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" Apple has long touted its device's assistive technology as a powerful tool for the educational development of physically and mentally disabled children. The iPad's touch screen makes it easier to manipulate than more traditional educational tools. For children with autism, "the iPad is not a toy, but a tool that works best when there is a 'team effort' between parents and therapists encouraging its proper use," said Marc Reisner, co-founder of Reach for the APPs. "Our goal is to provide schools with iPads so they can reach every child on the autistic spectrum." Reach for the APPs built their site with an initial donation from Managed Digital. Now, they're seeking out donations of money and/or iPads from both individuals and corporations to propel the program forward. According to reports from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1-in-88 children have some form of autism, up 78 percent from just a decade ago. The demand for augmentative communications devices is growing. But the schools can't meet the demand, so the children are losing valuable time during critical developmental years. Lois Brady, a speech language pathologist and assistive technology specialist, said apps can help develop fine-motor skills, which will in turn make functions like writing and manipulating small objects easier for the students. "I have spent years working with the most challenging students that are considered profoundly disabled," she said. "And I have seen some small miracles when I introduce the iPad into our therapy, as the children have made huge gains in attention, focus, communication, language and literacy skills." Some experts also say that the iPad can lessen symptoms of autistic disorders, helping children deal with life's sensory overload. Brady will be contributing content to the Reach for the APPs website to inform therapists about the latest-and-greatest apps for children all over the autistim spectrum. Apps must be tailor

There are many tools... (explanation to be completed...) There is a tension between following many people to broaden your information pool and being overwhelmed with the flow of tweets. It's an individual decision on how many to follow - why not start small and experiment? Most teachers prefer to network with other educators, but there is great value in having a diverse set of people to follow within Twitter. Below, you will find a number of tools and resources that can help you find interesting people to follow.

Buy Facebook Followers Introduction One of the most popular social networking sites is Facebook. Users can engage with one another using a variety of tools on Facebook. The capability of following other users is one of these capabilities. You will see someone's updates in your news feed on Facebook if you follow them. You can keep up with someone's activities by following them on Facebook. Buy Facebook Followers What Is a Facebook Followers? Facebook is among the most popular social networking sites. Users can engage with one another using a variety of tools on Facebook. The capability of following other users is one of these capabilities. You will see someone's updates in your news feed on Facebook if you follow them. You can keep up with someone's activities by following them on Facebook. Buy Facebook Followers

"You may have heard the educational buzz about the free app Periscope. With this app, you can record a live broadcast and share it with followers or with the public. If you aren't familiar with the it, check out this Education Closet article from the fall: http://educationcloset.com/2015/09/15/up-periscope-reimagining-arts-integration-professional-development/ Many educators have jumped on the Periscope platform, broadcasting tips after school hours or live from their classrooms. While it is easy to sign up and follow broadcasts, it can be daunting to record a public broadcast yourself. After learning about Periscope, I thought this might be a useful tool for my school district to help teachers network and learn from one another. I ran the idea by my principal, and she was immediately supportive. To help with privacy concerns, we decided all of our broadcasts would be set to private. In order for anyone to see a private broadcast, though, our staff must be mutual followers of each other. Here's the plan we followed when rolling out a school-wide Periscope community."

Who's not following you back? Who aren't you following? Check the followers/fans/friends of others or yourself.

"Today there are many resources for people to learn code. The Barbies and GI Joes of yesteryear have become tablets and smart phones. Young kids, such as 12-year-old Thomas Suarez, who gave this excellent TED Talk, are learning advanced forms of coding that few adults even fully grasp. The following is a list of websites online that offer free tutorials and courses for children that want to learn how to code. And even if you are not a kid, you might learn a thing or two. We reviewed a collection of websites and the following three are the best that we found, incorporating various features that put them above the rest. We went through all the most popular coding websites on the Internet and found the three best free coding websites, based on the following criteria: ● Ease of use ● Aesthetics ● Fun ● Effectiveness ● Free Without further ado, the following are the best coding websites we found that was designed especially with kids in mind."

"For those who do not know, here are two basic Twitter principles: 1. If you only follow ten people, you will only see the general tweets of those ten people. 2. If only ten people follow you, only those ten people will see your general tweets. Although some might argue that the right ten people might be enough, I would argue that ten educators is a very limited professional learning network. The never-ending task of building a PLN is to continually follow really good educators to get the information they put out."

"Yesterday I wished my friends could see the beauty of my snowy backyard and I discovered the Meerkat app. It seems everyone is buzzing about the free app that allows you to connect your iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch camera to Twitter and live stream or schedule the video you shoot real-time to all of your followers.  You can shoot videos portrait or landscape and turn the camera on yourself or the scene beyond. Your live video stream shows up instantly on your followers' Twitter feeds.  As folks start to watch, their Twitter profile pictures appear, and you can see and interact with your viewers,  Your viewers' tweets to you appear on the screen, allowing you to respond.  Followers who have the app get notifications of additions and may watch, comment and interact on the app."

"In my last post I shared how presentation platforms/communities contribute to my professional learning, sharing, and growth. Search the Scoop.it community Also in my arsenal are tools that, in the old days, we would have called current awareness services. These curation tools allow you to follow others who share your interests and to push newsfeeds to your inbox after setting up a variety of search/interest parameters. Some push automatically; some allow you to hand-pick and annotate specific items from those feeds. Most also allow you to curate discoveries made on the fly through the use of a handy browser bookmarklet to facilitate clipping, scooping, pinning, bookmarking, etc. when you are not actually on the platform. These curated newspaper/magazine communities allow members to follow other members to facilitate discovery.  Again, it's all about the network.  Your discoveries will be as powerful and the people and organizations you chose to search and follow."

