Universally Designed

Kindle 2 Released

It’s official, the Kindle 2 has been released.  I must admit that after seeing the Kindle 2, I now think that I may have purchased my Kindle too early.  Although expensive ($359 at the time of this writing), it has updated many of the things that I find problematic with the 1st generation Kindle, including:

• Battery life - The Kindle 2 is reported to have a 25% longer battery life
• Delayed page turn - now turns 20% faster
• More storage - Hold over 1500 books
• Text to Speech - This is the number one thing I wanted in the first version of the Kindle but didn’t get.  Text to Speech is not only for those who have reading disabilities, but also for people wanting to listen to their book while driving down the road.  I prefer to read than listen, but after running a couple of red lights I’ve found that listening is the better option while on the road.  One worrisome factor here is Amazon’s decision to make it optional for text to speech to work with books after some heat from the Authors Guild.

The Kindle 2 has even fixed a few things that I thought were fine to begin with.  The device now uses a 3G wireless connection (where available), which should make the download process shorter.  I must admit that I never had trouble downloading so this isn’t a big deal to me.  There is also mention of more shades of gray being supported to make the text look clearer, but I never had an issue with this either.  I’ve used the device in low lighting and in the bright sun without an issue.

There are a couple of things that I would like to see added (these may be included, but I didn’t find any mention of them):

• Some kind of back lighting option available in case I’m reading at night.
• Page numbers at the bottom of the screen… the current system for numbering pages is confusing at best.  Surely (I know… you’re name’s not  Shirley) it wouldn’t be that complicated to put “page # of #” at the bottom of the screen so readers know where they are.
• A better way to show lists and tables.  I’m not sure I know the solution here, but there have been a few occassions when it was very difficult to understand what the author was trying to say due to the way it was represented through the Kindle.

Overall, I really like the Kindle and will consider upgrading when I get a better idea of how many authors/publishers plan on allowing text to speech.  I think the implications for educators and students are tremendous… just think, an entire library on something smaller than a notebook.   If you’re an avid reader it doesn’t take long to make your money back when Kindle books are typcially $9.99 vs. the $20 plus for hard copy new releases.

Read&Write GOLD Version 9 Mobile Released

Read&Write GOLD version 9 was released a few weeks ago.  I’ll do a post soon with my review of the product.  What I want to do in this post is tell about their mobile product.

Read&Write GOLD v9 Mobile

If you are familiar with Texthelp (makers of Read&Write GOLD), you probably know that you can get their software on a mobile drive.  This is beneficial to many schools for several reasons, including:

• The ability for students to take the drive anywhere they go.  This may be school, home or anywhere in between.  Administrative privileges aren’t necessary to use the drive, so any computer with a usb port will work.
• I know this may come as a shocker to many of you, but special education classrooms and the technology department don’t always see eye to eye on things.  Sometimes it can take weeks to get assistive technology installed.  Having a usb product allows you to have the benefit of the program without any installation.

Of course there are negatives as well.  No one wants to keep up with 1000 drives and students have been known to loose things, but a mobile is still a nice option to have.

What I like most about the Read&Write GOLD mobile is the drive Texthelp chose to put it on.  It’s a Kingston DataTraveler® HyperX®, which let’s just say is FAST.  You can find more information on it here if you’re interested.  This is probably the most important part of the mobile, because loading such large program takes time and we don’t want students to spend 3 minutes in front of the computer just waiting for the software to load up.

I personally have one of these drives and now use it for all of my trainings, but I do want to mention a couple of odd things in case you are the one who receives the drive…

First, this may be a vista issue, but when I received the drive I couldn’t just plug it in and use it.  Texthelp requires that you enter your serial number and agree to a few things before you use it for the first time.  What’s weird is that after this I kept getting an error about needing to unplug any other drives before it could finish.  I didn’t have any other drives plugged in however.

So what I ended up doing was just using an XP laptop and the process went much smoother.  If you are using a Vista desktop, I recommend unplugging all other external usb drives before you start, do not use a usb hub (plug directly into your computer), and run the program as an administrator the first time.  This requires you to be an administrator of course.  If you have admin privileges, simply right click on the .exe file and choose Run as Administrator.

