Writing With Symbols 2000 Workshop

Yesterday I taught a workshop on Writing With Symbols 2000. Participation was up, yet I would love to see more of our FLLAC staff members and more teachers from our districts come to trainings. WWS2000 is a talking word/symbol processor. As you type each word into a document and hit the space key, the symbol for that word pops up. It can be used to create schedules, social stories, cooking directions, etc.

It is very motivating for students learning to spell, but it can also be used to create writing grids for students who are not able to read or spell. Check out this online tutorial for creating a linked writing environment. It is relatively quick and easy to create writing grids, but there is less flexibility in WWS2000 than in Clicker 5 or Intellitools Classroom Suite. Many classrooms have this software, but don't know of this capability. I think it is important to make every tool that we have work to our and our students' best advantage.

More on Closing The Gap

Mayer-Johnson is releasing version 6 of BoardMaker. Some of the new features are the ability to drag & drop pictures from the web or other applications, the ability to align and center button content, resize multiple buttons along with their content simultaneously, and dashed borders. You will be able to export your files to version 5.3 format. Sounds goood!

Attainment has Calculator Tutor CD for $39. I was desperately looking for something like this last year. They also have a great pictorial Shopping List Generator and a great variety of inexpensive single-message devices.

Zygo has a communication device with a built-in cell phone called the TalkingAid Wireless! I didn't find it on their web site yet, so no link except to Zygo.

Nasco Special Education catalog now has Money Calc, a money calculator with a more mature look and the ability to enter coins and bills AND numbers, a great tool for older students an d adults to make sure they get the correct change when shopping.

Internet Explorer 7 - A Short Break from Closing The Gap

I just installed Internet Explorer 7 and am realizing that once again the world of digital information has changed. New security (well that is always relative!), anti-phishing tools, the ability to set how text appears to best suit your own vision, tabbed browsing, a nice clean look with or without standard menus are some of the new features. It also has button that lights up orange when a web page allows RSS feeds. Bloglines lets you install a Bloglines Browser Plug-In to use the button to subscribe through its service.

Nov. 2 I am teaching a workshop on Internet Tools. I am going to have to update even more of this workshop to accomodate these great changes and show my teachers how much more power there is in the web -- and it increases every day!

Closing The Gap II

Bridgette Nicholson (OTR/L) of Custom Solutions gave a wonderful presentation on The Power of Voice for Writing! Her talk went beyond the use of voice recognition software as she discussed voice play, recording answers or written work into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, use of digital voice recorders, quick creation of talking books in PowerPoint with Record Narration..., and so much more.

When students record directly into Word, they are independently expressing their own thoughts. There is no influence of an overly helpful or a discouraging scribe. If the teacher is not willing to or doesn't have time to listen to the recorded work, an Aide can transcribe the work directly in the Word document in brackets for the teacher to correct. This is a wonderful way to increase the student's independence.

As part of her online typing tuotrial program, you can test a student's writing speed and accuracy by alternative methods so that you can truly judge which writing accomodations work best for the individual. You can sign up for a free trial.

Bridgette is one of the many practitioners of Assistive Technology who are expanding our concepts of Assitive Technology in the ever-growing digital world. At this web site she has video clips of students using her techniques and a wealth of other information about the use of voice. It is definitely worth checking this out.

If this is not enough, Bridgette has also designed
AdaptaTRAY which is a wheelchair tray with holes, blocks, brackets & straps for optimizing positioning of arms, hands, switches, augmentative communication devices, and anything else you might need to position on a tray.

Closing The Gap - Top Highlight for Me

This year's Closing The Gap has got to be the best one that I have ever attended. Maybe it is because I have more experience and know more people, but there was wonderful networking, sharing, and many discussions about how to make Assistive Technology more effective in our respective states. I will make more comments on this in later posts.

My highlight was presenting on "Creating Early Literacy and Readiness Activities with Clicker 5." The room was packed, and there was a great deal of enthusiasm about using Clicker 5. In fact, people were talking about it everywhere!

