Madalena+Boudreau+-+Content+Delivery


 * Madalena Boudreau: New Media – Think Outside the Box **

After completing the EdTechlocator assignment, the area that I need to strengthen is Content Delivery. Even though this skill is immerging for me, I believe the more professional development courses/seminars/conferences/classes I attend, the more software and free references I am being introduced to. I try to bring this knowledge back and incorporate it into my student sessions. Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck using the same software and free sites with the children but I have to remember as bored as I get with it, they do too.

For the month of December, I have chosen to work on the Polar Express theme with the classrooms I service. Currently, I work with children that are non-verbal and communicate via switches, eye-gaze, facial expression and pointing. After reading Educational Leadership: Engaging the Whole Child (online only): The Neuroscience of Joyful Education, it has provided me with information that helped me to go about planning my lesson plan. Such information included, “When students are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience “aha” moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery (Kohn, 2004).” “Cognitive psychology studies provide clinical evidence that stress, boredom, confusion, low motivation, and anxiety can individually, and more profoundly in combination, interfere with learning (Christianson, 1992).”

I kept in mind to keep the children engaged and learning will happen. I started out the lesson by having the Polar Express read to the children from an audio book free website [|www.storylineonline.net] and projected it on a Smart Board for all to watch and listen.



The next lesson, I had the children create “My Polar Express 5 Senses Book”. The children had to select their answers from a picture or object field of 4 as to what they see, hear, smell, taste and feel on the Polar Express. After they created their book, I was able to input their choices into a survey, which I had created on survey monkey. The following link brings you to the survey which I have left open for others to view []

After all the questions and answer were inputted, I was able to project the results on the Smart Board so the children could see how everyone answered and which answers were the most favorable. The following screen prints are the survey results from the 9 students in the class.



Finally, we worked on sequencing and mapping. Given choices (the boy’s house, the forest, the mountains and the North Pole) the children selected which event happened first, second, third and fourth. From there, I had created a map of the events on Google Maps. I allowed the children to also choose which photo they wanted inputted on the map. Please click on the following link to see our Polar Express to the North Pole map []

This assignment not only opened my eyes to the amount of free websites and resources that are available for learning but it truly built up my confidence to using these sites. I never thought that I would have been able to create a map with text and photos embedded into it, but I did it!! It just encourages me to see what else is out there and what else I can tackle.