I am so happy to be taking this course and learning about all of the great assistive technology that is out there. BUT... there is a down side to this. While those of you in Nova Scotia are extremely lucky to have talented personnel like Barb working in your school boards, there is no assistive technology consultant in my district. We did have someone working with as an information technology facilitator at the department level although she left at the end of October. There have been major changes in the IT sector in the PEI government and hopefully things will be remedied soon.
In top of that, I just learned from a co-worker that we have the older edition of Kurzweil (not the 3000) in our school. After telling her about all of the neat gadgets this program has to offer, I think that I convinced her that we are in need of the new program!! Also, we don't have Start-to-Finish books in our school although we can get access to them if needed.
Now you know!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
New Website sites and tutorials
The following are the websites for tutorials of varoius programs that we are learning about in class:
Write Out Loud video tutorials
http://ssrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/jrenouf/WriteOutloud.htm
Cloze Pro video tutorials
http://ssrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/jrenouf/clozepro.htm
Clicker 5 video tutorials
http://assist-tech.ednet.ns.ca/download.htm
DID YOU KNOW??
A free 30 day demo of Inspiration 8 can be downloaded from their website!!
Write Out Loud video tutorials
http://ssrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/jrenouf/WriteOutloud.htm
Cloze Pro video tutorials
http://ssrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/jrenouf/clozepro.htm
Clicker 5 video tutorials
http://assist-tech.ednet.ns.ca/download.htm
DID YOU KNOW??
A free 30 day demo of Inspiration 8 can be downloaded from their website!!
Starfall and Kidspiration
The remainder of class #3 was spent with Rachel giving us an introduction to Starfall and Kidspiration.
Starfall is a website that I have previously used with my 2 year old daughter. It was introduced to me by a colleague whose daugther is the same age (actually his daughter is 12 hours younger!). My daughter loves to sit at the computer and use to mouse to visit this website. She especially liked to ability to learn her ABC's through visual aides as well as sound. She enjoyed learning different things that start with the individual letters. As her name starts with the letter T, she loved to hear the train toot and the tiger roar. Those are two of her favorite sounds to make around the house.
I also enjoyed learning about Kidspiration. I have previously used Inspiration and was happy to learn that a similar program existed for kids. It certainly is kid friendly and provides them with an opportunity to play with the program so that they may learn as they play.
Thanks Rachel - you did a great job!
Starfall is a website that I have previously used with my 2 year old daughter. It was introduced to me by a colleague whose daugther is the same age (actually his daughter is 12 hours younger!). My daughter loves to sit at the computer and use to mouse to visit this website. She especially liked to ability to learn her ABC's through visual aides as well as sound. She enjoyed learning different things that start with the individual letters. As her name starts with the letter T, she loved to hear the train toot and the tiger roar. Those are two of her favorite sounds to make around the house.
I also enjoyed learning about Kidspiration. I have previously used Inspiration and was happy to learn that a similar program existed for kids. It certainly is kid friendly and provides them with an opportunity to play with the program so that they may learn as they play.
Thanks Rachel - you did a great job!
Kurzweil
In class #3 we had the opportunity to play with Kurzweil and work on our assignments. I had no idea about all of the features this program has to offer!!! One feature that I thought was interesting was the zone editing - what a great way to disregard certain things and also make sure other things are read in a certain order. This would help when you wanted a student to read the text that accompanies a picture before proceeding to the next section of the text. I also like that it has different dictionaries that can be used. What a great tool especially when you have EAL (English as an Additional Language) students in your class.
My partner, Ellen, and I dove right in to the use of the various applications of this program. We learned that the program does not always read what is written on the page. One problem that we encountered was the program was reading "I" as the number one. Another problem occured when we wanted to ask a question using a bubble note. For some reason, the program read the sentence and then the first few words of the next sentence (the last on the page) before asking our question. As a result, we recorded the sentence to read the way we wanted prior to asking the question and then corrected the next sentence as well.
We had lots of fun playing with the program while keeping in mind the student for whom we were designing the assignment as well as the MPTT. While there is a slight learning curve, the tutorials are very helpful. This program offers so many opportunities that I was unaware of. What a great tool to use in an inclusive class!! Two thumbs up
My partner, Ellen, and I dove right in to the use of the various applications of this program. We learned that the program does not always read what is written on the page. One problem that we encountered was the program was reading "I" as the number one. Another problem occured when we wanted to ask a question using a bubble note. For some reason, the program read the sentence and then the first few words of the next sentence (the last on the page) before asking our question. As a result, we recorded the sentence to read the way we wanted prior to asking the question and then corrected the next sentence as well.
We had lots of fun playing with the program while keeping in mind the student for whom we were designing the assignment as well as the MPTT. While there is a slight learning curve, the tutorials are very helpful. This program offers so many opportunities that I was unaware of. What a great tool to use in an inclusive class!! Two thumbs up
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