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

PATINS-Project Staff in Second Life Image

Here’s your chance to see what the PATINS Project is doing in Second Life.
We are hosting an open house on our Second Life Island and you are invited to join us to see what it is all about.
When:    Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Time:     9:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. and then again 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. EST
Where:  Go to: http://slurl.com/secondlife/PATINS%20Project%20Island/114/98/26

Various PATINS staff will be available during these hours and activities will include island tours, formal address and discussion of potential future events and training/meeting topics.  You must already have your avatar created prior to this event in order to participate. Attached, you will find how to “GET STARTED” on Second Life or visit the PATINS Website http://patinsproject.com/videos.html for 5 video tutorials that walk you through getting your avatar created.  You can always contact us ahead of time for additional help.

Give it a try… and give us feedback on how you like it, and what you would like to see us provide you on our island.

1. Do you have an Avatar created? See here: www.patinsproject.com/htm/TrainingVideos/SecondLife/SecondLifeIntro1/Second%20Life%20Introduction%20Tutorial%201.html
2. Do you have the software downloaded and installed? See here: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/?lang=en-US
3. Have you checked to make sure you can access Second Life and that your computer meets the minimum system requirements? See here: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements
4. Do you have the address or slurl for the PATINS Island? Here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/PATINS%20Project%20Island/114/102/26
5. Need The One Page Getting Started Hand Out? Second Life Getting Started Informational Sheet

Free Online Sketch Pad: I’ve recently been playing around with the potential use of a pen/tablet type of device in place of a traditional mouse.  During this experimentation I’ve been fascinated by the ability of many of these devices to respond to pressure (pressure sensitive) and have been looking for a free way of utilizing this technology.  Check out this Free Online Sketch Pad. www.onlinesketchpad.com

RFB&D Books! The ICAM is pleased to announce a recent agreement made with Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic to provide audio digital format to certified students with a print disability textbooks and trade books (novels). The Agreement allows at no cost to the school district to place request for materials and download materials through your ICAM registered Digital Rights Manager. To learn more on training and how to access RFB&D See the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic tab on the Tools & Downloads page.

• Announcement Letter: www.icam.k12.in.us/RFBDannouncementfall09.pdf
  More Info Under the RFB&D Tab here: www.icam.k12.in.us/downloads.php

Read:OutLoud Image Logo

Read: OutLoud: NEW VERSION FREE!!!!   FOR ALL YOUR COMPUTERS!!!!  Version 6 has many GREAT improvements!

More info and perform download here: www.icam.k12.in.us/downloads.php

Caption YouTube Videos: Just sign in with your Google Account and quickly caption YouTube Videos to make them accessible.  Easy and Free: http://captiontube.appspot.com/

]]> http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/10/16/10162009patins-sl-open-house-tuesday-new-readoutloud-version-6-free-for-all-your-computers-rfbd-book-opportunity-free-online-sketch-pad-caption-you-tube-videos/feed/ 1 http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/09/29/1022009-featured-teacher-2-mac-accessibility-ipod-touch-for-young-students-flip-video-educational-pricing-patins-second-life-open-house-karen-kangas-other-workshops/ http://nepatins.edublogs.org/2009/09/29/1022009-featured-teacher-2-mac-accessibility-ipod-touch-for-young-students-flip-video-educational-pricing-patins-second-life-open-house-karen-kangas-other-workshops/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:05:47 +0000 danielgmcnulty http://nepatins.edublogs.org/?p=391 8 Year Olds with iPod Touches: Check out this Learn 4 Life article and video on using iPod Touches with a classroom of 32 eight year old students.  They were all networked through an Airport AND allowed access to the internet! www.l4l.co.uk/?p=835

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

• Record by Phone
• Text To Speech (You can choose from several voices)
• Record By Mic
• Upload Audio File

What a COOL way to build in a little bit of accessibility to your online content like class blogs, school newsletters, etc.  Immediately coming to mind is the parent who contacted me last year, who was blind and unable to access her child’s school newsletter.  Build in some audio prompts for your students!  This could also be used as an alternate response method for some of your students!  Definitely worth checking out:   www.audiopal.com

Pogo Boards: “Pogo Boards: AbleNet Edition is the world’s first all-in-one, full-featured, robust, web-based, board-making solution.” The light version of this board creating online software is FREE!   Definitely worth a look!  I hope to play with this more next week and post some detailed thoughts.

Second Life Building Help: The real power of Second Life is the ability to model, teach and interact in 3 dimensions. Everything in SL is of course, built by users like us!   Here’s 2 tools to help you get started!

• Basic Building Info and Definitions: (in text format)
• Top 10 Building Tips from Vlad! This a very informative video.  I learned a lot myself!
• Keyboard Shortcuts for SL: SL_Keyboard_Shortcuts

Some AAC Tips and Resources:
…from my friend Chris: www.aacintervention.com

Register for Workshops:
Don’t forget to register for regional PATINS Workshops: www.patinsproject.com/regional.html

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!