Hope this helps.  Overall I think the mobile is a great product and great idea.  Just keep the above information in mind before you start using it.

Text to Speech just got easier

Most of us are probably familiar with products that turn digital text into speech.  Programs like Read&Write Gold and Kurzweil are feature packed applications that will not only read almost any digital text to you, but also provide numerous other supports such as advanced spell check, word prediction and more.  Other programs, like ReadPlease are basic (but free) and allow you to copy and paste any text in and have it read out loud.

The only major downfall to these programs is that a student must be sitting in front of a computer to use them.  Having one computer with text to speech capabilities doesn’t do you much good when 15 kids need it at the same time.

To help remedy this, there are several products out there that allow you to turn text into an audio file (typically an mp3 or wav file).  Once created, students can listen to it on their portable mp3 player, cd player, or even their computer at home.  Granted, this isn’t always as effective as being able to see the text as it’s being read out loud, but it does work for many students.  Surely you’ve seen all of the earbuds hanging out of kids’ ears haven’t you?

Before I list some options, I should mention one concern I consistently get is that not all students have the mp3 players.  This is true, but according to a recent report specializing in tracking the use of digital music and digital music players, over 70% of respondents ages 12-17 already have some type of portable music player.  This is up from 54% last year.  What’s more is that not all portable media players are as expensive as iPods.  A recent search on WalMart.com showed a 2GB video and audio portable media player for under $30!

Now that that’s out of the way, how do we turn text into audio files?  Well, there are really 2 ways: a software application (or one feature of a software application) and a web site.  Let’s look at each…

On the Web:  These websites allow you to paste digital text in and they will automatically create the audio file for you.

• Vozme.com
• HearWho.com (only free for limited amount of text)

Software Applications:

• Read&Write Gold - Contains a “Speech Maker” feature that turns text into a wav or mp3 file
• Text to Speech Maker
• Other options - a website containing several low cost text to audio programs

If you know of any additional programs, especially free programs, be sure to post in the comments section or send me an email.

Converting Videos to and iPod Format

Finding a solid free application to convert videos to an iPod format isn’t easy.  I’ve tried several out and have came to the conclusion that WinFF is about the best available at the time of this writing.
WinFF is about as simple to use as it can get.  Simply click “Add” (see screenshot below) to add the video you would like to convert, then choose what format you would like to convert it to.  The purpose of this post is to show a good converter for converting videos to an iPod format, but WinFF can convert to many other formats as well.

Download WinFF for free at http://code.google.com/p/winff/

Podcasting 101

I’ve held off on doing a post on podcasting because every school, district or organization I help get started have things in place that make them unique.  For example, I typically recommend using a blog to run your podcast through, but many places do not have or even allow the use of blogs.  Others may want to use their own server for podcasting while some organizations do not provide access to their servers by anyone except IT staff.  Having said this, I’ll use this post to provide the basic information you will need to create your own podcast.  You may email or leave a comment if you have additional questions.

The first thing I recommend is to give my previous post on “Podcasting and Podcatcher Options” a read.  It talks specifically about what a podcast is and how you subscribe to one.  This is important because I find that most people interested in creating their own podcast would be just as well off finding podcasts that are already out there.  There is no use in re-creating the wheel when many high quality podcasts are already available for you to download and use with your students for free.

Keeping the above in mind, here’s my 4 step process to creating your own podcast:

