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Sean Bennett

UI Faculty Council to discuss new technology - The Daily Iowan - 0 views

  • Unizin, an online database that allows universities to share information and resources.
  • Unizin is university-owned, meaning its values are concerned with the academic aspect of learning rather than the monetary and company aspect of educational software. Instead of allowing companies to enforce their programs and push their technology for their benefit, Unizin works to be sure the software benefits the students. Other universities — including the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champagne — are considering implementing Unizin.
  • Unizin works to enforce better education by having software that allows instructors to understand their students and learn how to teach them in the most effective way. Unizin also makes educational technology more efficient for both instructors and students by allowing professors to share technology more fluidly
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    University of Iowa might move to Unizin, a data management and learning software that allows professors to share technology more fluidly. Unizin is also university owned and recreates the idea of educational software by skipping the large corporations
Mandy Griffin

Pics4Learning - 5 views

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    Pics4Learning.com has free images for educational use.  This site is useful for K-12 and has many different categories of images.  The images have photographer information, location, and date taken.  There is even a citation available in the image information to assist students with the proper information to give the photographer credit.  This would be extremely useful for younger students to learn how to cite their findings.  The site also allows easy download for Windows, Macintosh, Android, and iPad devices.  Users can also save directly to Google Drive.  Our system now has Google Drive accounts for all of our students and so there is no need for flash drives any more! The images found here would be great for foreign language classes.  Students and teachers alike could use these specific images to work with vocabulary presentations or reviews.  Science classes could use the animal images for classification.  Teachers using flipchart software could create containers for the images to be moved to by the students. The only issue I can foresee with this site is the number of images available.  Users might not be able to find exactly what they are looking for.  Fortunately, educators are able to take photographs and contribute them to the website.  This could be beneficial to teachers and students.
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    Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos & images for classrooms, multimedia projects, websites, videos, portfolios, or any projects in an educational setting. I can see Pics4Learning being used for all grades. There are pictures of animals which would be good for science classes, pictures of countries that could be beneficial to social studies classrooms, and pictures broken down by subject including math and reading. Students could use these pictures for any of their projects, videos, or portfolios. I can also see teachers getting ideas from the "education" section under popular collections. I do not foresee any problems or challenges with this site. The pictures are easy to download and the option to cite each image. You just select whether you are downloading for Windows, Mac, iPad, or Android.
Anna Queener

8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools For Your Classroom - 4 views

  • One of the most remarkable aspects of modern education is the great diversity of today’s classroom. Thanks to mainstreaming and inclusion policies, students of all abilities study in all classrooms from kindergarten through college, even when they have physical, psychological, or cognitive disabilities that seem too challenging to integrate or excluded them from traditional classrooms in the past.
  • However, this integration creates challenges for educators. For example, the cost of teaching disabled students has more and more often fell on the already-stretched budgets of public schools. As one American school official told Huffington Post, this “raises an ethical responsibility question. We welcome our students with special needs, but the most expensive programming is on public districts.” This means that many schools may not be able to afford the kinds of special tools and equipment that may be needed.
    • George Bradford
       
      This was Anna's practice post using Diigo. The content of this post is not representative of the purpose of the group, so the post will be deleted - at some point. Her resource is good, and her post is valuable, but it needs to be moved elsewhere. Anna, I suggest you copy your information to preserve it in another place.
  • 8 Helpful ECE Technology Tools For Your Classroom 
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Screen Readers are described by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) as “software programs that allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer.”
  • Word Talk is a free add-in for Microsoft Word, this program can read aloud any document written in Word and create audio files that can be saved. In addition, assistive technology expert Paul Hamilton writes that “WordTalk functions can be accessed by customizable keyboard shortcuts–for individuals with vision challenges, or those who cannot use a mouse effectively, or to speed the work of anyone who relies extensively on WordTalk.” In addition, students with reading disabilities can also use screen readers to help them understand course materials.   
  • Word Prediction programs include a number of different applications, some of which can be downloaded from the Internet, are available to help students with writing challenges. Word predictors “can help a user during word processing by ‘predicting’ a word the user intends to type.
  • Supernova Access Suite is “a complete screen reader with natural sounding speech and integrated screen magnifier with Braille display support.”
  • Video Magnifiers are also sometimes described as a form of closed-circuit television (CCTV) that “uses a video camera to display a magnified image on a monitor or television screen.” Students with low vision can use them to read their course materials with greater ease.
  • Close Captioning and Subtitling: Services such as those provided by the CPC company can be used on both Mac and Windows formats, and enable deaf students to watch the same online video material as their colleagues.
  • FaceMouse: For students with limited mobility, Claro’s FaceMouse turns a standard webcam into a mouse operator, allowing students to use their head and facial gestures to perform a number of tasks, including pointing the cursor, clicking on sites, or typing on the keyboard. For example, “Claro FaceMouse effectively turns the user’s head into a remote ‘joystick’ controller.
  • Sip-and-Puff Systems: A truly innovative tool that makes computer use easier for students with mobility challenges, including paralysis and fine motor skill difficulties, sip-and-puff systems allow users to control a mouthstick, similar to a joystick, using their breath.
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    8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools for you classroom
Tiffany Davis

