Please see this letter in request of your support for the PATINS-Project to continue providing Assistive Tech and UDL support in the State of Indiana.  We would greatly appreciate your voice of suport.
Download Letter Here: PATINS AT letter of support 11-10-09

3D SL Wiki PATINS Staff

Think the idea of multiple parties in multiple locations collaborating on a single piece of writing in a traditional Wiki is cool?  Try to wrap your head around the possibilities that exist with a 3 Dimensional Wiki where each node or page of the wiki can contain text, links, notes, objects, etc!   Here’s a screen shot of the PATINS Staff participating in a 3D wiki experience on our Second Life Island regarding a Project Based Learning Book Study.   More to come on the possibilities here!  Don’t forget today at 2pm in my office on our Second Life PATINS Island will be the Accessible Technologies Round Table Discussion!  Here’s the slurl:

Mac Accessibility: Today, I’m doing a session for a district on some of the built-in accessibility features of Mac OS X and thought I’d might as well share a couple things here!

• Great Video Demonstration: Accessibility in Action
• Take your accessibility preferences with you: “Once you’ve customized your own Mac, you can take all your VoiceOver settings with you on the road. To do so, connect a USB flash drive to your Mac and choose Create Portable Preferences from the File menu in VoiceOver Utility.”

Quick Thoughts:

• Today’s students are expected to have about 7 careers, NOT 7 jobs in their lifetime.  How should this impact what we teach them and how we are teaching them?
  
• When you think about ACCESS to your curriculum; physical and sensory access is usually pretty concrete, but we must also think in terms of cognitive access.  What, specifically, are you doing with your teaching to account for cognitive access to the general education curriculum for ALL of your students?
  

TEXT TO BRAILLE: www.translatum.gr/converter/braille.htm

Featured Teacher! This week I spent a couple minutes talking to Maria Demopoulos about some of the things she is using video iPods for, specifically for social stories/scripts for some of her students on the autism spectrum.  Let me know if you know of other amazing teachers doing great things for students from a Universal Design for Learning or accessibility point of view!

Download

Flip Video Educational Pricing: Many of you have probably heard me talk about Flip Video cameras in my workshops and trainings and I wanted to point out that there is special educational pricing on some of their video cameras for teachers through the Digital Wish program.    http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/product?id=4310

Mac Accessibility: I got a couple questions this week, one from Warsaw and one from Jim about software to access an Apple computer.  Immediately coming to mind is the built-in Voice Over utility that comes on Macs and also some of the iPods now. www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover

• 50+ Reasons: …to consider using VoiceOver on your Mac. www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/reasons.html

Karen Kangas: …a handful of seats remain!
Sensory Processing, Integration and Seating with Karen Kangas: PATINS is once again bringing Karen Kangas back to Indiana for 2 intense workshop days at no cost to you!   There are still a few spots remaining for this workshop.  If you’ve heard Karen before or heard me speak ABOUT Karen, you know this isn’t one you want to miss!  November 17, 18.   Click Here to Register!

PATINS Project Island Main

PATINS Island Open House! Don’t forget to spend 10 minutes:

1. Creating Your Free Avatar:
   www.secondlife.com
2. Download and Install the Second Life Software.  Remember this can be installed to a $5 Thumbdrive and run from there.  No need to install to your computer’s hard drive if you’d rather not.
3. Make sure you can access the Second Life Grid by trying to log in once step 1 & 2 are completed above.
4. If you cannot log in, contact me.  I have some ideas that could help.

On OCTOBER 20, ALL DAY LONG, at least one PATINS Staff Member will be available on our Island to greet you, give you a tour, answer your questions, provide you with training demonstrations, etc.  Contact me with questions via email or leave comments on the blog!  Additionally, if you want to log in to SL earlier than October 20th to explore our island and would like one of us to meet you there, just let us know!

Additional Resources for learning about Second Life and getting started:

• PATINS Video Tutorials on Getting Started (5 minutes long)
• Second Life Getting Started Informational Sheet
• SL_Keyboard_Shortcuts

Remember you can register for any of the FREE trainings PATINS offers:
www.patinsproject.com/regional.html

Article on Sight-Words: www.donjohnston.com/enewsletter/teacherleadermcnulty.html

Karen Kangas! …is coming back to Indianapolis November 17 and 18! If you saw Karen last year when she presented for us on Seating and Positioning for Success, you know what sort of treat you’re in for by attending this year’s 2-Day workshop on Sensory Processing, Sensory Integration, and
Seating & Access.

