Good morning this is...
Good morning this is Karen Sheehan, director of marketing for the Accessible Technology Coalition Program of the Center for Accessible Technology.
I'm very pleased to have with us today, Laura Simmons-Martinez, who is technology project director.
the TASK center, the Team of Advocates for Special Kids, and she's presenting today on reading and writing solutions, tips and tricks.
And Laura, I'll hand it over to you.
Hi, good morning everyone, thank you for attending, I know it's a busy week.
I just wanted to get kind of a show of hands if you guys, click the little razor hand and tell me,
how many of you are beginners in the technology - assistive technology arena?
Okay, there's one. Sharon, okay.
Okay, and then how many of you feel like you're intermediate?
And everybody else feels kind of advanced?
How many of you feel like you're advanced? Okay, eight, Tina...
Okay, I just wanted to get kind of a feeling for who's in the room. So welcome, and thank you again for joining us.
I'm gonna get going and try to keep this under an hour which should be um... [laughs]
Okay, here we go.
I wanted to start and tell you just a little bit about TASK and who we are.
We're a free training information center and we serve all ages and all abilities.
Our service area covers eleven counties in southern California.
We currently have two technology centers, our main center is in Anaheim.
And we just, on December 3rd, opened a new center in Compton.
So, Compton, California, so we're really excited to get that going.
I just went ahead and listed some of the services that we offer, I won't go through them but I put them there for your information.
And if you have any questions at all, feel free to call or email me, and I'll give you my email at the end.
So what is assistive technology?
I went ahead and put the federal definition. [reads the definition on screen]
Typically it can be anything that can help someone with a disability do something easier, better, faster, or with less assistance.
So, before we begin, I want you to think about your consumer or consumers or the students that you're working with.
And the first question that I always ask is what question would you like them to be able to do with the use of assistive technology?
Also, what is their learning style? Do you know or do they know? Are they hands on learners or are they auditory or visual?
We'll talk a bit about that in a minute.
And think about their learning or work environment.
Are there a lot of visual or auditory distractions going on?
And if so, what can be done to adjust the environment?
I like to say set the stage for success, so basically, we're looking at adjusting lighting if needed.
A lot of people don't respond well to fluorescent lighting.
Is there a lot of visual clutter going on, is there a lot of background noise?
I personally use the computer screen tints and a filter, which I'll show you in just a minute.
There are also tinted overlays or tracking helpers for reading, which I'll show you a picture of.
And then if you need help with writing, you need to look at adding writing support if that's necessary.
So these are just some sample distortions of what print might look like to someone who has scotopic sensitivity.
Or, which is also known as Irlen Syndrome,
Or a learning disability, dyslexia, something like that.
Sometimes the print moves, sometimes it looks like it has a double shape around it, it just depends on the person.
But sometimes overlays or actual glasses, lenses, or screen filters help with that.
And I put the website at the bottom, the www.dyslexia-test.com, it's an online test to see if colored backgrounds or colored filters help a person.
And I have a found, I get really bad migraines, and I have found that using colored filters help me tremendously.
And I do use them with our students and with our other clients, so I wanted to include that information, for you.
I listed some free colored filters, there's two that I use for different things.
The one on the left actually changes the color of the background with the document that you're using.
Like if you have a Word file open, or even the internet like if you're composing an email,
it changes the color, the background color, so it's not that bright or stark white.
And it's musatcha.com, and you can download it and then you can - when you download it you can try different colors to see what works for you.
I do have, thanks Karen, I do have a list of all the resources that I sent you, so hopefully everything that I talk about will be on there, if not please let me know.
The one on the right I use a lot it's called Screen Tinter, there's a Lite version that's free and then there's a version you can purchase that does more,
I use the Lite version, and what it does, it puts a colored filter over everything on your screen, so my color happens to be light blue,
And it just looks like a filter over the screen, I have mine set to just come on when my computer comes on,
And it just helps the bright stark whiteness, and it seems, for me, I don't have as many headaches.
Especially when I stare at the computer all day.
These are three different learning style surveys. I use the top one a lot, there are questions, you go on, and when you're done answering the questions
It comes up and it tells you what type of a learner you are, visual, auditory, or calisthenic.
And then it gives you tips on how to best study or ideas on how to learn. I use the other two as well, they're all pretty good.
The top one is just the one I use the most.
Does anyone have any questions before we move on?
Okie dokie, feel free to put it in the chat-land or raise your hand if you have any questions.
For low tech writing support, here in our center, we use so many different ones.
It's hard to pick but I listed some of the ones that I really like the best.
There are all different types of specialized paper, with different bold lines and different shadows and shading.
The one I'm going to talk about is carbonless notebook paper.
It's the one all the way over to the right on the top.
And what it is is it's paper that you can have someone in the class that takes good notes or the person that sits up front that takes good notes,
you can have them be the note taker for your students and when they're done they just tear off the back, copy it,
and see our paper or carbonless notebook paper, and we do have several students that have these either written into their IEP or written into their other plans
depending on where they are.
And that's available through any Mountain Technology.
Which will be on your research sheet.
For specialized pens and pencils there are so many out there. There's a ring pen which is an ergonomic pen,
And then there's the twist and write which I just found that I really like.
It's the blue one at the bottom. And it's an ergonomic pencil, you just twist it and the lead comes out.
And we also have a pen version that I really like.
