Assistive Technology Recommendations

This week my friend Barbara McLaughlin (@barbaram) asked me to comment on some of the best tools for Assistive Technology that I see and use when I'm out working with kids and I thought maybe that sounded like a blog posting!  Especially if I could get YOU to share your favourites in the comment section...so please do...I'd love to learn about some more!

Here are the top ones that come to mind and not in any particular order.

1.  Voice recorders of any kind are a biggie for me.  Whether just using a computer voice file in window accessories, or something more elaborate (Audacity or GarageBand - by Apple) we need to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning orally instead of using the pencil or keyboard.  Their are many graphic organizers that can support this kind of retelling so that students aren't just talking 'off the cuff'.   It always stikes me as unusual that this kind of accommodation is frequently noted on IEP's but teachers often don't know how easy it is to create these files.

2.  Word Q - This software, developed at the Bloorview Kids Rehab Centre in Toronto is perhaps my favourite because very young students can begin using it really quickly and it's so versatile.  It's a text reader and a word prediction software that learns the writing pattern of the student and gets 'smarter' about predictions as time goes on.  Great for web reading and most kinds of word processing that students will do in school, and teachers can provide and customize lists of words to put into the predication word bank.  Another bonus...it's available in French!

3.  Write Outloud and CoWriter:  These two kind of go together and are available from OSAPAC for Ontario students.  Write Outloud is the talking word processor, and CoWriter is the word prediction software, similar in quality to WordQ.  CoWriter can also be used with other word processors like Word Perfect and Word.  Teachers can use the database to keep track of their students and assignments if they wish. As with Word Q, teachers can provide and customize lists of words to put into the prediction word bank.  My only problem here is that they are not available in French which leaves out many of the students that might need it.  If anyone knows if it is available in English, please let me know!

4.   Kurzweil is the giant of assistive technology for literacy.  It is accurate, reliable, robust and therefore quite expensive, but if a student needs assistance it is well worth the money!
There are many features of Kurzweil to assist students who have learning needs:

• scan texts into Kurzweil and have them read to the student
• customized preferences for reading speed, pausing, voices, visual assistance (eg. highlighting words, sentences, paragraphs)
• a writing tool with built-in word prediction that acts as a talking word processor as well
  
• study skills help (dictionary, thesaurus, highlighting tools, annotations)
• you can extract text easily to create audio files for ipods and mp3 players
• graphic organizer and tables are built into the newest version for sorting information 

There is a bit of a learning curve with Kurzweil because it's so robust, but once student's get using it regularly it helps to provide access texts, a talking word processor to help with writing and lots of built -in study helps for research, writing and for use during assessments.

5.  A new little tool that I just found out about is Odiogo and it's very promising for students with learning disabilities or for younger students or ELL learners.   Here's what their website says,
Odiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device. 
I recently installed an Odiogo button on my blog, and now readers of my blog can either listen right then and there (with a very good computer voice, as well!) or download the blog posts to listen to on a portable device or through itunes.   I wish I'd known about this when I first began blogging with Grade 2s as it really opens up access to blogs which are often a really text based experience.  Now that I know about it, I see more and more of them in the blogs I read.  Wouldn't it be great to see blog hosting services adopt this as mainstream...UDL at work! :)

6.  Dragon Naturally Speaking is a speech-to-text software that allows a student to speak into a headset and have their words converted to text within an application like a word processor, or using Dragon Pad, the built-in simple word processor.   This integrates really well with a lot of different software applications IF the student's voice can be trained (I've run into some problems with the voices of some students) and if an adult checks in regular to do the accuracy training to make sure that the student is being successful.  Without that accuracy piece, students can quickly become frustrated unnecessarily with Dragon Naturally Speaking.

7.  Inspiration and Smart Ideas are two examples of really good kinds of concept-mapping software, really a must for all learners not just those with special needs.  I have a preference for Inspiration in the area of AT because you can easily record your voice into any of the concept bubbles and attach a voice file.  It's also really easy to embed video, graphics, sound and weblinks which really hits more modalities for all kinds of students.

I'm sure there are more that I should be listing here, and I welcome your comments to add to our list here.  These are simply the ones that I'm most commonly using with the students in our schools, and the ones that our provided at our school Board.

Expanding Our Boundaries....by Sitting on the Edge

The edge of my ZPD that is...

I've just returned from a fabulous two days with Will Richardson in Toronto, at the Expanding Our Boundaries Conference. I was invited to be part of a tech team helping the 100 people or so with a hands-on BYOL event.

