Updating

Okay, since last post in February the school I was at closed because of a brand new school being opened down the street. My school district mixed my paperwork with someone else's making it impossible for me to get a contract this year, but I did pick up a long-term sub job only to be offered a contract at that spankin' new school. I took the contract with great guilt over the students who I had promised I would be there for the entire year.

I teach ESL this year and feel overwhelmed by a group of beginners who lack the motivation to try and learn English. I am used to thinking about the impact of the CAHSEE on students and am wondering how are these students going to be able to pass it.

On the upside I am going to have technology to rival that of any school in CA. The only thing i'm currently missing is my class set of laptops, but i've been told i'll have them by second semester. I have only been at my new assignment for three weeks and have already had to go to professional development. Two days were for QTEL which is encouraging. The other day was for a text reader product by Kurzweil.

The little technogeek in me got excited with the Kurzweil product, Bernie if you still read this you should check it out if you haven't. It's cool because you can scan text in and the program reads it to students. It highlights the sentences and lowlights the actual word being read. If you don't know what a word means you can highlight and click on the dictionary icon for a definition. It also has the ability to allow the teacher to go in and add things to the reading. If you want your students to pause at a certain point to answer a question or any other thing you insert a sticky or have the ability to insert a question that has to be answere before the text will continue to read. The teacher can also highlight what you think is important. The students is also able to do all of these things. The great thing is that you can block some of the things that a student does while reading the text. The other cool thing is the text extractor. If you want students to high light main ideas they can and then all the highlighted points can be extracted and submitted. Or the text can be extracted and used as a study guide. Teaching made easy.

Another great thing about this program is the text writer. As students type they can hear what they are typing and hopefully it will help them to notice misspellings or any other errors.

The voices are not monotone robotic. There are two voices that sound more human than normal. I sound like a salesperson for this program, but I have to admit I can see it helping some of my most beginning students.