Assistive Technology Resource Guide - Secondary Environmental Sc

This website lets you create comic strips that are fully customizable and could be used by teachers and students. Students can make cartons, books and doodles and even create their own characters to put in the cartoons. They could be used in classrooms to create social stories, visual schedules or other visual aids or student projects. FREE or $12/YEAR for your own homepage and added control

Leafsnap is an iPad or iPhone app that identifies a plant based on your photograph of the leaf. This is a wonderful resource for students and teachers trying to identify plants while outside because it has all the information of many field guide books in one mobile tool. Once you take the photo of your leaf, the app gives you lots of information about the plant (or a list of possible matches) along with detailed photos of the plant's fruit, bark, flowers, seeds etc. Students can also explore the database of plant photos and information on the leafsnap website. FREE DOWNLOAD

Co Writer is a predictive text software program that assists students in writing COST $290 FOR 1-4 COMPUTERS, $1,999 FOR SCHOOL LICENSE. ADDITIONAL DICTIONARIES ARE FREE

The ArcGIS online software gives students and teachers access to a simple, user friendly, online version of the GIS software used by professionals. There are many built-in data layers, like roads, topography, aerial satellite imagery and bodies of water. Most GIS data is free public information that can be downloaded from government and university websites. The website's use for education is expanding, as they have partnered with National Geographic and the MD Association of Outdoor & Environmental Educators to share and create data for classroom use. Students can make maps of a field trip site or look at the tree cover over their school. Completely interactive for students and customizable by the teacher to set up class maps or activities. Online tutorials (free) are available and maybe necessary for teachers with no GIS experience. 30-DAY TRIAL IS FREE. BALTIMORE COUNTY HAS SOFTWARE LICENSE. I am unsure of what the cost is, but I'm sure it is a lot.

Author stream is an online resource for sharing PowerPoint presentations. Teachers are able to post their classroom presentations along with a recording with transcript of the class lecture, which is useful for students who are absent or wish to review the material in the evening or before an exam. PowerPoints can be shared with others so educators and students can post their presentations as a jigsaw activity and viewed for homework, where they can be paused and reviewed. LOGIN IS FREE

EDU-YouTube is website for viewing and sharing educational videos; most are provided by universities. Videos are submitted and used for educational purposes so they are student-friendly and appropriate. Some very interesting tutorials with helpful features for teachers, like saving videos into collections and embedding into emails or programs for students. FREE

Socrative is an web-based tool for questioning students. Teachers can create their own exit tickets, games, quizzes or surveys. This resources gives the teacher greater flexibility and features than PollEverywhere. All students with a laptop, e-tablet or smartphone (internet access) can participate and receive instant feedback as they answer each question. Student responses are input into an Excel spreadsheet and emailed to the teacher. This informs teachers if the students are ready to move on, or need more instruction and practice regarding the topic. COST IS FREE FOR UP TO 50 STUDENT USERS

An online resource developed by the Discovery Channel that solves math problems from simple conversions to Calculus derivatives. It doesn't only give the answer, it outlines each step to get to that answer. There are useful graphics and extra information about the calculation. It is a helpful tool for some students, but not meant to instruct. FREE

An iPad app that can be used by students to take notes during, create outlines while reading or jotting down thoughts. This resource is useful for older students that are no longer provided with graphic organizers, but still struggle with reading comprehension or organizing thoughts. The app is compatible with MS OneNote and DropBox for sharing or storage. Users can add images or text, highlight text, type or draw using a finger. COST IS $14.99 FROM ITUNES

Erasable highlighters are a must-have item for all students using school or library owned textbooks. They are helpful to have in various colors, so students can assign meanings to each color. Yellow could signify follow up questions, orange for finding additional information and green for important details to know. COST IS $4.00 FOR A 5/PACK OF ASSORTED COLORS

This website, Poll Everywhere, allows you to make a simple multiple choice or open ended question for your students where their answers are sent using by text message or online computer. This is a useful tool in motivating students to complete a warm up question because it is fun, interactive and they get to see an analysis of the student answers. This analysis is a great way for teachers to perform a quick formative assessment on the students too. FREE

Online source for students to create graphs using their data; bar, pie, line, area graphs. All graphing tools are user friendly and the program allows students to explore their data by visualizing it in different graphs. Students are able to choose the graph that makes sense for their particular data set, by editing colors, positions and shapes as wel as graph type. FREE