"Please take the following survey and share your thoughts, then pass the link on to your colleagues and friends. I'm writing a new column for the Appealing Apps for Educators series in Appolicious and I'd love to get gather the opinions of educators and students on their favorite apps that they've used this year. These apps do not have to be new to the education market this year. Vote for one app per category only; apps can be listed in multiple categories. You also are not required to submit an app in every category. K12 classes may want to consider discussing the following categories, and making one group entry. NOTE: This is not a survey for app developers to promote their own work. Do not take this survey if you are not a K12 student, a K12 class or educator."

"Evernote Food makes it easy to use your iPad or iPhone as a digital cookbook, and a new feature for iOS users makes following a recipe even more seamless. Now, when you've opened a recipe you plan to make, your display won't go to sleep while you're cooking. You can follow a recipe without needing to re-enter your passcode to unlock your screen, creating a more efficient cooking process - and less flour on your device when you're ready to clean up."

"I'm not sure of the way most people learn the complicated process of programming Arduino projects because I only know my own convoluted journey. I started the hard way following projects from the Arduino Starter Kit by building photo sensor theremins and electronic magic 8 balls. Here is one of my first Arduino projects I created at a class at the Denton Public Library. (The tweet below is a flashback to the Coding Bonanza I led at Lamar Library in 2014.) I quickly found that I wanted to do things OTHER than what the projects outlined, but I just didn't have the code knowledge to hack projects and make them my own. I continued following projects and attempting to tinker with code. For someone with absolutely no background in coding, it was quite an arduous journey. Imagine my surprise when I found out about the ScratchX extension from Kreg Hanning at SXSWedu in 2015!"

"Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand. The projects teach students how to make a stable product, use tools, think about the needs of another, solve challenges, overcome setbacks and stay motivated on a long-term problem. The projects also teach students to build on the ideas of others, vet sources, generate questions, deeply analyze topics, and think creatively and analytically. Many of those same qualities are goals of the Common Core State Standards. (What Does 'Design Thinking' Look Like in School?) I use the following activities to introduce elementary students to the design thinking process. The ultimate goal is for the learners to work on their own, self-selected problems in which they will apply the design thinking. Introducing the general design process to elementary student occurs through showing the following video about the engineering process:"

"This paper captures the evolution of the Mozilla Web Literacy Map to reach and meet the growing number of diverse audiences using the web. The paper represents the thinking, research findings, and next iteration of the Web Literacy Map that embraces 21st Century Skills (21C Skills) as key to leadership development. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, and more people come online, Mozilla continues to refine its strategies to support and champion the web as an open and public resource. To help people become good citizens of the web, Mozilla focuses on the following goals: 1) develop more educators, advocates, and community leaders who can leverage and advance the web as an open and public resource, and 2) impact policies and practices to ensure the web remains a healthy open and public resource for all. In order to accomplish this, we need to provide people with open access to the skills and know-how needed to use the web to improve their lives, careers, and organizations. Knowing how to read, write, and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs-reading, writing, and arithmetic-in a rapidly evolving, networked world. Having these skills on the web expands access and opportunity for more people to learn anytime, anywhere, at any pace. Combined with 21C leadership Skills (i.e. critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, creativity, communication), these digital-age skills help us live and work in today's world. Whether you're a first time smartphone user, an educator, an experienced programmer, or an internet activist, the degree to which you can read, write, and participate on the web while producing, synthesizing, evaluating, and communicating information shapes what you can imagine-and what you can do. follows:"

"In this 3.5 minute screencast, digital learning consultant Wesley Fryer demonstrates how to use the $4 iPad application "eBook Creator" to export an enhanced eBook (in ePub format) to the DropBox application, and then email a public link to the ePub to a Posterous blog so it will "post" as a publicly accessible link for anyone to download. The following iPad apps are required to follow these steps:"

"Each morning as we start our day together, I draw attention to things that my students may have missed or mentions from our Twitter feed. This short time together each morning discussing our Twitter feed has resulted in rich discussions that prompt thinking, cause us to wonder and lead us to seek out further information. There are many opportunities during the school day to incorporate the use of twitter. A good place to start is to read the tweets from the other classes you follow, ask questions or provide comments as a whole class. The following examples will give you some ideas on how to involve Twitter in literacy, math and science. All of the Twitter activities explained can be done as a whole group, small group or by individual students. "

"Today, February 5th, 2014, is Digital Learning Day. According to its website, the focus of this awareness campaign is "about giving every child the opportunity to learn in a robust digital environment everyday, with the goal of success in college and a career." To celebrate, here are 5 of the best, must-follow #edtech curators on Scoop.it."

"Craig Badura, a PK-12 Integration Specialist in Aurora, Nebraska, has developed a series of App Task Challenges. Each challenge is a an easy to follow guide that gives teachers the opportunity to create products with an app. You can read more about App Task Challenges on Craig's Comfortably 2.0 blog. Below are four of Craig's App Task Challenge guides. Craig is working on more of them, so follow him on Twitter to find out when he publishes new ones."