This is a video poem I made on imovie. It is Yeats' "Second Coming." Kind of a depressing one, but it was written right after WWI, when many had lost hope for the "civilized" world.

ReadWriteThink

I came across a great site called readwritethink.org while working on various unit plans. It's great it has tons of lesson ideas, and web resources for teachers. The best thing I found was a whole page of interactive educational activities, and interactive graphic organizer templates. These can be completed online and then printed. Many of the templates have steps that the student follows. Check them out, they can be found at:

http://readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp

Kurzweil

Kurzweil 3000 is the most popular text-reading tool out there. It's great for students who have physical disabilities that prevent them from accessing books, or for students with reading deficits. I found it very intuitive and easy to use. Students can change the speed at which text is read, and alter the voice that is reading the text. Additionally, teachers and students can place notes on the text as they read.

However, the process of scanning and preparing text is longer than one would expect. While the program is mostly accurate, it sometimes misread words or symbols on the page. Scanning entire chapters or books, and ensuring that the text is read correctly can be extremely time-consuming.

More information can be found here: http://www.kurzweiledu.com/

Classroom Suite

Classroom Suite has many different possible uses and purposes within the classroom. The program provides an alternate means of completing schoolwork, participating in classroom activities and demonstrating knowledge. For writing, math, and reading activities, teachers can create customized activities for students that match what the rest of the class is doing in particular subject areas. Rather than writing on paper, which is hard for some students with fine motor difficulties, or spelling and mechanics problems, students can complete writing assignments on Classroom Suite. The program provides various templates (autobiography, letter, book reports, science reports, journals) for assignments that students might be asked to do in class to demonstrate their knowledge of certain topics across all disciplines. Students can choose to write without these templates, to create stories and other documents with and without pictures. Some students may be motivated by being able to design paintings on the program, or by adding fun pictures to their work. Students can choose to use an on-screen keyboard in both QUERTY and ABC formats, with large letters to input information. Word prediction software is also available for students with spelling difficulties in order to allow these students more independence in the creation of their works.
Additionally, there are math and reading programs available on Classroom Suite. Teachers can make worksheets on the program, whose paper equivalents students are completing in class. Students will be able to manipulate objects and perform calculations on the computer with large number and symbol representations. The program ensures that place value is maintained throughout the students’ operations, promoting success and independence for students who struggle with the concept, or with writing skills.

Classroom Suite is generally intuitive and easy to use. All action buttons are labeled, and dialog boxes can be read aloud. In many cases, instructions for activities can also be read aloud. Teachers can easily customize any activity by changing the content, or starting from scratch. One criticism I have is that the picture library is not the easiest to access. It comes up on the bottom of the screen, but there is no search box to search for a specific picture. It seems as if students must look through all of the pictures in each category first. This might be difficult for students with attention problems, who might be distracted by all the options. Also, students who cannot conceptualize categories, or may not be able to categorize certain objects may have difficulty using this particular feature.

Accessibility on Google

I don't know how many people realize the incredible number of features Google has. I was looking through some of the newer ones I hadn't checked out yet, and discovered that Google has developed a browser for the visually impaired. You can also access it by typing in http://labs.google.com/accessible/.

you type in your search topic as you would on regular Google. The results page is modified for the those with visual impairments. Only one result is highlighted at a time, in a different color, and the print is significantly enlarged. As you navigate through the results (by pressing the down arrow, or clicking on different results) a clicking sound occurs to indicate that a new result is being selected!

TRY IT!

How-To Manuals for Popular Technology

This website from the High Tech Center Training Unit (HCTC) has how-to manuals and tutorials on how to use a lot of the technology found that can be found in classrooms.

This includes:

JAWS
Dragon Naturally Speaking
Kurzweil 3000
Captioning tools
Web accessibility manuals
Alternate media manuals (e-text, braille, etc)
Web evaluation tools.

I have to thank Jade for providing me with the link for all these great resources!

RSS Feeds

This page Feedage, has tons of RSS feeds that have to do with special education. Within the page you can search any and every topic, including "assistive technology," and get the most popular feeds on the topic! So helpful!