• Flyer here: Karen Kangas Fall 2009 2-Day Workshop Flyer

• Registration here: www.patinsproject.com/training.html

FETC Virtual Conference: Last year I attended an FETC online virtual conference with Sandy and we both really enjoyed it.  It’s an experience you should consider if at all possible.  October 22 from 10am to 6pm.  Details and registration here: http://virtual.fetc.org/Microsites/FETC-Virtual/Event-Home.aspx

Fall 09 PATINS AT Overview Course: Don’t forget to register!  This is a great opportunity to become more familiar with Accessible Technologies and how you can help increase access to the General Ed. Curriculum in your building! As always, this course is free and provided by the PATINS Project.  It will run from 9/28 through 11/6.  More info here:
2009 AT Overview Coarse FAQ
2009 AT Overview Course REGISTRATION FORM

Time Zone Converter: Between Second Life Time (SLT), which is the same as PDT and EST, where I live and work and CST where some of the other PATINS Sites are and Australian time, where my in-laws live, and England where my brother-in-law lives, I tend to get confused now and then!  Here’s a resource that might be worth bookmarking for you and your students.
http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

Camtasia For Mac: YES!!! All I can say is that it’s about time!  Camtasia is hands-down my favorite program for recording screen tutorials, but until  this week it has been unavailable for Mac.  Here it is!  Unfortunately, it’s not a free one.  But, it is one that’s well worth spending the money on if screen recordings are something you intend to do right. www.techsmith.com/camtasiamac

Getting Started in Second Life: Second Life Getting Started Informational Sheet

• 5 Short Video Tutorials on getting started here: www.patinsproject.com/videos.html

]]> http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/08/28/8282009-featured-teacher-video-fetc-virtual-conference-karen-kangas-returns-camtasia-for-mac-getting-started-in-sl/feed/ 0 http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/02/06/262009-your-readoutloud-software-more-from-trld-and-atia-2009-mac-screen-capture/ http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/02/06/262009-your-readoutloud-software-more-from-trld-and-atia-2009-mac-screen-capture/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:03:54 +0000 danielgmcnulty http://nepatins.edublogs.org/?p=183

There are still many Indiana schol districts that haven’t taken advantage of this incredible opportunity to install Read:OutLoud text-to-speech on ALL district and ALL student home computers, AT NO COST!  PATINS-Project and the State of Indiana has already purchased this unlimited license for all Indiana K-12 districts with a Digital Rights Manager (DRM).  All the DRM in your district needs to do is go to this website to download the software: http://www.icam.k12.in.us/DJ/DJLogin.aspx

The September 15th letter announcing this unique opportunity for Indiana schools can be downloaded here: http://www.icam.k12.in.us/LEADRMannouncment.pdf

Remember this software can (and should) be used with all students, not just those who qualify for NIMAS File Sets.  Contact me with questions you might have about this opportunity.

TRLD: Two weeks ago I gave a few short intros to several tools I learned at TRLD and promised to go into more detail on them.  So, here’s one of my new favorites!

Bubbl: The first tool worth spending some time with is called, “Bubbl.”  Bubbl is a website: http://bubbl.us/, so it can be accessed on any computer with internet capabilities AND it’s FREE.  Think of Bubbl as a concept mapping or brainstorming application.  Each bubble can be moved, linked or re-linked to other bubbles, named, re-colored.  You don’t even need to sign up for the free account to start using it.  You simply click Start Brainstorming as in the image to the left.  If you want to save your creation, then you do need to create a free account.  This tool, to me, seems like a great resource for the classroom (any classroom) the case conference, parent-teacher conferences, alternate method of response and/or pre-writing preparation for students to use at home, etc.  A sample Bubbl looks like this:

ATIA…and some more from ATIA 2009: The idea of Assimilation vs. Accommodation was something interesting in one of my sessions that I wanted to share.  We all know that far too often, when we try to incorporate or implement technology into the classroom, that it ends up getting dusty over in the corner of the room.  There are likely many reasons this happens, but this concept of Assimilation vs. Accommodation is one that really stuck with me.  Most of the time I think we try to Assimilate technology into what we are already doing in the classroom.  Think of this as doing old things in new ways.  When we do this, we can often end up saving time, being more efficient, etc, but not really changing the core achievement of students.  Accommodation, on the other hand refers to really taking a look at doing things in completely new ways, possibly with new technologies.  Are we truly teaching our students to be literate when we consider non-linear or hypertext reading, interactive text and multi-media reading and navigation?