I LOVE watching people teach and learn. It's the exhilarating (and sometimes exhausting) part of my teaching journey...that I can be 20 years or so into it, and still be learning so much in order to hone my craft! Will did a great job of providing a lot of options to many different learners and the two days supported what I believe about the co-learning that can go on whenever experts and novices engage together in the learning process.

He had us all on the edge of our ZPD in one way or another:

-many folks were trying out Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis for the first time, and were led through step-by-step demo-style and with help as needed from the tech team
-a mix of expertise at tables allowed the novices to watch and use the expertise of those right beside them


-dialogue was encouraged in the form of collaboration at tables or in the online chat that went on throughout the day and was archived here
-many of the 'experts' in the room spent their time branching off on tangents and networking to push their learning

So for me, I spent my time engaged in the presentation while continually dropping out to help others and then jumping back in to catch up. I actually really loved that, as it was a good blend for me as a learner and I was definitely in "my element" as Sir Ken Robinson might say.
I'm sure that there was a lot that I missed, but now I've got that chat archive to go back to whenever I want and my new network of incredible people to support me when I need something....just in time learning, basically. Check out Kent Manning's experience where he so wonderfully captured the networking that went on over these 2 days! He mentions so many of the wonderful new people I've met and I really hope that my PLN continues to grow with these folks! Check us out on Commun-IT, I really look forward to the future of this network.

I had some "ah ha" moments too. The biggest for me was the idea of using my network more efficiently to drive my own learning. I have been aware and participating to varying degrees in online spaces (social networks, using rss, IM, skype, email, wikis, blogs) but when Will described this "vibrant learning space that cannot be matched in the physical classroom" and provided me with a couple of new tools to leverage and integrate those networks, the lightbulb went on. I didn't 'get' Twitter before I think I might have a new addiction...but what the heck!

So, I stayed up way too late last night, got my TweetDeck going, set up my igoogle page and moved my feeds from bloglines so they stream into my browser homepage along with some better connections to the things I'm working on (docs) and the people who help me learn (chat, email, social networks). I also cracked Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky which has been in my 'to read' pile for ages!

Other new stuff for me:

http://www.fanfiction.net
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
http://www.diigo.com/
http://ccmixter.org/
http://www.jingproject.com/
http://voicethread.com/#home
and who could forget: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

So, I am trying to manage my own learning in this "world where content is not scarce", as Will mentioned this weekend, in order to help my students and my own children build their PLN in exciting f2f and online environments...an exciting challenge!

Aren't you glad we aren't alone in all this? I agree with Doug we need each other! :)

Group Project

This was a challenging project for our group, but in the end I think we've created an excellent product about the importance of Community and Collaboration. We created a website called Professional Learning Community: Teacher to Teacher Dialogue

and we feature 4 connections: Learning (PLCs), Writing, Social Networks and Bookclubs. It was a great experience to work with this really dedicated group of five who were very concerned with both academics and aesthetics and were very respectful of the busy schedule and strict timeline that needed to be followed. We had excellent trust and openness that allowed for flexibility and creativity, and by choosing parts of the task to focus upon, we were really committed and engaged in our learning.

I learned a ton about Net Generation Learners, something that will be useful next year when I'm talking to teachers about advantages of integrating technology use into their programs. If you are interested in hearing about these learners check out this podcast from Net Day and Educause.
My course is moving along at a frantic pace, probably because it is a 6-week course with many of the assignments requiring partner or group work online. I'm finding it hard to have the time to journal here, and have begun drafting my reflection paper. I've discovered that it's difficult to journal online for the purpose of writing a reflective paper...there are some things that are just best recorded in a private space, although really....who reads your blog anyway?

Putting the Learning Together

It's been an interesting week for me as my work on Social Networking for my group project is morphing into a study of Net Geners (born 1982-91) and the fascinating ways they are using technology and particularly what they would LIKE to be doing in schools. I'm finding this so exciting, because as it turns out we shouldn't be afraid of how kids want to use technology....in fact, they have the same goals as we educators!
Net Geners want:

• communication
• collaboration
• self-directed learning
• and more ways to construct and demonstrate knowledge.

Perfect!
What I've always believed to be the best learning approach then, project-based learning (PBL), is even more important today. PBL allows students to ask the really hard, important questions, to collaborate deeply, and to construct knowledge. Technology is a crucial part of making this learning more engaging, more interactive, faster, and more multi-modal and globally connected than ever before.

For more information on the Net Generation listen to this podcast.