John Crick designed a brilliant promotion for the introduction of Clicker Paint, due to be released in January 2007. It is a switch-accessible paint program with a simple interface and is also quite powerful. On Wednesday night bright red lanyards were handed out to attendees entering the hall. Each one had a sticker with 4 bright paint splashes. Each person who found his or her exactly matching set of colors received a $100 gift certificate for Crick software. It was lots of fun, encouraged conversations between participants, and definitely kept everyone's attention on Clicker!

There is so much more to talk about in posts over the next few days.

scanR - Another Web 2.0 Application

Brian Benzinger has published Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2 at Solution Watch. It is full of great online Office types of applications. I was looking for something that might be extremely useful to my teachers who have to submit Alternative MCAS Assessment Portfolios in Massachusetts. I have been sending emails to these teachers about trainings for submitting electronic versions of the portfolios and about a grant that they can use to purchase items like digital cameras or scanners. One of the applications mentioned can increase the mileage they would get out of a digital camera.

It is called scanR and "turns paper into useful digital information." You can take pictures of whiteboards, documents, business cards. Email the pictures to scanR, use a camera phone to take pictures and phone them in, or use a widget on your Google homepage. They will email a clean PDF file to you. Here's an example of a converted image.


This one is definitely worth playing with and it has that special 4-letter word associated with it - FREE!

del.icio.us.com Use My Links for AT Needs

I want to make sure that all of my teachers have access to information about Assisitve Technology, regular technology (and lines lines continue to blur,)and other tools that might be extremely helpful to teachers and students. I have been upating my tags and links at Jane's del.icio.us list .

Please check it out. There are lots of freebies, great free clip art, free programs, links to manufacturers and Assistive Technology products, and lots more.

More on Web 2.0 tools

I am just getting my feet wet in this new world (for me) of Web 2.0 tools. I checked my blogs and look what I found: This fantastic article on Solution Watch titled Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1 . It contains a list of tools that I can't wait to explore. What a great resource! It is written by Brian Benzinger who is 19 years old and is a web designer/programmer.

Assistive Technology - A Changing Concept

In October I will be teaching an introductory workshop on Assistive Technology and pulled out an old PowerPoint presentation to edit. I began by updating software versions. Intellitalk II is now part of Intellitools Classroom Suite, etc. I had pages for switches, alternative keyboards, talking word processors, portable word processors, slant boards, communication devices, and a number of other items that have changed little over the last 10-20 years.

Then I realized that there are so many more tools at our disposal than even 3 years ago. And many of them are FREE!! We have really entered a new paradigm in delivery of assistive technology to our students. We have new fonts to help our dyslexic students differentiate between b and d, p and q. Take a look at this image from Crick Software's ClozePro .

You can also download a free Dyslexia font.

We have new tools to provide text-to-speech for our print-impaired students. It is built into Office products and even operating systems, while more voice-recognition will soon be here in both products on multiple platforms. Computer voices have become far more human-like with AT&T Natural Voices , NeoSpeech Voices , and many others available. We can use programs like TextAloud MP3 to read our text out loud or convert it to MP3 files to play on our iPods. We can use high-quality, noise-cancelling, wireless headsets while dictating to the computer.

As I was searching for some good organizational tools for a student today, I gave up my search for traditional software and began to browse through the many choices of free, online, Web 2.0 tools. This blog is one example, but there are wikis, to-do lists, calendars, start pages with sticky notes, and so many more applications to choose from. With different looks and feels, different bells & whistles, we can now organize our lives, our careers, and interests with online tools and make them accessible to our friends, family, and colleagues. We can save and categorize all of our links on del.icio.us and share them on our blogs. Have a peek at my del.icio.us list for pages related to Assistive Technology: Jane's del.icio.us list . Another free application, PocketMod lets you make a free organizer that you can print on a single page of paper -- perfect for high school students.

Check out this article:25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive . There is a wealth of information icluding links to cusomizable start pages (see my Protopage example ,) online calendars, and planners.

