• This plan was updated recently.  504 Plans and IEPs should be updated yearly.  Students change and the supports they require in order to be successful can change.  For example, a student may not need a 100% time accommodation anymore and may only need a 50% accommodation.  The opposite can also be true.  A student with a 50% extended time accommodation may still be struggling and may need more time to complete their assignments. If these plans are not reviewed frequently, the student might continue to struggle.
• The section "Information Relating to Nature of Disability" was more detailed.  I liked that it included what I'll call "personality information."  I find it helpful to know if a student is shy and doesn't often reach out for assistance.  To me, the more information provided about the student, the better I can accommodate this student.
• The section "Description of Accommodations/Services" was very specific. I liked seeing exactly how much extended time was offered to Sally.  As the instructor, I find it helpful to know exactly what I need to do for a student to best support them. Plan A mentioned preferential seating. This accommodation is not incredibly useful in the online environment.
• The "Student Responsibilities" section was also more detailed.  This section mentioned that Sally should communicate BEFORE a due date to arrange an extension, not after. This helps Sally be proactive with her assignments, rather than reactive.

• Plan A was implemented in 2016, but isn't scheduled to be reviewed until 2019.  This means her plan is not scheduled to be reviewed for 3 years!  Three years is an eternity for a growing child!  That could be the entirety of middle school!  Or it could be implemented in 8th grade and wouldn't get looked at again until 11th grade!  That would mean the student could go almost all of their high school career without even a glance at their accommodations.  The adjustment from middle to high school often challenges students and not looking at the child's accommodations to see if they still make sense for 3 years is ridiculous!
• The section "Information Relating to Nature of Disability" lacked information.  Plan B included things like Sally's personality and academic strengths. Leaving this information out of Plan A leaves the teacher receiving Plan A at a distinct disadvantage when trying to support Sally.
• The section "Description of Accommodations/Services" was pretty vague. 
• This section mentions extended time, for example, but does not mention how much.  With a plan like this, the teacher does not know how much extended time to offer the student.  We used to have problems with this in my face-to-face classroom.  Plans were written vaguely and stated that the student had "extended time" on their assignments.  Students and parents would approach teachers at the end of the semester with piles of work stating that their plan allowed them to turn in this work late.  Or, students would have, for example, a week of extended time, but then they wouldn't complete their assignments before the in-class test the assignments were meant to prepare the students for.  Having a reasonable and specific amount of extended time, keeps everyone on the same page. It lets the student know how much "extra" time they get and, hopefully, avoids procrastination.  It also lets the teacher know specifically how much extra time to offer the student.  
• This section is vague with respect to the "reduce coursework" accommodations.  When this particular accommodation is written like this, students and parents often expect the number of assignments to be reduced drastically and sometimes even expect to "pick and choose" which assignments they complete.  Written this way, this accommodation does not take into consideration the fact that the student must still learn all of the state-mandated standards of the course.  Plus, some courses have a bare-bones number of assignments, so there isn't a lot of overlap or room for removing assignments without significantly compromising the integrity of the course.
• This part of the plan also mentions preferential seating.  This makes little to no sense in an online environment.
• The "Student Responsibilities" section lacked detailed. Students do well when they know exactly is expected of them.  This section lacked the detail that was found in Plan B.  It does not mention that Sally should contact the teacher BEFORE the due date, rather than after the due date if she needs an additional extension.

1. She was able to attend the synchronous sessions even while in the hospital. I remember one week in particular where I was conducting my synchronous session in the waiting room of the hospital waiting for my nephew's birth and she was in a completely different hospital in a completely different state attending the session.
2. She was able to work on her assignments when her health allowed.  If she was able to work while in the hospital, she worked.  If not, she did not.  She received numerous extensions during the semester, but she always had her documentation in order.  Her mom was very good about keeping me in the loop (most of the time).  If I noticed she hadn't logged into Brightspace in a few days, I'd email mom and she'd immediately email back and let me know what was going on.
3. She did not have to worry about seat time or attendance or things like that.  She could focus on her health without worrying about attendance issues. When I was in high school, I was very sick and missed approximately 50 days of the 180 day school year. I received notices that I would lose my parking permit due to absences and even received a letter with my straight A report card at the end of the year stating that I would not earn credit for any of my classes and would have to repeat them all, even though all of my absences had accompanying doctor's notes. This was very stressful for me and my parents and I'm glad that this was one worry my student did not have to deal with.
4. Most of our labs are virtual labs.  They get the concept across to students, but do not require standing for long periods at lab benches, attending school in person, and can be completed by students in a hospital bed, if necessary.

Joyce has accommodations for an Emotional/Behavioral Disorder. Her mother informed you that Joyce's specific diagnosis is Anxiety and Depression, and she sometimes does not respond well to correction. She plagiarized a large section of her essay for your class this week. How will you handle this situation?

