Group items tagged

Includes a couple of treasures, such as CrossLoop (Windows) that allows you to share screen and collaborate in programs like Word; Yuuguu, that also has a chat application that allows you to save a history of conversations; Unyte Lyte that integrates with Skype; SoonR that lets run access your PC with a mobile; FolderShare, which allows you to access your PC remotely; and sVNC to let remote users access your system.

"WebAIM, in my opinion, provides well-written and very user-friendly advice and instruction for those who want to learn more about accessibility. Below, I've selected a few of their resources that explain some of the most common issues concerning this topic." This blog page has some great, short, and simple advice about making your website more accessible -- a good place to start.

"he introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps. " While this is a pay-per .pdf file, it looks to have some significant data about the effect of technology on reading and math. Worrisome!

A downloadable, free web accessibilty checklist: "Whether your course includes one web assignment or is a full-blown online journey, you're developing and managing online content for your students, who may have disabilities like "…blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these. "And just like your instructional material, your online content should be understandable-and accessible-by your diverse students. Your online content should include the basic web accessibility features."

Recording of assessment strategies relating to accessibility from a panel of university representatives. Helping faculty become more aware of accessibility issues through enhanced assessment processes and tools.

This is a list of links with very brief notes on what the various applications do for those with learning disabilities or other accessibility issues.

Tips by R. Stannard on how to use G-Docs with your students. Includes how to create a Doc in your personal G-Drive. Students do not need a Google account to access your selected documents. For example, students can discuss a question with a table indicating which group students belong to. Students write their answers/discussion within the cell of the table. Once the doc is created, one student can access a computer to put in all the ideas generated by the group, using a shareable link. Google provides an area to shorten the link so it can be written on the board. [Remember, all students could type in the Doc simultaneously, and chat in the margin of a G-Doc.]

"I attended a webinar two week's ago featuring Stacey Harris of Brandon Hall Group and Mark Hellinger of Xyleme. The topic of conversation was this idea of going mobile with your learning; a hot topic in the learning space no doubt. They touched on the concept that learning expectations have shifted with all of the new technology, which has caused change among those who are initially developing the content. Furthermore, while social media monitoring and exploring, I am seeing an increase in not only speculation of that point, but a firm belief from others in the industry that there IS a shift happening in todays learning market. People haven't exactly been able to call it by name, but its being felt. People are feeling a shift from the current learning demands of just getting the information out there, to infinite accessibility and readability. " = Dawn Poulos An interesting article on how e-learning is responding to the push-pull of mobile accessibility.

This brief article by Tom Robb outlines a great new Moodle application that is free if your school already uses Moodle, or accessible online where you can have your own page for quiz access. The add-on offers a short quiz of 10 randomized questions for almost 2,000 commonly read books used for extensive reading programs with the major graded reader series. See the http://MoodleReader.org site.

"If you're using it to solve problems in your location, to access information you need here and now, it's mobile, whether pocketable or not. That's what mlearning is, and it's mostly about performance support, or contextualized learning augmentation, it's not about just info access in convenience. "Which actually segues nicely into my main point. So let's ask, when would you want a tablet instead of a pocketable when you're on the go? I think the answer is pretty clear: when you need more information or interactivity than a pocketable can handle, and you're not as concerned about space."

"Communicating with and engaging your school community (parents, students, and donors) is essential is growing a great school. Facebook is a tool that school principals, admissions directors, and development teams should use to build this engagement. Here are four great reasons to use Facebook as a central tool for your school's engagement strategy" These 4 are ease of use, accessibility, ubiquity, and ease of management. Most of these reasons are the same as for blogs, but Fb seems the hot one today, and it is pretty easy to use. One important feature is that you can now put all your schools accounts in one place, and you and/or your students can protect page access. This should salve the worries about Internet safety. One problem may remain: Fb does get shut down in various countries for a variety of political reasons. Caveat user!

"With the growing popularity of internet access to mobile devices like the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, monitoring internet activity isn't so easy as plopping the computer in the living room and keeping a watchful constant eye over young shoulders. Now, the internet is mobile. It's small enough to fit in a pocket and that makes parental monitoring an even bigger challenge. "Fortunately, the tech world has heard the rally cries of concerned parents and a number of kid-safe browsers are available to allow your child internet access in a safe manner. By no means is everything on the internet dirty, filthy, vulgar or dangerous. Much of the content on the web is educational, informative, fun and smart. With these kid safe browsers, you'll be able to help keep your kids on the right side of the cyber tracks."

This seems like an interesting way to present (and solve?) problems with your students. I could imagine it being used to solved behavior problems, but I'm not sure how practical this would be in real life. How it works 1. You enter a problem. 2. You enter ideas that could solve the problem. 3. Some ideas lead to new (hopefully smaller) problems. 4. When a problem is solved, the tree gets green. A problem is considered solved, when you found an idea that does not lead to a new problem. The URL is the key * The URL is cryptic (no two URLS are alike). Nobody can access your Solvr without its URL. * However, you can skype, mail, twitter or even blog the URL to give others access. Everybody who knows the URL can do everything.

"Today's updates to Office 365 Education include enabling students to write a paper using only their voice, thanks to Dictation in Office, the latest feature to join Microsoft Learning Tools, as well as improved access to assignments and class collaboration with the Microsoft Teams iPhone and Android apps. What's more, we are delivering on the number one most requested feature from teachers, page locking in OneNote Class Notebook-allowing teachers to provide students with read-only access-and we will further help teachers save time through assignment and grade integrations with leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Student Information Systems (SIS), including Capita SIMS in the U.K. Office 365 Education gives teachers and students the power to unlock limitless learning. And best of all, it's free for teachers and students." Update on new features (2019), including dictation to Office apps.

"Social bookmarking is a way to save, store, group, and share Internet bookmarks online. It allows you to have access to your favorite bookmarks on any computer with Internet access, so even if you are away from home, or work, you can still find and use the sites you value most. Social bookmarking sites also give you the option of joining a group of like minded people, following, or being followed by, individuals who collect similar types of bookmarks to your own. Examples of such sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and the focus of this article, Diigo."

"Spark for Education is a free service that Adobe has launched to address the concerns that schools have had about Spark since it's launch a few years ago. The biggest of those concerns being use by students under the age of 13. Spark for Education is designed for school-wide deployment (much like G Suite for Education) in a manner that is COPPA compliant. The school will be able to manage student and teacher use of Spark including access to the service itself. Additionally, Spark for Education will provide students and teachers with free access to all of premium features of Adobe Spark." T/h to R. Byrne

Review of Digital Dante Website. "Great works continue to draw new specialists into the field and serve to bring the history of a language, its people, and their culture to life. Literary works serve as examples of the power and beauty of language at its best. Helping to make such texts more accessible to learners, the Web can make use of hypertext and multimedia to provide context that is so often lacking for those without the general background knowledge that a good reader is assumed to possess. "

Virtual Presentation Assistant http://www2.ku.edu/~coms/virtual_assistant/vpa/vpa.htm "The Virtual Presentation Assistant is an online tutorial for improving your public speaking skills. This site is designed to help you target your specific needs as a speaker by allowing you to access any or all of the contents listed below."

A library of books and periodical for many different ages, for people with print disabilities. Free to educators, students, and schools.

"Webinars for English language teachers - Whether you are a relatively experienced English language teacher or very new to the game, log in for these FREE monthly webinars on a range of subjects. You can access the archive of past recordings, too." Although many of the courses are for pay, there are a number free Webinars for English language teachers as well (see right-side link).