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TAC it Up "Do you teach students with intellectual disabilities? Do you spend most of your day creating lessons because there is no curriculum designed for your students? Do you have a desire to find out what other teachers are doing for students similar to yours? Do you want to spend some time learning new strategies, creating activities and sharing with others?"

StoryToolz is a nice assembly of useful tools for writers. Writers who are struggling to come up with ideas for fiction stories will like the story starters featured on StoryToolz. StoryToolz has three tools that you can use to get story ideas; Random Conflicts, Half Title Generator, and Story Idea Generator. To use any of these three tools just select the tool from the main menu then look at the randomly generated idea. If you don't like the options, run the tool again until you get options that you like. In addition to the writing prompts tools StoryToolz offers a few tools to help you edit your work. The Cliché Buster analyzes your work to find clichés that you have used in your writing. The Readability tool analyzes your text to estimate a reading level on several scales.

"[TechKnowledgy 2015-16] Twitter 101 for Educational Professionals: Harry Potter Style! Author: TechKnowledgy Conference Description: Webinar on 11/12/2015 by Christopher Bugaj Face it, you're a muggle. There's an entire wizarding world happening all around you called Twitter. You've heard about it. You may have even tried it. But you don't understand how or why it works. Why tweet? What's a hashtag and how do I use it? What is a "chat," how does it work, and why would I ever want to be involved in one? This session will take you through the basics. Not only will you learn the "hows" of Twitter, but you'll learn the "whys." Learn why and how to search Twitter for assistive technology resources as well as find other users who share similar interests. Features such as hashtags, mentions, direct messages, and scheduled chats will all be discussed. Accio participanto!"

Is it possible that a few simple words like "give," "go," "like," "you," and "stop" can change the lives of nonverbal students? Finding the answer to this question has been the work of speech-language pathologists, assistive technologists, and teachers in the Spotsylvania (Virginia) County Schools for the past four years.

Grammarly is an online proofreader. It's more advanced than typical proofreaders found in word processing programs like Word and Pages. The tool finds possible mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation and suggests corrections. It also gives explanations so kids can learn from their mistakes.

The AssistiveWare Core Word Classroom is a large collection of learning resources which are designed to support implementation of any AAC system that is based on core words. They emphasize the use of AAC best practices such as modeling, communicating everywhere, and communicating for a wide range of reasons beyond requesting. You can find out more about the Core Word classroom here [http://www.assistiveware.com/assistiveware-core-word-classroom-now-open ] . The Core Word Classroom is a beta release. They will be improving it and adding more resources based on feedback. The focus in this initial release is on schools, but the materials can easily be adapted to home use and use with adults who are learning AAC. During this beta release the materials are available free!

"Our free Text Readability Consensus Calculator takes a sample of your writing and calculates the number of sentences, words, syllables, and characters in your sample. Our program takes the output of these numbers and plugs them into 7 popular readability formulas. These 7 readability formulas (see below) will help you find out the reading level and grade level of your materials and help you to determine if your audience can read your materials."

In this blog post by a famous AAC clinician named Gail Van Tatenhove she tells the story of Velma, an employee at an adult facility who witnessed Gail talking with an AAC user by modeling on the device. Velma was inspired to become "America's Next Top Modeler" with Gail acting as her coach. In the article, Gail outlines some initial scripts she gave to Velma to use when chatting with the AAC user. These scripts were necessary because Velma couldn't be expected to know where every word was she might ever need to say. The scripts took the pressure off! Velma only needed to find these few words. Guess what happened? In time, Velma learned where all of these words were so she didn't need to use the scripts at all.

Your Special Chef" is a collection of resources to help teach cooking skills to individuals with special needs. Click around the site to find cue-card recipes, lesson plans for life skills teachers, video tips, and more!

"Did you know Windows has had Speech Recognition built-in since Windows Vista? This is more than just a way to type by speaking aloud - you can use it to control applications and navigate the desktop with your voice. It's a free, built-in alternative to paid voice dictation programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It's a shame most Windows users will likely never find it buried in the Control Panel."

"Here you will find speech therapy materials for speech-language pathologists, teachers, and parents alike!  Check out the great games, cards, and e-books to help you improve speech and language skills in your child or in your students."

Using Google Images

Find the definition of "open source" plus the definitions for 99 other social media terms.

Welcome to this humble course. Here you'll find a set of free online typing lessons and typing exercises for beginning typists, and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing.

We have also included number of resources that those working with children with Special Education Needs might find useful. These include A BSL version of the SMART rules free symbol flash cards A BSL version of the parent's overview A Widgit symbol SM

Looking for educators to follow on Twitter? This Wiki has TONS of suggestions for people to follow (all broken into respective categories) Sample categories include: Math Teacher, Librarians, Elementary Teachers, Music Teachers, Psychologists, Special Ed