The great beauty from the viewpoint of Assistive Technology is that all of this is digital information, accessible to everyone. Some of my friends are making an effort to talk about Education Technology instead of Assistive Technology. UDL or Universal Design for Learning is becoming less of an acronym and more of a reality. I am just scratching the surface in this short discussion, but there is a world of possibility out there.

WordBar by Crick Software

Another application that worked very well for my grandson was WordBar. It gives a student grids with appropriate vocabulary for a writing assignment. It comes with many grids or you can create your own. Anthony really liked the High Frequency Word Bank. It has 30 cells for each letter on tabbed pages. Clicking on a word enters the text into the document.
Many students that I work with do very well with word prection software, but Anthony was far more comfortable with a static list of choices. Here's a screen shot of the program. Check it out at WordBar.

CueCard 1.5

My grandson is 9 and in 4th grade. He has been struggling in school. A lot of testing has been done questioning ADHD, Aspberger's, anxiety disorder. He is very bright but clearly has some sort of communication disorder. His comprehension is good, but he has to work very hard to communicate his thoughts effectively. There are ongoing consults, his school principal and staff are very interested in helping him, and I wanted to try some Assistive Technology supports in the meantime. He has not been able to recall his multiplication tables this year, so I tried a free program, CueCard 1.5.

I typed in the entire multiplication table, 1-12. You enter each question and answer and the question pops up just like a flash card. He comes up with his best answer, then checks to see if he was correct. He clicks a button for correct or incorrect, then goes to the next question. He can study as many facts at a time as he feels comfortable with. The program tracks his success and only adds new cards when he has mastered the current facts.

His reaction was astounding. Like many children in this age, he is drawn to electronic forms of stimulation. Once he got the hang of it, we couldn't stop him & he was remembering those math facts!

CueCard can be used for any subject. Check this excellent freebie out for your students.



CueCard 1.5 Download Site

Using PowerPoint to Create Presentations

PowerPoint has got to be one of the most versatile programs for creativity out there & almost everyone has it! Last night I taught the first workshop in my serries this year at FLLAC on using it to create presentations. Only 2 people actually attended, but they learned a lot, go to experiment with many features, and generally had a good time. For those of you who could not attend, but would really like to learn how to use PowerPoint, I have placed my handout online. It is full of screen shots guiding you through each step. You will learn how to select styles and color schemes for your slides, insert charts, tables, clipart & media of all types, use research tools within the program, edit and combine clipart, create animations, and find royalty-free digital images or animations online.

PowerPoint Training Handouts

Another great resource for learning to use PowerPoint are the free trainings on all Office applications at the Microsoft web site.

Microsoft Office Online Training

Workshops

I will be teaching a series of workshops atn FLLAC this school year on technology for the classroom and on Assistive Technology. They will all take place on Thursday afternoons and run from 3:30PM to 5:30PM. The cost is $40 per class for out-of-district teachers and $30 for those who work in FLLAC member districts.

Take a look at the offerings.

FLLAC Technology Workshops

The Big Deal Book -- A Great Resource

I received a wonderful booklet from CDW-G full of informaiton for Educators. It includes goodies like free stuff, grants you can apply for, Hot Web Sites, and more. You can find the digital version online. I hope you find something you like and will use here.

The Big Deal Book of Technology for K-12 Educators

Getting there slowly

As I learn more about Web 2.0 tools, I want to make more content available, especially to the staff members of the FLLAC Educational Collaborative. In my links section, I have now placed instructions for using FLLAC email in Outlook Express or in your web browser.

FLLAC Email

Greetings as I Explore a New World

This is my initial post. I am an Instructional/Assistive Technology Specialist working for the FLLAC Educational Collaborative. We cover school districts in North Central Massachusetts. I would like to share ideas and activities that I have created for teaching children with cognitive,emotional, and physical disabilities. I tend to see a lot of younger children on the autisitc spectrum and children of all ages with a combination of fairly severe cognitive and physical disabilities. I love to create activities in Intellitools Classroom Suite, Clicker 5, and PowerPoint to provide access to the curriculum for these children.