Clickerpedia

Here's another website I've just found out about: Clickerpedia. If you're familiar with Crick Software's Clicker 5, this website is devoted to this AT gem. For those of us in Ontario, Clicker 5 is OSAPAC-licensed, so I encourage you to learn about it if you've never seen it in action before. It is hands-down one of the best pieces of education software for k-6, maybe k-8, on the market today. I'll be posting more Clicker 5 resources in the future, so stay tuned or subscribe so you don't miss out.

Free Mindmapping Online --- Another Option

A short while ago, I mentioned free online mindmapping tool mywebspiration.com. Well, since then I've had a chance to check out another example of a Web 2.0 tool for creating mind maps. If you want something really simple to use, and you don't need anything other than bare-bones mind mapping, bubbl.us is the tool for you. If, on the other hand, you want something full-featured, with the ability to start from ready-made templates, or make complex webs with imbedded images, go for Webspiration. Here's a visual comparison of the 2 services made using bubbl.us. Click the image to enlarge.

More Kurzweil How-To Videos

I've created some new Kurzweil 3000 how-to videos. Most of them are centered around completing tests or worksheets in Kurzweil. Enjoy!


  KESI Virtual Printer: no need to print and then scan files from your computer. Take documents from Word or Adobe PDF, web pages from your browser -- anything you can print -- and zap them into Kurzweil image files with all the features of Kurzweil not normally available through text import: http://j.mp/virtprint 

1.    Customize Toolbars: add buttons to simplify tasks: http://j.mp/k3000custom

2.    Completing a Test or Worksheet: filling in blanks, circling answers for multiple choice, managing text boxes: http://j.mp/k3000test

3.    Locking Out Features: disabling tools like the dictionary during test-taking: http://j.mp/k3000lock

4.    Built-in How-To Videos: Kurzweil 3000 has several of its own how-to videos you can access to learn some of the basics: http://j.mp/k3000videos

Book-Reading and -Making online (from "Pencils For All" workshop)

Deb Thomas, an exemplary Occupational Therapist at my board, provided me with a series of links to websites that have examples of, or tools to create, online accessible books for students with developmental and/or physical disabilities. Click here to download a Word document in which she provides all the links with a brief description of each.

Digital Math Workspaces

Now why didn't I think of this?! Montgomery County Public Schools have a page of strategies for helping struggling students featuring low-tech and high-tech solutions. A couple of people have recently asked me what software solutions exist for students who have difficulty writing out math calculations in their workbooks. My immediate thought was MathPad Plus, which sounds pretty nifty, but I haven't seen it actually being used by students (if you have, please comment!). The trouble with MathPad is that it was abandoned by the publisher; well, they still sell it, but they haven't updated it in years, and it's still in version 1.x.

So, back to Montgomery County. They have a simple solution for getting some calculations down using some well-thought-out MS Word tables. Here are direct links to download the Word 97-2003 version and the Word 2007 version. Tables are my favourite feature of MS Word, so it pains me that I never thought of this. Kudos to those folks in Montgomery for their elegant and simple (and no-cost) idea to help kids with dysgraphia and executive dysfunction get through their arithmetic.

Maps to Success --- SMART Ideas & MyWebspiration

Update: MyWebspiration is no longer free now that the product is out of Beta. Try bubbl.us instead. 
A lot of students with special needs are visual learners. Many have poor executive function (in other words, they're clinically disorganized). Put them in a Venn Diagram, and you'll see a fair number in the overlap section.

One of the strategies for dealing with these issues is to use graphic organizers, such as Mind Maps and Concept Webs. In fact, graphic organizers can be an indispensible tool, even to those without special needs, to

• view and represent information
• study/memorize material
• plan projects
• organize research
• provide scaffolding for tasks.

In Ontario, we are very fortunate that our Ministry of Education has licensed SMART Ideas software for all public schools and teachers. I love SMART Ideas because it's so intuitive. It simply does what you want it to. If you're teaching in Ontario and don't use already use it, do check it out.

As wonderful as Ontario's Software Acquisition Program (OSAPAC) is, it doesn't license software for student home use. So students who benefit immensely from software like SMART Ideas are out of luck. At least they were until....

A free, web-based version of mindmapping software Inspiration was released last year. MyWebspiration.com has tons of features.

I still prefer SMART Ideas. Webspiration is a bit less intuitive and less flexible. But if you or your students don't have access to SMART Ideas or Inspiration, you just can't beat the price of $0.00!

Combining WordQ and Kurzweil 3000

f you're familiar with WordQ, the excellent word-completion and -prediction software, you probably already know that you can use it together with all sorts of other software for writing, including Kurzweil 3000.

Typing with WordQ in Kurzweil 3000 is a fairly intuitive process, but Kurzweil can also be used to boost the vocabulary and topic lists in WordQ.

Here the how-to, broken into 2 videos:

Part 1: Creating a WordQ Topic List in Kurzweil.

Part 2: Installing a WordQ Topic List.

Ignore any references to the SharePoint, unless you work in my school board.

Good News --- Current Events Web Sites For Special Needs Students

Here are some neat web sites I've just learned about to support students with special needs. They've got accessibility features and visual symbols to support comprehension. Of course, thanks to the magic of UDL, they will also support students of ESL / ELL. If only they featured more Canadian content....

www.symbolworld.org: Free, published monthly. Click on eLive for for news; site also has other symbol-supported content. View online, or print out. UK-based.

www.news-2-you.com: paid subscription, published weekly, with each article rewritten at different levels, with worksheets and other related content. View online with built-in speech support, or print out on paper. With 40+ pages every week, there's a lot of content you could cover. Very well done. USA-based.