Mac Screen-Capture: I received a question about screen-capture software for the Mac yesterday and did a little researching that I thought was worth sharing.  On the PC, I certainly have my favorite tools of Camtasia (paid) and CamStudio(free).  But, on the Mac I hadn’t yet found anything I’d consider a favorite.  Here’s a quick list of products on the Free Mac Blog that I thought was certainly worth sharing here: www.freemacblog.com/mac-options-for-capturing-a-video-of-your-screen/.  Playing around with them myself, I have to say that I like iShowU HD the best.  It is not a free one, but relatively inexpensive at around $29.  It includes YouTube upload and capture from video cameras as well.  iShowU (w/out the HD) is around $20.   There is also an iShowU HD PRO for $59 which adds a few features you may or may not need such as watermarking and audio mixing.

JING:  Of course, there is my old friend JING for both the PC and the Mac that will also do screen capture as both still images and video.  However, the free version of JING only records screen video as an swf file.  This is fine, unless you need to convert to another format or do editing on.  The paid version of JING costs $14.95/year and offers many additional features including the recording of video in formats other than swf.

PATINS TECH EXPO 2009

April 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Junior Achievement Building
of Central IN, Inc.
7435 North Keystone Ave.
Indianapolis, IN  46240
No Cost to attend!   Door Prizes
To Register:
http://patinsproject.com/training.html

ATIA 2009: My session this year at ATIA was my first national session in a Mac computer lab, which I found to be a great experience!  The session went very well and I learned a few things from some members of the audience.  I also learned a lot from the many sessions I participated in as an attendee.  I’ll share a few of those today and more next week.

Text-To-Speech Recommendations: At the ATIA conference this past week, several recommendations were given with regard to text to speech and reading trends in general.  Some I thought were good general rules to keep in mind and some were simply wake up calls!  I wanted to share just a few that struck me:

• Over the last 2 decades reading achievement scores nationwide have hardly improved at all. The ‘pressure’ around test scores have changed, BUT the scores themselves have not!  This speaks loud and clear to me.  The way we’ve always taught hasn’t and isn’t working.  It’s time for the traditional classroom to be more universally accessible, which might mean that today’s classroom looks drastically different than what traditional educators are used to in the way instruction is presented, responses are accepted, students are engaged AND the tools we allow our students to bring into the classroom, leave turned on and actually use.
• According to the 2007 Nations Report Card, 1/3 of students aren’t proficient readers and 44% of 4th graders have a reading difficulty.  This is NOT just a special ed issue and again this screams out for a universally designed classroom experience.
• The discrepancy model or ‘waiting for failure’ no longer applies.  After 2nd grade, it is MUCH more difficult (if possible at all) to bring struggling readers back up to grade level.  Reading accommodations are needed even at early grade levels to circumvent the lack of reading fluency.
• Good readers read more and get better.  Poor readers struggle, get frustrated, read less and fall further behind.
• TIME SPENT READING IS THE GREATEST PREDICTOR OF READING GROWTH!
• Knowing that struggling readers need help: Digital text is dynamic, flexible, portable, malleable, non-linear, interactive, muli-media and able to be searched.
• When using Text To Speech with students AND having them watch the text on screen, a general rule of thumb regarding the rate is that it should be about 35% faster than that student’s oral reading rate.

Picasa For Mac!  Many of us have at least a familiarity with Google’s free Picasa software for editing, organizing and displaying digital images.  Picasa has been around and heavily used by PC users for quite some time now.  Well, Google has recently announced a free Mac version of the popular Picasa!  Give it a try here: http://picasa.google.com/mac/.  There’s also a video of how it works on the Mac HERE.