Regional PATINS Workshops: Having personally spoken with several people this week that are new to this blog, I thought I’d post a quick link to the Regional Training Opportunities you might be interested in knowing about.  Many are already scheduled and additional trainings can be scheduled by request!

Go here and click on the link representing your region of the state: www.patinsproject.com/regional.html

Adapted Spelling Tests: I got a request this week to help make a spelling test more accessible for a student who struggles with handwriting (fine motor control) and thought my response might be worth sharing.  This was something I used to use in my classroom with a student who has since passed away, but who still inspires me almost every single day.  She would take all day to write her spelling test and we still couldn’t read it, but cognitively knew 90% of her spelling words or better every week.  So, I simply utilized the FORMS TOOLBAR in Microsoft Word OR the FORM CONTROLS TOOLBAR in Open Office.  This works in either one.  I would used these tools to create a form consisting of a combination of Form Fields, Drop-Downs, Radio Buttons, and Check Boxes, which allowed my student  to truly show what she knew with regard to spelling.  No longer was she being given a spelling grade based on her handwriting ability.  This is super easy, free and quick.  See screenshots below.  I’m also happy to walk through this over the phone/email with anyone needing help.  Of course, Forms can be used for so many things beyond spelling tests too!  Be creative!

Open Office Screenshot

MS Word 2007 Screenshot

A Sample Shot of the Final Product

Don’t Forget…To get your avatar created and Second Life software installed and running so that you can participate in the PATINS Project Second Life Island Open House on October 20th!

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 if that’s an issue.
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!

Second Life Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet: Down load here: SL_Keyboard_Shortcuts

Scuba Diving with Disabilities: An avid diver myself, this caught my interest and thought I’d pass it along.  This is really cool in so many different ways.  If you’ve heard me talk about broadening your definition of assistive technology and thinking more along the lines of accessible technologies, then you probably already know what I’m talking about.  But, maybe the barrier preventing someone from learning is the engagement piece.  Or maybe the barrier is actually someone’s preconceived notion that “they can’t do it.”  For example, “people without arms can’t scuba dive.” …right?

“Elliott is undaunted by the nature and degree of a diver’s disability, or age. He works with children, starting at 8, who are visually impaired, paralyzed, have autism, cerebral palsy or almost any other disability.”

Here’s a man ‘undaunted‘ by the severity of someone’s disability when it comes to taking them under the water with a regulator and compressed air to give them what could be a truly awesome sensory experience or motivational experience.  It makes me wonder why we still seem to have so many educators so ‘daunted’ to take these same students with disabilities into their classrooms to provide them with equally wonderful experiences.  In the light of Project Based Learning, this is exactly the sort of experience that could just ignite motivational wild fires in some of the students we struggle with in class to get even a little participation from.   Click Here for the Article

Online Learning: This week I participated in an ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) webinar on Project Based Learning and Collaboration.  One of the many very interesting components of the discussion in that webinar was some recent meta research looking at online learning.  While the search turned up relative little research in the K-12 world, the results did indicate that more learning occurred online that face to face and even better performance yet was obtained by utilizing a combination of face to face and online training.

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.
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!

Talking Calculator for iTouch/iPhone: Of course you probably are as used to me blogging about the extraordinary educational power in the iTouch/iPhone as you are me blogging about immersive 3D environments!  …but, Nanette from Elkhart came to see me today to pick up her refurbished computer, talk about some accessibility issues, NIMAS and other stuff.  One of the things she was looking for was a big-button talking calculator that didn’t make her student feel like she was standing out or using an “un-cool” tool.  Again, if it’s not socially valid, it’s not likely going to be engaging.  A quick look in the app store yielded a .99 application that is a very simple talking calculator with larger buttons.  It’s not perfect, but for .99 is worth looking at for some students.

Greetings Indiana Educators! I hope everyone has had a relaxing and inspired Summer and are now settling back into the school routine.  No more Brussels Sprouts philosophy this week.  I’m back into the groove and ready for some new, exciting, free/cheap, and engaging 21st Century Accessible Technologies! …hope you are too!

PATINS Project Island Main

With limited time this summer, I decided to devote much of my free time to building on the PATINS Project Island in Second Life.  I’m pleased to let you know on this beautiful Friday morning that the Second Life PATINS Project Island is up and running and ALMOST ready for Indiana educators to come check out!  For much of the past 2 years, I’ve blogged about Second Life and many other online, immersive, 3D spaces available  for the purpose of professional learning networks, technical training, 3D workshops, etc., for educators as well as for student learning, role playing and social scripting.  It’s exciting now that PATINS is almost ready to open our island up to Indiana educators looking for a safe and secure space in which to do these things.  What I’m looking for NOW is a group of 5-10 educators interested in participating in some preliminary trainings/meetings as the facilities are developed and fine tuned.  If you are one of these educators, contact me via email, phone, skype, SL or simply leave a response here on the blog.

UDL:  For any of the current or former PATINS UDL Pilot Teams, here is a free training opportunity: BCSC UDL Flyer September 17-18.

