Ups and Downs of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)

One of the most well known methods for working with students who are non-verbal is the Picture Exchange Communication System, or PECS.  According to the PECS website, “PECS was developed in 1985 as a unique augmentative/alternative communication intervention package for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and related developmental disabilities.”  As the name suggest, PECS begins …

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Staying up to Date

The most common question I am asked when I speak at a local or national conference is “How do you stay up to date with all of this stuff?”  While it would be nice to be able to say that I travel the world going from classroom to classroom and lab to lab to find …

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Apps from TechSmith

I use TechSmith programs often.  You may not be familiar with the company, but I bet that you have heard of some of the products they offer such as: Camtasia – Create high quality screen videos in many different formats Jing – Free site that allows you to create screen videos and images to share …

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Interactive Timelines

The use of graphic organizers in classrooms have been shown to be an effective practice for some time now.  Graphic organizers can be anything from a Venn diagram or KWL chart to an interactive web based support.  These types of supports help students make previously invisible connections visible.  Now before you get too excited, there isn’t any …

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Learning Styles

Are you a visual learner?  If not, maybe you are more auditory or kinesthetic?  If you are not sure, don’t worry because there is no shortage of websites or preference assessments you can purchase that will help you determine what type of learner you are. I bring this up because learning style preference assessments are …

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Ups and Downs of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)Staying up to DateApps from TechSmithInteractive TimelinesLearning Styles

Apr
21

Evernote – Remember Everything

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I ran across a cool litte application called Evernote that I wanted to share.  You can check it out at evernote.com.  According to the site:

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Did we mention that it’s free?

I have an office computer, laptop and home computer in addition to an iPhone and access to the internet about everywhere I go.  Evernote gives me a system for collecting notes, to do lists, websites, photos and more in one place.  Say I’m at a store and need to snap a picture of a product to check out later.  No problem, I just take the pic with my phone and add it to evernote.  It will show up on my computers, phone and evernote website when I log in.  Same goes for contacts, notes from a lecture and more.

From an educational perspective, think of how useful this would for students who are in seven class periods a day and have computers and/or internet capable phones at home.  I can see this being a very useful resource for them as they collect information for a report, story or other project.  In addition, for students who have poor organizational skills, this could be an excellent support.  A screenshot of the desktop version for windows is below, but this application works on the internet, mac and iPhone as well.  Oh, and it’s FREE for the basic version that should handle most uses.  The premium version on runs $5/month.

Evernote Windows Screenshot

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Apr
20

Digital Text Resources

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Finding sites with digital text (mostly free) is a job in itself.  However, this is one of the most important things overlooked when schools decide to purchase text to speech software.  I remember doing a 2 or 3 hour training on how to use such software, then asking participants where they were going to get their digital text to use with the software.  You would have thought I had asked how to solve a complicated mathematical equation.  Needless to say, I start my trainings off with this question now.  If participants leave thinking that they are going to have to scan in text books from beginning to end, I can pretty much guarantee you the use of the software will be around the same level as it was before you bought it.

I’ve included in this post a few places to check out.  The best thing to do is just CLICK HERE to download the Word document.  I can’t take credit for developing it, but it’s been past around so many times I cannot credit the original author.  I did however remove several out of date links and check the others to ensure accuracy.  This of course doesn’t include every resource out there, so if you can think of something else I encourage you to post it as a comment on this blog post.

Here are a few of the included resources along with descriptions (usually from the site itself).  Note that this is for free/non-copyright text.  Therefore they will not include links to textbooks or other copyrighted literature.  Those types of texts will many times need to be purchased separately or only used with students with specific disabilities.

Bookshare – http://www.bookshare.org

Bookshare offers more than 42,000 digital books, textbooks, teacher-recommended reading, periodicals and assistive technology tools. It is free for all U.S. students with qualifying disabilities.

Project Gutenberg – http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

There are over 27,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog

Bibliomania – http://www.bibliomania.com/

Free Online Literature with more than 2000 Classic Texts

AcademicInfo – http://www.academicinfo.net/

AcademicInfo is an online education resource center with extensive subject guides and distance learning information. Our mission is to provide free, independent and accurate information and resources for prospective and current students (and other researchers).

ReadPrint.com – http://www.readprint.com/

Offers thousands of free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast

Kids Corner – http://wiredforbooks.org/kids.htm

Contains a collection of Beatrix Potter’s books with text available in English, German, Japanese, and French.

WorldWideSchool.org – http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/catalogs/bysubject-top.html

The Intersect – http://intersect.uoregon.edu/

A Library of “Supported Text” books incorporating resources and study strategies that help students learn more from what they read.

Bartleby.com – http://www.bartleby.com/

Alex catalogue of electronic text – http://infomotions.com/alex/

The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.