Dogs As A.T. When I was teaching, one of my absolute favorite activities was when Caring Paws Therapy dogs would come to my classroom to work with my students.  The benefits were incredible, ranging from improved social skills and confidence to improved reading fluency!  This morning I saw this article in SmartBrief and wanted to share: Smartbrief Article. If we consider a broad enough definition of Assistive Technology to be ‘anything’ that helps ‘anyone’ do something they couldn’t do otherwise and/or perform more efficiently, reading dogs might be a powerful tool!

More next week from ATIA and TRLD on 3D immersive worlds, reading research, switch access, etc.

Don’t Forget to Register…perfect time to learn about instructional technology and meet vendors

PATINS TECH EXPO 2009

April 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Junior Achievement Building
of Central IN, Inc.
7435 North Keystone Ave.
Indianapolis, IN  46240
No Cost to attend!   Door Prizes
To Register:
http://patinsproject.com/training.html

]]> http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/02/03/1312009-atia-2009-free-picasa-for-mac-text-to-speech-recommendations-reading-for-the-dogs/feed/ 1 http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/01/23/1232009-trld-conference-patins-tech-expo-09-immersive-pixies-udl-facebook-group-drm-registration-update-backup-your-blog-and-more/ http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/01/23/1232009-trld-conference-patins-tech-expo-09-immersive-pixies-udl-facebook-group-drm-registration-update-backup-your-blog-and-more/#comments Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:47:26 +0000 danielgmcnulty http://nepatins.edublogs.org/?p=178 Alright….LOTS of stuff today!  It’s coming at you fast with not alot of explanation to some of it, so get ready! I’ll go into more depth on some of these next week)

TRLD Conference 2009:

Lots of good stuff at the conference!  My session went really well this evening and was well attended.  A recurring theme at the conference and general buzz amongst people seemed to be that of professional development and how it seems that so many teachers are ready for it to be, at least in part, an online experience.  This is interesting to me and goes right along with my recent blogging about Second Life and other immersive environments as I believe this sort of 3D virtual world is where we are headed with a lot of professional development.

Some quick tips and things to try:

Zoho: Zoho is sort of like Google Apps on steroids.  Try this out as a great way to collaborate on documents!   It’s FREE.  www.zoho.com

Twidla: Twidla is a FREE interactive whiteboard that multiple people can use and colloaborate on at once.  It’s fairly basic, but it works really well and it’s free!  www.twidla.com

TagCrowd: A free, simple way to take a body of text and focus down to the most frequently used words in that text.  Very Powerful Tool in my opinion!  www.tagcrowd.com

UDL Editions: http://udleditions.cast.org/

Book Builder: http://bookbuilder.cast.org

CAST Curriculum Self-Check: http://udlselfcheck.cast.org/

CAST UDL Lesson Builder: http://lessonbuilder.cast.org

PATINS Project Tech Expo

April 16, 2009

Junior Achievement Building of Central IN, Inc.

7435 North Keystone Ave.

Indianapolis, IN  46240

• No cost to you.
• Varied Presentations nd Vendor Booths.
• Door Prizes and Giveaways!

• Register for the Tech Expo By Clicking HERE

NIMAS Digital Rights Managers Update:

• There are currently a little over 600 DRMs registered statewide.
• New DRMs can now be registered through the ICAM right on their website.
• There will be DRM Webinar Trainings from the ICAM almost every week, on Tuesdays.

Pixies Online: It’s been a few weeks since I’ve talked about immersive environments such as Second Life and I wanted to mention a couple of things.  First, we now have a PATINS-Project SL Group in Second Life.  If you create an avatar (which is free) in Second Life, do a search for PATINS and join our group!

These last few weeks, my daughters have been completely immersed in Disney’s Pixie Hollow, which is a free, online virtual world.  Unlike Second Life it is highly controlled and I feel, quite safe.  My daughters each have created multiple fairies (avatars), know how to fly them around, how to chat with other fairies, how to collect ingredients such as leaves and spider webs and how to decorate their fairy homes!   My daughters are 5 and 7 years old.  I’ve given them relatively little instruction or help once I helped them set up their accounts.  This is just incredible to me and it really goes to show that this sort of 3D virtual or immersive world is what our students are growing up with.  They understand it, it’s not “wierd” to them like I hear from many teachers and they are quickly able to learn with it, from it and contribute to their worlds.  I think we have an obligation to pay some close attention to what’s coming!

