Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id fARKN7029903; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 15:23:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 15:23:07 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20011127120507.009ed430@mail.aracnet.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Sylvan Rainwater <sylvan@cccchs.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:6773] Re: FW: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2109] use of X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Status: O Content-Length: 4029 Lines: 75 At 10:54 PM 11/26/2001 -0500, you wrote: >With Erna's permission, I am sharing her answer to my questions about the >use of technology that I posed to the list serv. > >Nancy Gulliver ><SNIP> Very nice tools, and a very comprehensive answer. I'll just jump in with a little of what I'm doing. We are fortunate to have a ready-made lab of sorts used by the church we rent space from for their community education classes. There are six 486s with Windows 3.1, with a games package as well as Microsoft Works. I've used them primarily for keyboarding training and drills, but also for a little bit of file management, formatting disks, etc. A couple of years ago I started teaching Solitaire for mouse practice, and quickly discovered other uses for it. I'm still finding more uses for it, and have been actively teaching it for the last few weeks (one hour a week, you understand). First, I did a screen capture of the game board itself, so they could all have copies. Then I pasted the instructions into a Word file and printed those out, using it as an English lesson. A couple of years ago it became clear to me that I could actually use Solitaire as a diagnostic tool to find those who have sequencing problems, which can suggest learning disabilities. This year I figured out that most of my students had never played cards (they are all from Mexico), and didn't have a clue what a deck of cards was about. I did one lesson on Playing Cards math, where I brought in an actual deck of cards and showed the four suits, the cards in each suit, and did some things about 1/4, 1/13, 1/26, 1/52, with simple adding, subtracting, multiplication, and division in English. My co-teacher had been working with them with these things in Spanish, so this was a nice follow-up with my own twist on it. Yesterday I actually played a game of Solitaire with a real deck of cards, so they could all see it. We did it as a group, with lots of questions about "what card comes next?" "what am I looking for to put this card on?" etc. Then back to the computers so they could actually play the game. I found one student who was clueless, even after all of this instruction, and found that I had to do one-on-one coaching with her. She's one I've had my eye on for quite a while as someone who has a lot of trouble making connections in a group setting. It's pretty clear to me that she needs special tutoring. Not that she's not intelligent, but there's some sort of processing problem, whether mental or emotional, or at least a different approach to learning that we've not been able to access very well yet. It's been quite amazing to me how much I've been able to do with this little game that I introduced just to give some mouse practice. If you think about it, it has to do with sequencing, sets, and logical orders of operations. I began to realize that the card games we all played together as a family when I was a child gave me a great deal in terms of math readiness and love of that sort of analysis and pattern-making. The other thing I've started doing is having each student enter their attendance each day. I have two Pentium computers that belong to our program, and one of those is the dedicated attendance computer. They all come in and open Excel every day, find their own file, and then enter the date's attendance hours. Of course, I also keep my own attendance records, but this gives them all a clear visual ongoing picture of their attendance in the program. It incorporates opening a file, saving and closing a file, as well as entering data. We now have reliable Internet capability on that computer, and I'd like some good ideas of how to use *one* computer to teach at least the rudiments of email and web browsing to the class. Any suggestions would be appreciated. >----------------------------- Sylvan Rainwater . sylvan@cccchs.org Adult Education Teacher and Family Literacy Program Manager Clackamas County Children's Commission . Oregon City, OR USA
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