1. Record your audio.  Most podcasts are audio podcasts unless defined otherwise.  To record audio, I recommend downloading the free application Audacity.  It is simple to use and works great for podcasting.  One thing to note is that by default Audacity does not save audio files as MP3 files (the format needed for podcasting audio).  To remedy this, you must download the LAME MP3 encoder.  You can find this on the Audacity download page.  Once downloaded, upzip the file and copy the folder onto your computer in a location that you will not delete or move (your C drive, my documents, etc…).  The first time you use Audacity and export your audio to an mp3 file it will ask you if you would like to locate the encoder.  Just select yes, and browse to the folder. You will only have to do this the first time.  Audacity will remember the location for future exports.  Although Audacity works with both PC and Mac, most new Macs come with Garage Band, which has all sorts of additional bells and whistles for creating audio podcasts.
2. Store your audio file. This is where the unique part comes in.  Once you have created your audio file, you will need to store it in a place that is accessible via the web.  For example, my organization has a website at www.cksec.org.  If had an audio file named audio.mp3, and uploaded it to our server, you could access it by going to www.cksec.org/audio.mp3 (this is just an example, it will not work if you try to access this link).  Once there, you would either download the file or listen to it straight off the site.  This is important because if your file is not accessible through the web, no one except you can access it.  So where will you store your file?  Several options exist… For example, you may be able to store it on your organization’s server.  There are also several hosting services, like switchpod.com, that will host your files for you (usually for a fee).  You may also use a blog to store your files.  Blogs typically come with a predefined amount of storage space for videos, images, etc… that you want to share.  I use Edublogs.org and it gives me 100MB of storage for free.  This should be sufficient for several short audio files.  If you plan to produce large files (like video or long audio segments) you will want to upgrade your storage limit or only keep them up for a specified amount of time and remove them afterward to save space.
3. Syndicate your files.  Syndicating your file simply means making it available for subscription.  I explained in fairly good detail why you want to be able to subscribe to your files in my podcasting and podcatcher options post mentioned earlier.  In short, a podcast is not a podcast if you can’t subscribe to it.  It would only be an audio file on a website.  Syndicating your files is the primary reason I recommend using a blog to run your podcasts through.  Since blogs are already syndicated, simply including a link to your file in a blog post should suffice.  If you are not using a blog, you will want to use a service such as RapidFeeds.com to create RSS feeds for your files so users can subscribe.  Other services, like feedburner also help with syndicating feeds, tracking your subscribers and more.
4. Subscribe to your podcast.  Most information you need here is also available in the podcasting and podcatcher options post.  You need a podcatcher, such as iTunes, to subscribe to podcasts after they are syndicated.  Once you have your feed from step 3, simply go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast in iTunes and enter it in.  Then iTunes will automatically download your most up to date podcasts each time you open it.  If you use a blogging service, like Edublogs, this feed can be found by clicking the subscribe to posts button.  After clicking, copy the link from the new web page that is displayed and paste it into the subscribe to podcast box in iTunes.

Hopefully this post will be enough to get you started with podcasting.  If you are interesting in video podcasting, know that is very similar to audio podcasting excpet you will be recording video instead of audio in step 1.  I’ll go over some things to think about when recording video in a separate post.

Removing Shortcut Arrows

OK, so this post doesn’t really have much to do with educational technology, but it solves an annoying problem.  In Vista, if you have a shortcut icon on your desktop there is a huge arrow that attaches itself to the icon to show that it is a shortcut to another location.  One way to fix this is to edit your registry, but that’s never really recommended unless you are an experienced user and aware of all the risks.  Instead, download the free Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover by FXVisor.  You can download it from http://www.frameworkx.com/ or PC World.

After installing, simply open the program, choose no arrow and log off.  Once you log back on you’ll see that you no longer have a shortcut arrow on your icons.

Free Learning Styles Inventory

One of the first steps in creating a Universally Designed classroom is to complete a learning styles inventory with your students.  This gives you a better understanding of how your students learn best, which in turn should effect the way you deliver content.  My personal favorite free online learning styles inventory comes from Learning-Styles-Online.com.  Not only does it provide information on how you learn best, but if you are an educator it allows you to create an account so that after your students complete the survey it will build a classroom profile for you.  This is much easier than calculating and putting together a profile manually.  

Newspaper Generator adds Engagement to Activities

I just finished doing a session on using technology to motivate writers and came across this cool website. It’s called the Newspaper Clipping Generator. It’s purpose is to generate what looks like a newspaper clipping out of whatever you have your students write. They can choose the title of the newspaper and download an image of the completed product to print off and hand in or include in their blog or website. It does have a couple of shortfalls, namely it’s inability to show the full text of the newspaper title or the article itself. But then again it is a clippings generator, not an entire newspaper generator. My colleague, Lisa Shaw, mentioned how this is a great strategy for teaching students how to generate leads for feature articles.