Congratulations Frontier Elementary School! Last Friday morning I visited Brookston, Indiana.  Frontier Elementary is the school I taught at and helped to plant the Universal Design for Learning seed prior to working with the PATINS-Project.   Having successfully completed the 3-year UDL Pilot Project with PATINS, the dedicated Frontier Elementary staff enlisted the help of the community of Brookston in order to continue funding technology (mainly SMART-Boards) to continue making the instructional environment of FES more universally accessible to students.  Friday morning, FES hosted a special ceremony to express their gratitude to all the donors and to the staff who put in a lot of extra work to make possible the purchase of 13 additional SMART-Boards at around $42,000!!!  It was an honor to return to Frontier on Friday and to be a part of the ceremony.  I’m certainly proud to be able to say I taught at FES and proud to be able to recommend FES to other schools looking for a model of how to scale up the UDL efforts in their buildings.  The dedication, hard work and teamwork of FES teachers and administration demonstrates that even in the current economic situation, funds do exist!  Check out the News Channel 18 (WLFI) coverage: www.wlfi.com/dpp/news/local_wlfi_smartboards_01092008

Welcome New UDL Teams! Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the 8 new schools selected this past October to particpate in the PATINS UDL Pilot Program met in Indianapolis for two intense days of training with Dave Edyburn and the PATINS staff.  Check out photos from the training here: www.patinsproject.com/PhotoGalleries/UDLTeamTrain2009

NIMAS Sample Contract Language: As many districts begin planning for textbooks and are talking with publishers, it’s important to remember to include language in your textbook contracts regarding the deposit of the NIMAS File Sets into the NIMAC.  PATINS and the ICAM have some sample contract language you can use here: www.icam.k12.in.us/generalinfo.php

MOBCASTING CONTINUED: So, hopefully last week you were able to set up your mobcast.  If you missed it, check out the easy step-by-step instructions.

Once you do have your free account set up and at least one episode recorded, you can login to your gabcast account (www.gabcast.com) to listen to your recordings online, download them individually OR you might consider submitting your gabcast mobcast to iTunes as a podcast (if you don’t mind it being public) OR you can simply share your mobcast RSS feed with the people you’d like to have access to the audio.

Submitting to iTunes:

1. Login to you gabcast account
2. Click on the My Channels Tab:

3. Click on the Title of your Channel:

4. Click the “CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE” orange button:

5. Click the RSS icon as the very first option on the page:

6. Copy (ctrl+C) the url in the address bar of the browser that opens up.

7. Open iTunes and go to the iTunes Store.  Once there, click on “Podcasts” in the upper left area of the iTunes Store.  You should then see an icon right in the middle of the store that looks like this:

8. When you click that “Submit a Podcast” button, you have the opportunity to Paste (ctrl+V) the address of your mobcast’s RSS Feed (from step 6 above).  This submits your mobcast to the iTunes Podcast directory for review.  It might take 2-4 days for iTunes staff to approve your podcast (verify that it contains what you state that it contains) before it will be public.

…AND THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT!  

Orator: Orator is a free Text to Speech and Text to Audio File application for the Mac OS.  Orator is simple and clean!  It’s a very light app that runs quickly and w/out problems.  It allows users to type into a window for text to speech/audio file OR to copy/paste text from other sources (docs, websites, accessible books, etc) into the window.  When producing an audio file, Orator creates an AIFF file, which of course goes straight into iTunes and onto your iPods!  You could also use iTunes to do a quick conversion of the AIFF file produced from Orator into another digital audio format like mp3 or AAC, etc. I’ve been using Orator to quickly and easily turn some of my text documents (that I don’t have time to read) into audio for my iPod to listen to in the car. Check it out:  http://homepage.mac.com/dougeverly/orator.html

Contact a Family (in SL): A new place I’ve come across in Second Life (SL) this week.  This is an advice center for parents with disabled children to meet others and access support and advice from a trained professional.  This organization is based in the UK and has been around for 30 years in Real Life (RL) and ventured into SL support for families just this year.   Definitely worth a visit!  The SL Slurl is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/20/54/23

NeoOffice: Think of NeoOffice 2.2.5 as Free, Open-Source office-type software for your Mac!  Includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases and even a drawing program.  This is based on the very popular OpenOffice.org office suite, but runs natively on the Mac without the need for the X11 windowing system.  You can also exhange files with other popular applications such as Microsoft Office.  This is a free download, but donations (even very small ones) are encouraged!  I’ve been using NeoOffice a little bit this week and have found it to be easy, quick and full of features.  I haven’t really been unable to find any tool or feature I’ve needed yet!   In fact, I think I’m on my way to donate now.