BONUS SITE: The Week In Rap
www.theweekinrap.com: Free, very high quality hip-hop summaries of the week's news, from the folks who created Flocabulary. Scroll down to see the lyrics of the week's rap, with hyperlinks to online news articles. Released every Friday during the school year, these raps are something many kids, special needs or not, will enjoy. USA-based.

The Spoken Word --- Using Microsoft Word Sound Objects

For those students who can express themselves better orally than in writing, Microsoft's Sound Objects, built into Word, can be a life-saver. Sound Objects allow the user to embed voice recordings in Microsoft Word in standard MS Word documents. Besides MS Word, all that is needed is some form of microphone, either built-in or external.

Here's a how-to video showing the method for setting up a toolbar button in MS Word 2003 that will make recording sound objects quick and easy.

Applications in the Classroom (and at home, if the student has MS Word)

The main way students can use Sound Objects is to produce a permanent document (or artifact) in MS Word, even if they ha

ve difficulty with writing. If Jimmy can't write well but has MS Word at home, he can answer (and ask) questions, respond to reading, create stories, etc., orally and end up with a product that better represents what's in his head.

Students with poor memory can brainstorm into a mic to get their pre-writing ideas down.

Teachers can also record instructions or oral prompts using Sound Objects in electronic documents if students have the ability to download from their teacher. This is especially useful for teachers ESL/EFL, French, Spanish, or other foreign languages, who want to provide a pronunciation model to which students can repeatedly refer. However, it also can simply be used as a means of Universal Design for Learning (UDL); by recording written instructions orally, teachers can ensure students can understand the instructions regardless of their reading ability.

I've used Sound Objects for recording the oral portion of educational assessments, such as the WIAT. It's easier to transcribe using the sound player than using a tape recorder.

Students can also get creative and record songs, raps, etc. without the need for additional software.

Limitations

The main limitation is that the recorder stops after 60 seconds, but if it is stopped, each time you push the record button again, you can add on an extra 60 seconds.

Note that this is a voice recorder; it does not transcribe voice to text. Students can't print out Sound objects; they have to share their electronic file with their teacher, and the teacher listens to the recording when it's convenient.

BiblioBLOGraphy

Today's post is all about my favourite Assistive Technology and Educational Technology blogs, where I get a lot of my info. If you want to know where I get some of my information, these are the goods.

Of course, I share these at the risk that you'll ditch reading my blog and start reading one or more of these, but hey, whatever floats your boat. I'm here to serve you, even if only temporarily. But you may opt to stay with CyberSERT because I'll filter out the best of the best for you, especially if you're an educator in Ontario, and esuperspecially if you're with my Board, the YRDSB.

AssistiveTek is by Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D.

If you google Assistive Technology Blog, this one comes up first. Dr. Friedlander teaches a course on assistive technology and is quite the expert. His focus is primarily on LD-related software and gadgets. His primary interest is in mind-mapping software, and he tends to spend a lot of time blogging about it. We, in Ontario, have SMARTIdeas licensed by the province, and it's pretty good. I'll throw my own 2 cents in the mind mapping software discussion in a future post.

All Together We Can is geared more towards the Augmentative and Alternative Communication side of assistive technology, and is actually not devoted exclusively to AT.

Free Technology for Teachers is more of a general education site. This is a very prolific blogger, and you really have to skim through the myriad posts that go up every week. To help you find the gems, the most popular posts are listed each week.

3 Free Boardmaker Materials Download Sites

Here's a set of sites from Florida that have got a lot of Boardmaker files you can download and use. Navigation on the sites is not the best; use the links on the far left to see categories. http://fdlrsregion3thematicvisuals.wikispaces.com/
http://fdlrsregion3curriculumvisuals.wikispaces.com/
http://fdlrsregion3literacyvisuals.wikispaces.com/

Tweet This!

If you're on the Twitter bandwagon, I'm using Twitterfeed to relay my blog posts on Twitter. Find and follow me at twitter.com/cybersert. (Of course, Twitter is blocked by many workplaces, including the YRDSB, so you might have to stick to RSS feeds or checking back at blogspot often.)

Mmmm... Delicious Links

Delicious.com is a site that allows you to save and share internet bookmarks. To learn more about it, you can watch this brief video from Common Craft.

I'm happy to share my bookmarks with you. I'm pdienstm on delicious.com, and you can see my education-related picks from the web (many of which focus on special-ed and/or assistive technology) at http://www.delicious.com/pdienstm. Visit often, since I'm adding more all the time and I won't be mentioning all my latest discoveries in this blog.

What and Why?

[[About the CyberSERT Blog]]

CyberSERT = me

SERT = Special Education Resource Teacher

me = TRT @ YRDSB

YRDSB = York Region District School Board (Northern suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

TRT = Technology Resource Teacher = computer geek + special education itinerant teacher

I like technology. I really like it.

I love being a teacher. I especially have a passion for helping the underdog, so I became a special ed teacher. About a year ago, I had the opportunity to leave the classroom for an itinerant role with my Board. It's a great job because it focuses on technology and helping students with exceptionalities. I train teachers on the implementation of assistive technology, and I also get to work with students in several schools.

But enough about me...

Part of my role is a sort of evangelist for assistive technology. This blog will allow me to get my message out within my School Board, but also beyond.

I should mention that this blog is in no way affiliated with the York Region District School Board, and the views and opinions presented here are those of the writer and not his Employer.

If teachers in my Board can benefit from this kind of information, so can teachers (and parents, and students) from districts around the world.

It is my intention to post assistive technology tips, reviews, how-to videos, ideas, opinions, and links.

And since you're busy -- and so am I -- I'll usually keep things brief.