adapted mouse that used a standard interface with the computer (track ball, any other adapted mouse).  The skill that I focused on to start with was dragging and dropping, as these tasks require the student to identify and hit a target, select the target and manipulate it into place.  I developed a drag and drop game around a lesson that I often teach in Pre-K and Kindergarten classes.  This lesson is part of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum and focuses on body awareness, and the ability to draw a person using simple shapes.  I used audacity to edit the song that goes with the “Mat Man” lesson.  I then used flash to make an interactive activity in which the student has to use the mouse to drag and drop the pieces of Mat Man into an outline.  When the student starts to drag each body part, the beginning of the corresponding verse of the song plays.  When the piece is placed in the right spot, the final line of the verse plays.  If the student puts the body part in the wrong place, it is sent back to where it started.  I tried this game with my pre-K students this week both during their pull out sessions, and as a whole class activity using the LCD projector in their classroom.  Overall, it was successful and the children were actively engaged throughout.  This game could also be used to engage students with significant physical disabilities who would not have been able to as actively participate in the lesson as I used to teach it.  The one problem that I was not able to fix was the fact that the items being dragged are not always dragged over the top of the other items on the screen.  However, the game is functional and engaging as is. This was a positive learning experience for me all around.

My friend is a singer/songwriter, and a few years ago she wrote a song that was inspired by a road trip in her Honda Element.  She often jokes about how it could be used for a Honda commercial.  I tried to make a video keeping this in mind.  It started out as a minute long video, but I had trouble keeping the music synced with the scenes, so I cut it back to thirty seconds.  I experimented with motion paths and tweens in each of the different scenes within the video. I found the motion paths to be a little difficult, and I am still not exactly sure of the order of steps that I used to get them to work, but I did finally succeed.

I decided to try to develop a game in which my students could get extra practice using the home row keys for touch typing. While my ten years of piano lessons and three years of guitar lessons did not turn me into a musician by any stretch of the imagination, it did allow me to have enough knowledge of reading music to put together the following projects:

This was the first version of the game that I tried to make. I found that the auditory feedback of the musical notes combined with the movement of the characters when you type a key definitely engaged my students. Once they figured out what song they were playing, or got bored with a particular song, they could click the button in the corner to switch to a new song. I also recorded the name of each song so that they could check themselves by clicking on the microphone, although this feature has worked inconsistently. This version focuses on the left hand, and a few keys with the right hand. I also did one for the keys you would type with your right hand.

Overall, these games did engage the majority of my students. They were laughing and having fun trying to be the first to figure out the songs that they were playing.

I have been hard at work trying to use scratch to develop a game that would promote touch typing.  I have noticed that most typing games do not give enough practice with the home row keys before moving on to other keys.  Thus, I am working on using just the home row.  The difficulty which I have encountered is that the  “;” key is not on the list of possible keys to assign a particular action to.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  I have finished a version of the game using the “p” key instead, but in using it this week with my students, they have consistently been leaving the home row to strike the p key.

welcome

For as long as I can remember I have been a huge fan of the Olympics.  When I was sixteen I was chosen to attend a special program with the Girl Scouts in Atlanta where we learned first hand what goes into hosting the Olympics.  I have however never been able to actually attend the games.  I have a childhood friend who currently lives in Washington State approximately an hour from Vancouver.  She and her husband were able to attend some of the events this winter. Therefore,  I decided to use Gimp to put myself into one of her photos (in front of the Olympic flame) so that I could at least pretend I was there with them.  In addition, as there was no indication in the picture as to which Olympics this was, I added a Canadian flag hanging from the roof of the pavilion in the background. I found it very easy to do, and enjoyed using Gimp. I did find it difficult to size the image of myself, as I have visual perceptual difficulties, and my friend who is also in the picture is a good deal shorter than I am.  Therefore, I tried to angle it so that it appears I am closer to the camera and then tried to approximate the height difference. However, as I said, doing things to scale is not my strong suite.

In the spring of 2006 my father received an email from a woman in Italy named Lucianna who was looking for the members of her family in America. She explained that through research, she believed that we were the family she was looking for. She turned out to be the daughter of my grandfather’s brother (if that is not too confusing). Seeing as how my grandfather passed away in 1985, and he was the last remaining member of the family who was fluent in Italian we had lost touch with this set of relatives shortly thereafter. Apparently, after September 11. 2001, my grandfather’s brother did everything he could think of to locate us and make sure that we were safe. Luckily his granddaughter had learned English and she was able to finally locate us. We immediately began talking about how to reunite and reconnect. This resulted in nine of my family members taking a trip to Italy to sight see and visit with family. Since that time, Lucianna and her sister have come to the US to visit with us and various American members of the family have been back to visit them. I am in regular contact with Lucianna, and can’t wait to get the chance to go back and visit again. My Google Earth tour is of the original trip to Italy that my family and I took in the summer of 2007.
In using this application, I found it a little difficult to shrink the file to a size small enough to upload it to the blog. I found that instead of clicking on the city and allowing the computer to navigate to it, I had to manual advance from city to city. In addition, shrinking the screen size helped a little bit. The result is that the final product is not quite as smooth in the movement or narration as some of my original attempts. I was able to use pictures I took on the trip to make overlays for each of the cities we visited. I hope you enjoy the quick tour of Italy.

As an avid fan of the Yankees, I like to keep up with baseball, especially in New York.  I have added the RSS feed for the New York Times Baseball Coverage as to keep up with ongoing developments in baseball.

This is about using pre-existing templates on creately.

More tools for organizing pre-writing can be found at creately.  Unlike the readwritethink website, this site allows the user to save a draft of their work to come back to later.  However, it would appear that to be able to do so, an account must be created.  The account is free, however the user has to provide an email address.  There are a number of pre-made templates.  The user also has the option of creating an original graphic organizer.  The files can be saved, or exported in an email or as a PDF file for printing.