Brainy Betty - Free Sound Clips and Music for Presentations - 1 views

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    I re-located this resource, that has been around since the year 2000, while searching for AUDIO files for adding to multimedia presentations for but, the site also advertises that, "you can find over 1,000 pages of free resources, tutorials, PowerPoint templates and backgrounds, graphics, sounds for presentations and much more for everyday use and productivity." The sound clips are simple enough for students in grades 5 - 12 to use however, many of the other resources are probably more appropriate for educators. After brief teacher modeling, middle & high school students could easily click on the midi sound files, listen to the preview that opens in Windows Media Player, right-click on the sound title they wanted, "save-target-as" to a file, and insert the free sound clips into their multimedia presentations. Students will also appreciate the wide variety of clear-quality, relevant sounds, a few of which sound like renditions of background hip-hop/rap music that I believe they would enjoy like, "Dr. Tekno," "Nightfunk," and "R&B Bassbeat." In the "Terms of Use" the owner, Nan Shastry, states that "items marked 100% free" can be downloaded free for "personal or business or educational use" but users may not resell downloads, make available as downloads on your website, or link to items without prior permission. While the sound files and many other resources are 100% free, students who try to branch out and download many of the PowerPoint backgrounds or animated graphics will encounter zip file popups that ask/require them to evaluate "WinRAR" software for a 40-day trial before purchasing it, to continue using the download. Educators could mitigate this problem by distributing a list of preferred download link titles from the site that students could easily access without any difficulty or, by simply instructing them to click "cancel" or "close" on any of the downloads that require purchasing.
Bret Greene

WorldClips.TV Stock Video - 0 views

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    This resource specializes in stock footage from around the world. All of the video clips are free to download and to use. There is no subscription or user login required in order to use the footage. This feature makes it ideal to use for educators looking to provide their students with a ready source of footage that they can use for their multimedia presentations. Students interested in media production and editing could create some fantastic presentations, especially if they have access to editing software and a green screen. The more advanced applications of the video clips could be used by high school students, but I could also see middle school aged students utilizing various clips to help with creating presentations for World History or Biology classes. For example, in my 7th grade Life Science class we do a project on the biomes of the world. Students could use the video files from the "Animal Footage" section to incorporate dynamic visuals into their reports. Students could also use footage from different continents to visually identify the various biomes for the class. Modeling of how to download, edit and embed the videos would be necessary to ensure that the students experience success with this resource, but that is just a matter of scheduling instruction time prior to the final projects being completed. The website is very easy to navigate and all clips are easily imported into any editing platforms. This feature makes it easy to use for educators who may have a variety of software on their school computers, depending on which school system they work in.
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    To use resources from this site, you will be required to pay an annual fee - at the time of this entry, $25.
Tiffany Davis

Bells 'n Whistles - Everything you need to build your website, for free! - 1 views

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    This online repository includes hundreds of copyright-free graphics that would be worthwhile for middle-high school students & educators to use to add a multitude of interesting "bells & whistles" to their word documents, multimedia presentations, or websites. In my 5th-8th grade Library Media Center, social studies students are currently completing PowerPoints presenting their research about assigned Middle Eastern countries. I can foresee allowing students who have finished adding all assigned subject content to their slides, use this site to add "spinning globe" bullets, horizontal rule section dividers in the shape of "International Flags" or "Palm Trees," and "Textured Sand" backgrounds. All of the graphics were easy to navigate to from a large table on the index page and everything I experimented with downloaded and inserted easily, the quality of the images was excellent, and many of the animations would be relevant for school assignments. In the "Terms of Use" section, the creators advertise that, "Bellsnwhistles.com graphics are free for your use and if you use them we ask that you PLEASE DOWNLOAD what you need…Do Not link to our graphics." I did not encounter anything on the site that required royalty fees or additional software to load before gaining access. The only problem educators might want to mention to students before using is to make sure they insert only school-appropriate graphics…while nothing on the site was unsuitable for student-viewing, there was a "Foaming Beer Mug" divider and "Dripping Blood" Halloween images that students would need to avoid downloading into projects.
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