Also, look for the NeoOffice 3.0 version mid-January ‘09!
www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/neooffice.html

Should I Forward This Email? If you’ve ever wondered when it’s appropriate to forward emails, here’s 5 rules that might help guide your decision.  Or, if you’ve got that colleague who is constantly flooding your inbox with hard-to-understand forwards, you might pass this link on to them!  This follows last week’s posting and the recently added online etiquette widget to the right side of this blog and the idea of trying to incorporate online etiquette into your lessons with students as they grow up in this increasingly ‘online’ world.  www.netmanners.com/email-etiquette/5-rules-of-forwarding-email

Is Banning iPods Cheating Our Kids? This week in the UDL Online Book Review for the newly selected UDL Pilot Schools, lead by Tina Jones, a familiar discussion came up about iPods and other devices coinciding with school policies.  So, I thought I’d link back to when I posted on this topic about a year ago.  There’s a great article here: http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2007/11/09/1192007-tech-security-in-our-schools/

]]> http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/12/05/1262008-free-text-to-audio-app-for-mac-contact-a-family-in-sl-opensource-neooffice-ipods-in-schools-revisited-and-email-forwarding-etiquette/feed/ 0 http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/10/10/1032008-proofing-tip-readoutloud-resources-itunes-apps-state-conference/ http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/10/10/1032008-proofing-tip-readoutloud-resources-itunes-apps-state-conference/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:22:20 +0000 danielgmcnulty http://nepatins.edublogs.org/?p=130 Proofing Tip: Studies have shown that when we proof read our own material, we have a tendency to skip some of our own errors like double words, misspellings, etc.  Further, some of our students who have a difficult time writing, also really dislike proofing!  In fact, I’m going to guess they flat out refuse or they fake it really well!  One possible solution is to have your computer read your material back to you using any one of the many FREE text to speech solutions, including the new Read:OutLoud application for Indiana. On your Mac computers, you can simply use the built in text to speech.  Go to System Preferences, Speech and then Text To Speech. Other free apps include, Speakonia, ReadPlease, Natural Reader, Vox Machina, TypeIt ReadIt and many others.  Most of which, I’ve posted about in the past.  If you are interested, go over to the right and try out the search box feature of this blog by typing in something like, “text to speech,” or “speakonia.”
NIMAS Resource:As more Digital Rights Managers (DRMs) in Indiana begin taking advantage of the Don Johnston Read:Outloud opportunity announced on 9/15/08 as a free text-to-speech option from Indiana/PATINS/ICAM, we’ve been getting lots of questions on it.  I’d like to point out 2 resources on the Don Johnston Website that should not be missed:

Parent Forms, CD Labels for Take-Home Rights and More: www.donjohnston.com/products/read_outloud/un_access.html

Read:Outloud Video: www.donjohnston.com/media/flash/product_demo/readoutloud/index.html

ALSO, on the PATINS Website, one of the new Video Tutorials is specifically on using Read:OutLoud to open/convert a NIMAS File Set.  View it here: www.patinsproject.com/videos.html

Remember that you can also contact the ICAM and your Regional PATINS Site Coordinator for more info on Read:Outloud and other text-to-speech and NIMAS related software as well.  Contact info here: www.patinsproject.com/contact.html

iPod Touch Apps: It seems like more people everyday are starting to use the iPod Touch or the iPhone.  I know of at least one UDL Pilot School planning to implement iPod touches in their classrooms.  The technology in these devices is exciting to me and the educational possibilities with this sort of technology is just beginning!   Looking in the iTunes App Store, I found several educational applications including, flash card apps, math apps, foreign language apps, study/review skills apps and more.   Some of these apps are free and others range from $2 up to $10 or slightly more.  If you haven’t done so already, go to the iTunes store from within iTunes, then click on Apps and browse the Education category a little bit:

Don’t miss the
PATINS State Conference-

Accessing the Curriculum, November 10th and 11th. The “Early Bird” price break on registration has been extended to October 17th. Details can be found here.

