OHIO, PRESIDENTS, AND COMPUTERS NAME: Linda Young SCHOOL: Reynoldsburg High School WORKSHOP LOCATION: Columbus, Ohio TITLE OF COMPANION ACTION PLAN: Ohio, Presidents, and Computers GRADE LEVEL: High School (9-12) Cognitively Delayed students CURRICULUM/SUBJECT AREA: Computer competency SPECIFIC TOPIC:Ohio and Presidents CONTENT INFORMATION This was an initial class project targeted for the special needs students at the high school level. The teacher had not worked with the former media specialist, so this was our introduction to collaboration. She initially asked for atlases to take to her room and I asked if she would like to begin a class assignment which would introduce her students to computers and also research a subject. The following are the sources used to move to a study of Ohio, its Presidents, and the ability to move from site to site on a computer. DEWEY NUMBERS OHIO including 977.1 917.71 973.91 973.92 920.0771 PRESIDENTS including 920 and BIOGRAPHIES BOOKS AND REFERENCE BOOKS Ohio: a bicentennial portrait, 1803-2003 R917.71 The Ohio Almanac R317.7 Ohio: The Buckeye State 977.1 The Presidents in American History 920 Bea American Heritage Illustrated History of the Presidents 920 Bes Atlas of the Presidents 920 Coo Presidents Vol. 1-8 Grolier Press 1977 920 Pre Lives of the Presidents, Fame, Shame, and What the Neighbors Thought Our Countrybs Presidents. National Geographic, 2001 PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES Turner, Philip M. 2003. Teaching Teachers to Teach. Westport, CT.:Libraries Unlimited, Inc. _______.2001.Teaching students through Their Individual Learning Styles: A Practical Approach for Grades 7-12. Reston, Va.:Reston WEB SITES This www.whitehousekids.gov was excellent for this ability level. The students easily managed tracing the steps they needed. This adult www.whitehouse.gov site was good, but sometimes difficult for these students This site provided several good lesson plans for the Presidentsb lesson For the study of Ohio this site provided some helpful information. We originally used this site for the initial almanac introduction, but found many facts about Ohio and our presidents Yahooligans was one of our favorite sites! It led us into several areas and when we would finish our projects we allowed them to search around and they loved it! I would recommend this site as a beginning point for many searches with the special needs age group. INFOHIO ELECTRONIC RESOURCES One of the major thrusts we have used all year has been the introduction to the www.Infohio.org site. The students have learned how to simply copy and paste a site, print it to a printer somewhere else in the library, and understand how to switch to different screens. We used the following sites within Infohio to locate information about presidents and Ohio. SIRS Discoverer had excellent information for this special group and they loved the coloring and pictures provided. By clicking on Biographies they were able to find many facts about their presidents. AMERICAN NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY gave them a chance to see the basic biography information, but then notice that to the left there were many other subjects about their president that they could look at. To teach the students about finding images, we opened up the EBSCO site and clicked on images. Note that in Google many images are small and EBSCO almost always has large clean pictures. Again, we practiced highlighting, copying and pasting these pictures. They were thrilled to take something with them. MEDIA RESOURCES A video tape we found exciting was * Ohio 200 years * 977.1 CONCLUSION This project has been so rewarding to the students, teacher and me. The students beg to come to the Media Center every other week to see what we can try next. The teacher and I have formed a wonderful relationship and will be doing more projects in the future. This was a great initial lesson and I am sure we will be working on the next level soon!