Group items tagged

"We began with a parent's vision of an inclusive community for families with and without disabilities. The hope was to use technology, particularly computers, to include individuals with special needs and their typically developing peers into one classroom environment. In 2001 a fully inclusive Hope Technology School was established. Now in our tenth year, serving over 120 students, Hope Technology School has become a preschool-through-eighth-grade program including an onsite, NPA-certified Therapy Department, Vocational Education Program, and Assistive Technology (AT) Lab in Palo Alto, California. Our school includes students who are typically developing as well as students with special needs such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down syndrome, dyslexia, and other learning differences. "

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening. The first step is to get the mp3 or ogg files into your own computer:

"MATRIX Learning Games Demo The MATRIX Project (http://matrixlearning.org) provides resources to improve middle school reading and mathematics achievement through the development of interactive educational games that use PDAs, iPods and video cameras, along with web-based resources including Quantum Simulations' online Artificial Intelligence Assessors and Tutors. Our games can be played on a handheld or computer using the Flash Player™ application. Download the newest Flash Player for free, if you don't already have it. Send Us Feedback on the games, and check out games developed by our partners at New Mexico State University."

"For any student having trouble reading material on a screen, text-to-speech technologies can be wonderful. My March 2008 post, "Converting text to and from speech for accessibility and convenience" addressed some of the software options available today for text to speech functionality. Of those, "CLiCk, Speak" is probably the main one to check out. It's cross-platform, works in the FireFox browser as a plug-in, and is free. In addition to those text-to-speech options, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system (OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard") includes the built-in ability to convert highlighted text in many applications into an audio file. Here is an example of a file I created while writing this post, of this paragraph."

"The goal of the myEye project is to develop an eye-tracking software to allow people with severe motor disabilities to use gaze as an input device for interacting with a computer. myEye was thought to help people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called ALS or "Lou Gehrig's disease"), who have lost their voice, and may only be able to move their eyes. myEye will be a free eye-tracking software (but not open source) for eye control, so I don't want to create false expectations. This software hopes to be just one more alternative for people who can't afford a commercial eye-tracking system, but I can't guarantee it will work for everyone."

"The Dynamic Keyboard is an on-screen keyboard which allows you to type using your computer and an input device such as a joystick, trackball, mouse, single switch, among others."

"Switch videos are animations or slideshows set to music, which can be controlled by a range of common assistive access devices. They are designed to help children understand and generalise cause and effect (the action / reaction bond), one of the foundation stones for early learning. The videos can be played online or downloaded for use on a PC or Macintosh computer."

This is the updated web addsress for the wonderful and highly entertaining Priory Woods videos. Farting Dinosaurs is my personal favorite.

"Whatever your philosophy regarding frontal teaching methods and the uses of Smartboards, there's no denying two facts: 1. Smartboards have become extremely popular tools in educational institutions 2. Smartboards are relatively expensive and eat major portions out of our shrinking school budgets What if you could create a parallel experience using nothing more than an iPad and a $50 piece of software? One software product with a matching iPad app claims that it can. Doceri is an iPad app that provides an alternative to interactive whiteboards at a fraction of the cost. Doceri lets an educator control and annotate on a computer connected to a projector from anywhere in the room. "

"Welcome to the Assistive Technology (AT) Support Website. Computer-Based AT can support students in accessing the curriculum and allowing them to show what they know. "

"Digital storytelling is simply using computer-based tools to tell stories. There are many different ways to do this - from making movies, recording voices, creating animations or electronic books. In schools they can help to take a task that might be seen as mundane - write a report, write a story, explain a process, describe an experiment - and turn it into something a whole lot more interesting. There are a great many tools out there that could be used for digital storytelling. I am going to give you just a few:"

Feel free to watch these helpful tutorials. Topics range from Setting Up an Email Account to Backing Up Your Computer to Disk Defragmentation. Videos were created by Graduate Students at NC State University enrolled in ECI 514: Multimedia Design and Application in Instruction.

"developing a case for tablet computers that can serve as a virtual interpreter for the deaf. Known as UNI, the case uses gesture recognition technology developed by Leap Motion to translate sign language into audible speech. It then merges this with voice recognition technology to convert spoken word to text."

EEG technology for education. "Safely measures brainwave signals to monitor the attention levels of students" Check out the Necomimi product for an interesting application

"Here we present 50 really useful iPad tips. We cover everything from customising your Home screen through to getting more from built-in apps like Mail and Safari."

"There are several reasons why Chrome is regarded as the most popular browser in the world: It is considered the more secure than the competition, is one the speediest, and benefits from cloud based profiles. This last feature is particularly useful for those interested in assistive technology because it allows the user to become untethered from the device. "

"If you are new to speech recognition technology, you may need a little direction as you get started.  We recommend you view some of the following special resources* intended to jump start your use of this exciting technology: Tips for Improving Accuracy  Dragon Support and Troubleshooting Tutorials Microphone Troubleshooting and Set-up Guide Microphone Selection Guide"

"It is critical for students to be proficient in these technology skills prior to taking the online assessments. The purpose of these assessments is to determine the students' mastery on subject-area content, not their technology abilities. Lack of technology skills could negatively impact a student's performance on a next generation assessment, and not give a true measure of their subject knowledge."

"ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. The concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually achieve through the use of different settings or products. Download ATbar is free and allows you to change the look and feel of webpages, increase and decrease font sizes, have text read aloud, use coloured overlays, readability and a dictionary to aid reading. Spell check forms and try word prediction when writing. It is a simple tool which is available for most popular browsers. There are three versions of the ATbar toolbar."

"ScanBuddy initially divides the entire screen into two sections, the top half and bottom half, and then offers them to you one at a time. Once you pick, for example, the bottom half of the screen, then ScanBuddy divides the selected bottom section into two sections again, the left half (lower left quarter of the entire screen), and the right section (bottom right quarter of the entire screen), and offers those to you one at a time until you operate your switch again to indicate which of those two sections contains the target location. By dividing the screen up into sections you effectively reduce the screen to a more manageable size."