Specal Ed Observation Essays - Segregation, Disability, Free Essays

Specal Ed Observation Essays - Segregation, Disability, Free Essays Specal Ed Observation Special Education Visitation For my visitation I went to the public high school in my hometown of Vineland, NJ. Due to time constraints I was not able to visit the school on a weekday when classes were in session. I did however get to witness another part of the special education/inclusion program called the Rooster Buddies. I did, however, get some information on the special education program from an administrator via phone and fax. The special education program at Vineland High School (VHS) is only seven years old. VHS is on a seven-period day, and the Severely Handicapped (SH), Special Day Class (SDC), and Resource Special Program (RSP) teachers are only assigned students two or three periods. The majority of students are only enrolled in a Special Education class one or two periods, depending upon their individual need. The breakdown of each individual section of the special education program at VHS looks like this: SH 10 Students 1 Teacher 1 Aide SDC 30 Students 2 Teachers 2 Aides RSP 50 Students 2 Teachers 1 Aide The administrator that I spoke to wrote in a fax the Special Education classes are transitioning into study skills classes so the teacher can provide additional help and support for the student to succeed in the regular class environment. During the four or five periods, when the teachers and instructional aides do not have students assigned to them, they are providing support for their students in the regular education classroom. The level of support is directly related to two factors: 1) What the student needs to be successful. 2) What the teacher needs to help the student succeed. So the support provided by the teacher may be provided daily in the regular education classroom, in the form of helping the student take notes, monitoring behavior, doing a lab activity, etc. The support may also take the form of weekly program checks with the regular education teacher, modifying and/or adopting curriculum, or teachers meeting informally to talk. As I mentioned before, I didn't get to actually sit in on a class but the weekend that I was home the Rooster Buddies were holding a fund-raiser. At the annual City Series basketball game between my alma-mater Sacred Heart and VHS the Rooster Buddies were selling an assortment of baked goods. The Rooster Buddies is a student club that was started with the intent of helping students with severe disabilities make the adjustment from a self contained classroom in a county special education school to the relatively unstructured experience of a large high school. VHS has over 4,000 students. There are more than 75 non-handicapped students in the club and they work with over 30 students who have disabilities ranging from severe physical handicaps to students with learning disabilities. At the game there were about 15 students without obvious handicaps and 4 students with visible physical handicaps. Since I was not with the administrator at the game I was unable to determine just how many of the seemingly normal students were non-handicapped. From what I saw, the students seemed to work well with each other and actually they were pretty efficient. At halftime they were really swamped by fans and they worked well. The physically handicapped students weren't just ornaments. They actively participated, as much as they could. One of the students, Alex I'll call him, was apparently paralyzed from the waist down. He had full use of his upper body and was one of two kids taking money. Another student in a wheelchair, who appeared to be afflicted with a more serious handicap (perhaps a form of cerebral palsy) was using the tray on his chair as a table displaying various cookies. The purpose of the bake sale was to raise money for a trip to a local amusement park. I thought that this was a good way to entice non-handicapped students to participate in the program. Another thing that I noticed that I found encouraging was the fact that the students with handicaps were into the game, as fans. Up until about two minutes before halftime and then again two minutes into the third quarter the physically handicapped students found their way out into the gym and watched the game from right near the student section. They were cheering just

