Welcome to your last update from Spectronics for this year. Lots of news to share as usual. Lots held over til our next newsletter too as we had too much to fit in one newsletter. As usual! We are excited about the collaborative classroom activities made possible by the cool new EDUSS Multi-touch Interactive LCD Touchscreens. Will they make interactive whiteboards (IWBs) redundant in classrooms? Read more about this great new technology and how to use it with your favourite software and even wirelessly with the iPad 2 in your special ed or early childhood classroom. 
Built-in features make iPad easier to use for those who are blind or have impaired vision. Via Tricia Dwyer-Kuntz 
Technology will only advance learning if it is used to support literacy and inquiry, William Oehlkers and Cindy DiDonato write. 
Maybe more significant than evaluating the app itself is evaluating how the app supports instruction that infuses technology to create a powerful learning environment. The Arizona Technology Integration Matrix is a rubric for teachers to assess their level of technology integration across five elements of meaningful learning environments. Via Nik Peachey, Spectronics 
Yes - you heard right - Clicker 6 is soon to be released here in Australia! I have been fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy to have... 
Microsoft Details Windows 8 Accessibility Feature... 
You really are spoilt for choice these days with a number of symbol sets available, with more being developed all the time. What are the things you need to... 
Colleagues around the world are using the 'Switch Progression Road Map' that I wrote during my time at Inclusive Technology to help them assess, teach ... 
Multi-sensory Room technologies have not changed dramatically for many years, but Sensory Guru in the UK is now ramping it up in amazing ways! They are turning... 
Luis Pérez, a 2009 Apple Distinguished Educator and current doctoral student, has created eBooks (ePub and PDF on Scribd) that covers the accessibility features built into Apple mobile devices:
"This free ebook covers the accessibility features built into Apple mobile devices, including the iPad, the iPod touch and the iPhone. Each section includes practice activities for you to practice the techniques and tips discussed in the ebook."
How to eBooks on "ePub Accessibility Best Practices" and "Closed Captioning 101: "These two ebooks cover topics related to the accessibility of the content available for Apple mobile devices. My hope is that by following the suggestions in these ebooks you will create more accessible ebooks and caption as many of your videos as possible. These practices will go a long way toward ensuring equal access to information for people with disabilities who use mobile devices."
Thank you Luis for these invaluable resources! Via Kathleen McClaskey, Spectronics 
Boardmaker Studio, the first update to Boardmaker for a number of years, was released late last year. It is becoming very popular now, so it might be...
Four brilliant resources this month:
Like many of my colleagues, I'd often thought about setting up a link with an overseas school and running a collaboration project. The children I teach all have severe... |
A sustainable model for using mobile devices to assist with analysing learners' literacy and numeracy skills will be developed in a pilot program. The project will develop, trial and evaluate an e-learning mobile solution to test literacy and numeracy capabilities of disadvantaged young people in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. When poor literacy and numeracy skills are combined with youth experiencing intellectual disabilities or mental health issues, or where they come from dysfunctional families, the chance of them remaining in formal education is greatly diminished. ... Via NDCO Tas, Spectronics 
When we are using the Boardmaker Software Family we can get creative with making our own new symbols from the existing PCS (Picture Communication Symbols). One symbol I like... 
The onscreen keyboard on the iPhone 4S and iPad (3rd Generation) has a new feature, Voice Dictation. This will provide speech recognition capabilities integrated right there via the keyboard.
Boardmaker Studio has been around now for a little while now and it really is creating a buzz in schools and services across Australia and the rest of the... 
Despite the growing use of multimedia in classrooms, schools remain primarily text oriented. This is a major problem for significant numbers of learners who struggle with text. No matter how capable they may be in other respects, these students are not “academically” oriented in the ways that tend to matter most in the classroom. Via Nik Peachey, Spectronics 
Evernote is a great tool to add to the suite of supports for students struggling with keeping their thoughts and study/research materials "organised". This blog post suggests a few additional applications and sources of more ideas for use in the classroom. It is not that one can not be used without the other; rather, one should be used with the other. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the concept and teaching method that helps explain the comp... 
We are constantly finding new ways of sharing great articles, links and resources with you, with the Spectronics Blog being the central place for display of...
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Many commercial switch training software programs feature a ‘switch building’ level where the learner is required to press the switch a number...
Advance information about some of the courses that I am leading in the coming months. 
Are you interested in being a part of a dynamic digital environment capable of changing the world of education? There are wikis out there that are just waiting for you to join and offer up your $.02. From wikis on teaching in the United Kingdom to art to web 2.0 tools, there’s a wiki for everyone. The list of wikis below is just a smattering of some of the best open wikis available today. They were all nominated by teachers and administrators from around the world during this year’s Edublogs awards. If you’re not familiar with wikis, they’re quite simply a website developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content. That’s the official Wikipedia definition. What better place to get a proper definition, right? Anyway, check out each one of these terrific wikis today and do your best to join or at least monitor what’s happening on them. Enjoy! 
Weally Wonderful Websites has been updated for the last time in 2011. It has grown to 85 A4 pages in length with new sites added to 75% of... |
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