There have been a lot of great, free, regional PATINS workshops and trainings going on around the state that many of you have been taking advantage of.  Additional workshops/trainings can be scheduled as well: www.patinsproject.com/regional.html Please note that there has been a slight change in workshop registrations for the NE PATINS Site.  All registrations must now be completed online rather than by faxing a form or calling.  See here: www.patinsproject.com/ne.html This should simplify the process and help elliminate errors and confusion.  Contact the NE Site if you have problems or questions with the new registration procedure.

Next Week is Closing The Gap in Minnesota.  I’ll be out of the office, but will be returning email as possible. I’ll be gathering information all week and then presenting on Friday afternoon.  I can’t wait to share information on the blog!

]]> http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/10/10/1032008-proofing-tip-readoutloud-resources-itunes-apps-state-conference/feed/ 0 http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/09/05/952008-turning-your-mp3s-into-ipod-audiobooks-and-more-digital-story-tellingdst/ http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2008/09/05/952008-turning-your-mp3s-into-ipod-audiobooks-and-more-digital-story-tellingdst/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:52:52 +0000 danielgmcnulty http://nepatins.edublogs.org/?p=121 Converting to mp3’s to iPod “Audiobooks” You probably have lots of mp3 files by now and if not, your students probably do!  However, what you may not realize is that an mp3 audio file is not the same thing as an iPod “Audiobook” file.  Audiobooks tend to be very large files such that you aren’t likely to listen to an entire book in one sitting.  If you’re listening to an mp3, you’d have to spend valuable time searching for the spot you left off at when returning to a book you previously had listened to in part.  With an “Audiobook” or iPod m4b format, your iPod remembers exactly where you stopped listening during your previous session, even if you had listened to other content in between sessions!  This could be extremely valuable to you and your students as you create accessible materials, including audiobook conversions from NIMAS File Sets!

So, here’s a couple of free and easy ways you can do it:

For PC:  Download and install this free mp3 to m4b converter: http://www.freeipodsoftware.com/index.php

For Mac: Audiobook Builder is nice little application, but is $9.95.  Alternatively for the Mac is Make Bookmarkable v.2.5, which is free and works quite well!  It’s also nice, because it works right within iTunes, where your iPod Audiobooks are going to end up anyway. Donations are accepted if you like and use Bookmarkable however.  http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=makebookmarkable

To me, it makes a lot of sense to convert your NIMAS File Sets, Text To Audio Conversions, etc to iPod Audiobook format rather than a simple mp3 or wav file for the primary purpose of improving efficiency with students who may already have some difficulty with time constraints.

A couple more Digital Story Telling Tool I wanted to make sure Indiana teachers know about this week.

#1 Slideoo: This is SOOO easy to use.  It works with your flickr account photos and honestly creates a slideshow from your flickr photo set/s in about 3 clicks and then makes it 1-click easy to post it to other places on the web and/or to share it.  Downside is that there isn’t any text, voice-over or music.  http://www.slideoo.com/

#2 VoiceThread: This one is unique because it almost allows a dialogue to happen.  Multiple voices along with your images and text can all be utilized to create a very interesting experience for the viewer and an incredibly engaging interaction for those creating the digital story.  http://voicethread.com

~REMINDERS~

PATINS Regional Site Trainings: Don’t forget that you can always see the workshops and trainings that are scheduled at each of the PATINS Regional Sites here: http://www.patinsproject.com/regional.html. Many workshops have already been scheduled and posted!

PATINS State Conference! …and don’t forget to register for the 2008 PATINS State Conference here: http://www.patinsproject.com/training.html Deadline is October 17, 2008

The Conference Booklet (including registration form) can be downloaded here:
http://www.patinsproject.com/Conference/ConferenceBooklet.pdf

Register for the Free PATINS Assistive Tech Online Overview Course here:
http://www.patinsproject.com/overview.htm Deadline is September 12, 2008

NEW UDL Pilot Site APPLICATIONS being accepted!  Info here:
http://www.patinsproject.com/udl.html Deadline is October 6, 2008