Podcasting and Podcatcher Options

For those that aren’t aware, a podcatcher is a software application used to collect and play podcasts. By far, the most popular podcatcher is iTunes. However, not everyone wants to rely on only one software application. In addition, there are many schools or entire districts that do not allow the use of iTunes. So what exactly is a podcast and are there options for those wanting to subscribe to podcasts other than iTunes? That is what this post hopes to answer.

To start with, a podcast is simply an audio or video file that is syndicated, which means people are able to subscribe to it using a podcatcher. Why would you want to subscribe to a podcast? Let me use an example that I think will help. Imagine there are 5 podcasts that i am really interested in. They are on various topics, maybe Spanish lessons, technology, financial information, music, and math strategies. All of these podcasts contain great information, but it is a time consuming task for me to visit each site every day just to see if a new podcast has been posted. If I find that there is a new post, I then have to download and store it somewhere before I can listen to it on my computer or on a portable media player like an iPod.

Now let’s look at using a podcatcher, such as iTunes, to make this process more efficient. Instead of visiting each site everyday, I only visit it once. While there, I find the feed information for that podcast (usually by clicking on a link that says “subscribe to this podcast”). I take that link and copy and paste it into my podcatcher (if using iTunes go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast) and viola, I am now subscribed to that podcast. I do the same with the other four sites and now every time I open my podcatcher it searches to see if any new posts have been made. If so, it automatically downloads and organizes them for me. Is that cool or what! iTunes also offers an extensive list of podcasts you can search and subscribe to without ever leaving the application.

So moving on, are there other podcatcher options than iTunes? The answer to this is yes, but you may need to spend some time exploring the options to find which works for you. Below is a list of a few options you may want to try:

• Doppler
• gPodder
• Juice
• MediaFly
• myPodder
• NewsFire (mac only)
• NIMIQ
• PrimeTimePodcast
• QuickNews (for PalmOS)
• RSSRadio
• SmartFeed (for Windows Mobile)
• ZiePod
• Zune (Microsoft’s Version of iTunes)

I figure this list will do you for awhile. I personally use iTunes, but if I didn’t I would probably give Juice, MediaFly or ZiePod a try.  If you have tried one of the options above feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Using Jott as a Writing Tool

I know that I am not the first, and will surely not be the last to do a post on Jott, a free web based tool to convert speech into text, but I still feel the need to mention it here for my readers.

So what exactly is Jott, and how can it be used in your toolkit of Universally Designed activities for students? Well, to access Jott all you need to do is go to www.jott.com and setup an account. Once setup you will receive a verification code to use when you call 866-JOTT-123. After dialing the number and entering the code, you can choose to Jott yourself or someone in your contact list (which you can create after signing up for an account). To Jott is simply to speak a message. Once spoken, you can set up a reminder to go along with it if you wish. When finished, Jott will sent you an email or text message with the text of that voice note. How cool is that! You can use Jott to send yourself reminders while driving in the car, create lists, and even add dates to your Google calendar or make a blog post.

So how can this be used in Education? It just so happens that a colleague and I did a session titled “Ugh, I Hate to Write!: Innovative Ways to Use Technology to Motivate Reluctant and Struggling Writers” yesterday. A major component of it was using services like Jott to motivate writers. For example, one critical part of writing that is seldom done these days is writing to learn. These are the kind of things students do to help digest information. They are not graded, and the main audience are the students themselves. Activities typically seen in writing to learn activities include writing breaks (stop talking for 2 minutes and let students write what is on their mind), exit and admit slips, brainstorming or clustering, drawing and illustrations, write arounds and much more. So imagine next time you want your students to participate in a writing break you allow them to call Jott and speak what’s on their mind! This not only increases engagement, but is also much more accessible for students who may struggle with writing due to cognitive or physical disabilities.

The above is of course only one example. I can see students using Jott as an organization tool, a method for delivering admit and/or exit slips to teachers (remember that students can Jott to teachers and other students, not just themselves), brainstorming, and to take notes among many other things. Have an idea for using Jott? Write it in the comments section below.