Tech Bytes

Do you have students who need text read to them? If so, there is a Google Add On that can be found in the Chrome Web Store called SpeakIt!.  SpeakIt! allows a student to highlight text while on the Internet and have it read to them. This is a great tool for students who have difficulty with reading comprehension, who may be slow readers, or students who have dyslexia. This tool is a quick way for your student to help themselves instead of waiting on someone else to solve the problem, or worse yet, don't complete an assignment due to their reading difficulty. If you are a Google school or if your students have a personal Google account, they can use this Add On.  Watch the instructional video to learn how to add this to Google Chrome.

As many of you have begun to try new and creative ways to engage your students with your curriculum by using technology, I wanted to offer encouragement. There will be times when lessons fail: because the technology doesn’t work, because the lesson wasn’t completely thought out, because the idea was good, but the execution left something to be desired. Whatever the case may be, when you are being creative and takings risks, failure will happen. Robert F. Kennedy said “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”. He wasn’t saying we should embrace failure, rather embrace the purpose of failure, which is to learn from it. I came across a three part article written by Michal Eynon-Lynch, the second of which is titled, “ Failing Toward Success ”. In this article, she address how as educators, we should respond to students work, especially when they do not reach the standard set. However, I also think the article relates to how we should respond to our own teaching m