Register Quick! The PATINS-Project Assistive/Accessible Technologies Overview Course tends to fill up fast!  Registration for the Fall 2009 Course is now open. 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

Scratch for SL Image

SCRATCH IT! Over the Summer I was introduced to a program called Scratch, or more specifically, Scratch for Second Life.  In short, what this FREE program does is allow you to create scripts or programs that you can attach to just about ANY object in Second Life, causing it to become animated and/or controlled by your commands.  This is very exciting news for educators in Second Life!  What this means is that you can create, buy or find any object in Second Life and use Scratch to animate it without having to know anything about programming!   It’s all drag & drop and copy & paste.  …Super simple and highly effective!  This brings modeling, teaching, learning and networking in an online environment to a whole new level!  Oh, and did I mention, it’s FREE?   Check it out for yourself:
http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/S4SL/

I’m planning to do a few workshops this year, both in Real Life and Second Life, where we’ll be working with Scratch to create some teaching and learning tools!  Keep a look out!

Mr. Glass

Great Teacher Featured: Last week I spent some time in Warsaw doing some hands-on trainings and came across a teacher named Rick Glass, who reminded me that there are so many incredible teachers out there doing amazing things who have so much to offer, but often don’t get to share beyond their own school district.  Mr. Glass made several comments in response to various questions I asked during the workshops and it became obvious to me that he’s had Brussels Sprouts on his grocery list for some time now.  So much of what he’s been doing in his classroom NEEDS to be shared with other educators.  When I asked Rick for permission to write a little about him in this week’s blog, he agreed and shared, “I am excited about the ways I have been permitted to teach my students.  What is most fulfilling is seeing their excitement grow as they take responsibility for their own learning.  I love teaching them to learn to love learning.  Please feel free to share anything I might be doing that could encourage others who read your blog. All the best, Rick” What I specifically wanted to share with you this week about Rick is the Global Virtual Classroom project he and his students are a collaborative part of.  Along with a school in Illinois and a school in Israel, Rick’s class works on this collaborative project-based learning initiative as a way to engage his students in reading, writing social, technology and community oriented skills.  Their website can be explored here: http://gvc0801.gvc08.virtualclassroom.org/

…I hope to include a little more from Rick next week and if YOU know of an Indiana educator doing amazing things with accessible technologies and Universal Design for Learning who’s ideas should be shared, please do let me know!

Article 7 Learning Opportunity: For those of you in the Anderson area, INSource will be offering some free training next week. 

Article 7–Getting a Fresh Start in the New School Year”, 7 on August 27, 2009. This is a 2.5 hour training and open to the public, but registration is requested.  More information and registration here: http://insource.org/forms/08-27-09MM-Gen.html

Second Life Art: A few  good places for art-related content in Second Life were recommended to me this week.  I haven’t been able to spend much time in any of them yet, but thought they were worth sharing at this point.  Check these out and tell the art teachers in your building to check these out!  Let me know if you need help w/Second Life.

1. The Present Age:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Utwig/153/253/291
2. Gallery: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dakota Skies/125/67/22/
3. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Immersiva/116/157/24/

Converting Video Formats? I’ve had the question come up several times this week about good, free programs for converting a video from its current format into a different format, so I thought I’d post my favorite tools once again.  (Remember that VIDEO is one of the new Accessible Formats listed in Indiana’s Article 7 (511 IAC 7-36-7).  The other 7 are Braille, Audio, Digital Text, Large Type, Tactile Graphics, Captions, Audio Descriptions.

• “Any Video Converter” is still a favorite of mine:  http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/
• Another good one is “Super”: http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html
• A third one I really like that works well on both Mac and PC is “MPEG StreamClip“:  http://www.squared5.com/

Accessible Book Resource: This resource came across one of the groups I read this week: LINK HERE.

More TRLD: Another tool I learned about at TRLD that’s well worth discussing this week is ZOHO www.zoho.com.  I was instructed to think of Zoho as Google-Docs on steroids!  Being a big fan of Google Docs, I was very keen to spend some time with Zoho, and I have to admit that the steriod comment was probably an accurate assessment of this tool.

As this screen shot indicates, Zoho offers LOTS of great tools including apps for mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, file management, databases, invoicing, web conferencing and more!   Did I mention that Zoho is FREE?  You do need to create a login or you can use your existing Google account or your existing Yahoo account.  IMPORTANT: One thing I recently learned that you should also take note of (if you don’t already know), is that with most of these free tools such as Google Docs, when you create docs using their applications, they technically own those documents.  This was very startling to me.  However, Zoho’s Terms of Service pretty clearly state that you own the content you create.  This is a huge positive for users!  In fact, Google’s and Zoho’s Terms of Service are pretty much exact opposites of one another in this regard.  These are things you should think about when using tools like these.  Keep in mind however, that the real power in these sorts of tools is in the COLLABORATION opportunities they provide.  Multiple people, from multiple locations w/out needing any other software, can collaborate on a document or a project and be making almost real-time edits!  That’s powerful and exciting stuff!  Zoho also has chat, calendar, planning and utilities like website monitoring and polling that I’m hoping to explore further soon!

Plan To Attend
PATINS TECH EXPO 2009

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

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

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