• using the Welcome Escape room in my class
• adding email templates in Outlook
• creating a video in Camtasia with a quiz
• entering zeros with Michael's tip that allows zeros and feedback stamps to be seen in the dropbox AND gradebook

1. The notes pane.  I NEVER use this pane anymore for notes.  It displays WAY too small for students to see, especially in the low quality of a recording.  I have switched to the whiteboard pane for this type of information.  That way I can write as large as I want and it shows up MUCH better in the recording.
2. I have switched to a black background for working out problems.  This was suggested in my Advanced TOOL group and makes the colors stand out much better.
3. I would love to implement little "check" quizzes here and there, but until I can get some consistent attendance, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend time creating a bunch of questions to give no one.  I think that could make the session more interactive.  Although, just having students attend live would make it more interactive too :)

I've been trying to implement the Panes we discussed in Jigsaw 103, especially the whiteboard, as I think it could be useful, but I hadn't used it much at all for content-related stuff.  I had to pre-decide what I wanted to discuss in the Whiteboard.  This month, I decided to try adding images to the whiteboard and discussing/annotating these images in the whiteboard.  I had to upload these images as assets and tag them appropriately.  Then, I had to add the images to the session.  Next, I had to add the image to the whiteboard.  During the session, I put the whiteboard on follow me and discussed/annotated the image.  I'm not sure how it improved engagement, because no one attended either session live, but I liked having a large copy of the image for the students to really understand important concepts. 

Annotated image in 4 pane view: 

Annotated Image in 2 Pane View: 

IF you use the 2 pane view and "add whiteboard" and then put the whiteboard on follow me, the whiteboard will show up as a "strip", not the whole page.  IF you choose the "actual" vs. "fit", the image/text will look large on your screen, but still remain quite small on the student's screen.  So, the best way to use the whiteboard still seems to be the 4 pane view, at least until Jigsaw is changed. 

What I saw: 

What They Saw: 

Best Practices/Tips: 

1) Plan your session in advance.  Don't try to upload an image in the middle of your session.   

2) Before the live session, log into the session and go ahead and insert the image into the whiteboard so it is ready to go 

3) Make sure you put the screen on "follow me" so the students can see the image as large as possible while you are discussing it. 

I've been trying to experiment with the features I haven't tried yet instead of sticking to my same ol' same ol'.  I tend to be one of those "if its not broken, don't fix it," but sometimes an update or a renovation isn't a bad thing, even if it wasn't broken in the first place :) 

My partner and I made a goal this month to practice screensharing.  Both of us had been hesitant to use it with Jigsaw before because we knew that there had been a few issues regarding screensharing in the past.  However, these issues were cleared up not long before we decided on our focus, so we decided to go with it! 

Screensharing can be very helpful in science courses.  Our students have quite a few virtual labs in their courses and even with clear instructions on the lab handout, the kids can sometimes get confused or not sure about which values to put into the data tables or how to set up the simulation or even how to do the calculations in the lab.  So, sharing our screens and walking them through the lab is very helpful, especially for our special education students. 

I ended up doing my screenshare trial during a non-live session for a couple reasons: 1) I wanted to make sure it worked before I tried it when students might be present; 2) I wanted to see what the recording looked like before I tried it in a live session so I'd know what to expect; 3) I don't often have students attend my sessions live, so I could make a screenshare for a lab AND also be able to use my live session time to solve practice problems – something the kids really need in a computational science like physics. 

My recording is on YouTube here: Newton's 2nd Law Lab.  I've edited it to take out the places where I felt like I messed up or repeated myself or whatever. 

A few things I noticed about my recording: 

1) The quality isn't as good as a recording done from Quicktime on my computer.  Do I need the recordings in HD?  I don't know, but the quality is still less. 

2) There are some places in the video where the screen goes black but I'm still talking.  I'm guessing this was a blip between my connection with Jigsaw.  I don't have these issues using Quicktime because I don't have to connect to any servers when I record my screen on my computer. 

3) Overall, it would work if I needed to share my screen to show students something, but I wouldn't want to rely on it during a synchronous session that no one attended live because I wouldn't know if they were getting the dark screen or not for the recording, which is what my students tend to utilize the most. 

I liked the idea of recording myself walking my students through a lab and the students that viewed the recording had higher scores on their labs, so I think it was helpful.  I like having that recording in my repository of helpful things I can provide for students.  However, using Jigsaw for those recordings seems, at this time, to be a waste.  I can do the same thing using Quicktime and avoid the server issues with Jigsaw and get a better quality recording.  Since making the recording through Jigsaw, I have been trying to record myself walking the students through other labs and posting those recordings for them, so even though I wouldn't use Jigsaw to simply make a screenshare recording, the idea of recording myself doing the labs came from this activity and I have been implementing that, so overall the activity was helpful.