A List of Programming Contests and Challenges

A List of Programming Contests and Challenges Link to C TutorialsLink to C TutorialsLink to C# Tutorials Not every programmer wishes to test his programming skills in a contest but occasionally I get a new challenge to stretch me. So here is a list of programming contests. Most are annual but some are continuous and you can enter at any time. The experience of stepping outside your programming comfort zone is entirely beneficial. Even if you dont win a prize, youll have thought in new ways and be inspired to have another go. Studying how others solved the problem can also be educational. There are many more contests than I have listed here but Ive winnowed these down to ten that anyone can enter. Most important of all you can use C, C or C# in these. Annual Contests International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP). This has been running for a decade and happens in June or July each year. Though its based in Germany, anyone can enter using any programming language, from any location. Its free to enter and your team isnt limited by size. In 2010 its from June 18-21The BME International is an intense free to enter contest that takes place in Europe once a year for teams of three, and you have to bring your own computers and software. This year, the 7th took place in Budapest. This has had some interesting challenges in the past- how about driving a car over a virtual terrain? Other past tasks included controlling an oil-company, driving an assembly line robot and programming for secret communication. All programs were written in one 24 hour intense period!International Collegiate Programming Contest. One of the longest-running  - this started in 1970 at Texas AM and has been run by the ACM since 1989 and has IBMs involvement since 1997. One of the bigger contests it has thousands of teams from universities and colleges competing locally, regionally and ultimately in a world final. The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a gruelling five-hour deadline. The Obfuscated C contest has been running for nearly 20 years. This is done on the internet, with email submissions. All you have to do is write the most obscure or obfuscated Ansi C program in under 4096 characters length according to the rules. The 19th contest took place back in January/February 2007.The Loebner Prize is not a general programming contest but an AI challenge to enter a computer program that can do the Turing test, ie talk to a human sufficiently well to make the judges believe they are talking to a human. The Judge program, written in Perl will ask questions like What time is it?, or What is a hammer? as well as comparisons and memory. The prize for the best entrant is $2,000 and a Gold Medal.Similar to the Loebner Prize is the Chatterbox Challenge. This is to write the best chatter bot- a web-based (or downloadable) application written in any language that can carry on text conversations. If it has an animated display that syncs with text then that is even better- you get more points! International Problem Solving Contest (IPSC). This is more for fun, with teams of three entering via the web. There are 6 programming problems over a 5 hour period. Any programming language is allowed.The Rad Race - Competitors in teams of two have to complete a working business program using any language over two days. This is another contest where you have to bring along equipment, including a router, computer(s), cables, a printer etc. The next one will be in Hasselt, Belgium in October 2007.The ImagineCup - Students at school or college compete by writing software applicable to the set theme which for 2008 is Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment. Entries started August 25th, 2007.ORTS Competition. ORTS (open real-time strategy game) is a programming environment for studying real-time AI problems such as path-finding, dealing with imperfect information, scheduling, and planning in the domain of RTS games. These games are fast-paced and very popular. U sing the ORTS software once every year there is a series of battles to see whose AI is best. The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a programming contest for the most creatively obfuscated C code. It started in 1984 and the 20th competition started in 2011. Entries are evaluated anonymously by a panel of judges. The judging process is documented in the competition guidelines and consists of elimination rounds. By tradition, no information is given about the total number of entries for each competition. Winning entries are awarded with a category, such as Worst Abuse of the C preprocessor or Most Erratic Behavior, and then announced on the official IOCCC website. Theres no prize except if your program is featured on the site then you won!Google Code Jam. Running since 2008, its open to anyone aged 13 or other, and you or a close relative dont work for Google or a subsidiary country and you dont live in a banned country: Quebec, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Syria, Burma (Myanmar). (The contest is prohibited by law). Theres a qualification round and three oth er rounds and the top 25 travel to a Google office for the Grand Final. Continuous or Ongoing Contests Hutter Prize. If you can improve on the compression of 100 MB of Wikipedia data by 3% or better then you can win cash prizes. Currently, the smallest compression is 15,949,688. For every 1% reduction (minimum 3%) you win â‚ ¬500.Project Euler. This is an ongoing series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. computationally the problems should be solvable in less than a minute. A typical problem is Find the first ten digits of the sum of one-hundred 50-digit numbers.Sphere Online Judge. Run at Gdansk University of Technology in Poland, they have regular programming contests - with over 125 completed. Solutions are submitted to an automatic online judge that can deal with C, C and C# 1.0 and many other languages.Intels Threading Programming Problems. Running from September 2007 until the end of September 2008 Intel have their own Programming Challenge with 12 programming tasks, one per month that can be solved by threading. You get awarded points for solving a problem, coding elegance, code execution timing, use of the Intel Threading Building Blocks and bonus points for posting in their problem set discussion forum. Any language but C is probably the preferred language. Codechef is Indias first, non-commercial, multi-platform online coding competition, with monthly contests in more than 35 different programming languages including C, C and C#. Winners of each contest get prizes, peer recognition and an invitation to compete at the CodeChef Cup, an annual live event. Annual Contests Hewlett Packard (HP) Codewars is for high school students and takes place every year on Hewlett-Packards Houston campus. its been run every year since 1999. Not only do students get the high-tech HP environment, a wide range of programming challenges, large amounts of good programmer food (pizza and caffeine), music, plus loads of giveaways. There are trophies for the top competitors in each of two classifications, plus loads of exciting door prizes like computers, scanners, printers, software, and accessories. This is the ultimate high school computer programming competition. Dont forget the About C, C and C# Programming challenges. No prizes but you get fame!