Page by Page Books – http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/

Offers hundreds of free classic books with frequent additions to the collection

SchoolLibrary.com – http://www.schoollibrary.com

Offers public access to over 27,000 books and materials (choose public access from menu at top of page to access). Paying a nominal membership fee of $8.95 per year allows access to over 100,000 additional books and materials. Reading lists prepared by the University of Hawaii sort books by grade level.

20-20 – http://www.2020site.org/

Provides free books and other materials covering a wide array of areas. Topics include history, garden, children’s books, how-to books, home repair and decoration and fashion.

Classic Reader – http://www.classicreader.com/

Offers a large collection of free classic books by authors such as Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare and many others. You can read, search and even add your own annotations to any of the classic books. A selection of author biographies and portraits are also available.

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Apr
15

Cool Whiteboard Software

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Just finished reading about how to integrate whiteboard lessons into online learning environments where the FREE software LectureScribe was mentioned.  LectureScribe is a software developed by Brian Dean, an assistant professor of computer science at Clemson University.

I viewed a demo of the software and found it very well put together.  Although it is recommended that you use a tablet PC or WACOM (input device you for computers that you can use a digitized pen with), you could always use a regular PC with a mouse (just know it may be a bit frustrating).

The software gives you multiple boards so that you don’t have to include your entire lecture on one board.  It also allows you to record audio.  When finished, it saves as a .swf or flash file, which is compatible with almost all web browsers.  From there, you can post it to your site, blog, eLearning course or whatever floats your boat. Currently the software is PC only.

Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE!  Check it out at http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~bcdean/lscribe/.

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Mar
11

A communication device worth looking into

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I had an opportunity to take a look at a new communication device at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) Conference in January.  It is called the ProxTalker and is a bit different from other devices on the market.

Proxtalker communication deviceAs you can see, the ProxTalker’s design is one that fits in well with students who use systems such as PECS (picture exchange communication system).  Meaning that the pictures can actually be taken off the device and used as a low tech communication system, an exchange system or for an activity.  I think this is great because most students begin using symbols and symbol activities at an early age with programs like Boardmaker.   This system just provides students a gateway to move to a more advanced system without a major shift in ability.

The basics on how ProxTalker works is simple.  You just purchase the device and it comes with a hundred or so plastic “sound tags” that are used as the communication aides.  Here’s what the website has to say:

Each Sound Tag is encoded with a unique radio frequency identification code. When the Sound tag is place on the zone button and pressed, the ProxTalker detects the tag and then it speaks the word associated with the it. There are five word zone buttons so a complete sentence can be formed. Sound Tags are included with the device and are also available to add to a system. Specially designed binders and accessories are available for added convenience. Multiple real human voices and multiple languages are available. There is no programming involved.

I have been looking for a device that goes beyond the GoTalk and CheapTalk types of mid-tech devices, but are simpler than the dynamic display devices for some time.  In my short time experimenting with this device, it seems to fit the bill.

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Mar
10

A UDL resource you will want to bookmark

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Many of you may already be aware of the Free Tech Toolkit for UDL, but just in case you haven’t had a chance to visit it, you should do so now.  It’s actually a wiki and the address is http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/.  For some reason, during the time of this post, I was having trouble getting the homepage to load, but you still view the information by clicking on a category link on the left of the page.  Categories include free text to speech, graphical organizers, writing tools, research tools, reading tools, and much more.

The wiki is maintained by Karen Janowski, who also happens to have a cool blog I read on a normal basis at http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com/

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Mar
03

Academic Earth makes going to college easy

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I ran across one of the best sites I’ve seen recently after reading about it an article.  The site is called Academic Earth and this is how they describe themselves:

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment that in which that content is remarkably easy to use and in which user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

The colleges you can visit include the most pretigous in the United States.   Here’s a list:

  • Berkley
  • Yale
  • Harvard
  • MIT
  • Princeton
  • Stanford

The lectures are great and users can rate the lectures after watching.  I have never been one of the YouTube types that can sit around watching videos on the web all day, but I literally spent an hour (56 minutes to be exact) today listening to Paul Brown at Yale discuss Sigmund Freud.  I learned more in 56 minutes than I can remember from my entire college psych class and found the whole thing very enjoyable.

So in addition to giving you something useful to do during your free time, what else can Academic Earth be used for?  Just think of the opportunities this gives many of our students.  Not all of us are able to go to Yale or MIT, but viewing lectures from some of the worlds greatest professors gives us opportunities we may have never gotten otherwise.  This is just another example of how education is becoming more accessible.  You’ve probably heard of California’s Open Source Textbook Iniative or MIT’s Open Courseware project.  Academic Earth is another one of those great free resources to add to the list.

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Mar
02

Kindle 2 Released

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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.

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Feb
25

Read&Write GOLD Version 9 Mobile Released

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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.

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.

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Nov
13

Text to Speech just got easier

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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.

Software Applications:

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

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Nov
06

Converting Videos to and iPod Format

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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/

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