For writing grips and holders, the writing bird which is the one on the top left, for someone who really has motor issues.
You don't have to pick the pen up you can just move it back and forth to write. You can put either a pen or pencil or whatever writing utensil you like in it.
And you just screw it in, and there you go.
Another favorite is called the handi-writer, it's the red one. You put a pencil in it,and basically what it does is it gives you the correct writing grip
for someone who has trouble with that.
And then there's another one called the arthwriter which is that great big ball.
Yes, you have a question? I'm just curious... can you hear me okay? Yeah.
What does the twist and write do?
The twist and write is the ergonomic pen, it's the one at the bottom,
And you just stick your fingers through it, it's short, and you just stick your index finger through it,
And it's just simpler, easier to grab,
Uh-huh, okay,
And I know a lot of our students that take occupational therapy, they have them write with smaller, shorter pieces, which is just sometimes easier for someone to write.
Okay, thank you. You're welcome.
And then the final one is the arthwriter which is the big plastic ball that you can put any size pencil, pen, or marker in, and twist it,
I know years ago we used to use tennis balls and poke holes through them and styrofoam balls, this is very similar to that only it's just made specifically for this.
Really good for seniors and people who have arthritis, or repetitive stress issues.
For low tech visual and reading supports there's a lot of things out there. Again I listed the ones that I use the most.
The magnifying bar which is the one that's over the thing that says Lottie Kit,
the one on the top left, really helpful it's got a light magnifier and then it's got a yellow line that goes through the middle like a yellow highlighter,
and it helps track whatever you read. And I have two sizes, one that fits the page of a book and one that fits an eight and a half by eleven sheet.
Or eight and a half by whatever I guess.
Really easy, under ten dollars, and nice for those of us who are over forty and starting to have trouble reading tiny print.
The other thing I like a lot is called the reading helper, and it's on the bottom with the pink stripe.
And it comes in all different colors and what it does is it blocks out the line above and the line below what you're reading and just
helps you stay on one line and focus on what you're reading.
Another one are the heads up frames, which is the pink square on the right,
and those help with reading, but I like to use them for math, to isolate math problems if you have too many on one page it kinda
helps focus on one at a time. There's also highlighter tape, which comes in different widths; one line, two lines, whole paragraph,
that you can use for textbook - they can highlight what they need, and then when you peel it off it doesn't remove the print or the text or harm the book in any way.
And then erasable highlighters are nice, they're on the bottom right, basically anything that you need to highlight you can highlight
and then the white part of the highlighter you go over it and it erases it and doesn't do any damage to the book.
And then finally Irlen color filters are colored sheets, see through sheets, just like the one on the top right, but it's the whole page,
And I've found this to work with a lot of students that have trouble with text moving or jiggling or having letter reversals and things.
Not for everyone but it works for some.
Are there any questions on those?
Okay. I just listed some other simple visual support, some easy things to do are changing the background color,
A piece of paper, sometimes instead of a bright white sheet, a soft green or a soft blue, might help.
You can also change the background color. When I open my Microsoft Word, I have mine set to a kind of a bluish lavender color,
that works for me. Maybe changing the font to a larger font or easier to read font, depending on what it is.
And sometimes white text on a black background is easier for someone with a visual disability to see or with low vision.
There are also page magnifier sheets like on the top picture here, that just sit over the entire page and it makes the print larger,
And then there are signature or pocket reading guides like the one on the bottom where you can apply them as you read and go a couple words or sentences at a time.
I listed some handheld or portable devices used for reading and writing support, digital tape recorders are really nice;
If you have someone that can calibrate stories that have trouble writing, I usually have them turn on the recorder and tell the story,
And then when they're in a more comfortable environment like at home or wherever they can play it back and remember what they wanted to talk about
and keep rewinding and playing it back as they need it.
And there are portable magnifiers depending on if somebody has low vision, there's iPod or MP3 players, and then Franklin products
like the dictionaries, thesauruses, spell-checkers, and then different kinds of reading pens.
The one that I love lately is called the Live Scribe Smart Pen, for the basic model it's 99 dollars,
But what it does is you turn it on and it records everything. If you're in a lecture and you can turn it on,
And you can make doodles or draw little diagrams or pictures, and it lets you capture the words, the diagram,
everything on audio, you're gonna have to buy specialized paper, it's about seventeen, eighteen dollars for a three pack of 25 sheets.
But what happens is you push on the plus sign, and it will play back everything that you recorded, and I'm excited to try and use them the next conference I go to.
Okay, auditory supports for reading, gonna talk about e-books and audio books, screen readers and text to speech, optical character recognition software,
And portable USB software.
So, most people know but just in case, e-books or audio books are books that are in a digital format, or electronic format,
That are either on a CD or they're a download that you can download from certain organizations,
Or you can also download them as MP3s depending on what you're looking for.
These are the resources, there are so many out there, but these are the main ones that we use;
Learning Ally used to be recording for blind and dyslexic, you do need to have a yearly membership for theirs,
Bookshare.org, have a yearly membership but anyone with an IEP in the special education system that has a print disability
For their qualifications you can go on their site and they have a listing, but anyone with a print disability can have access to their books,
And what's nice is they do have textbooks.
Project Gutenberg is free book downloads, and then one that I found that I really like is called Lit 2 Go, and it's out of the University of South Florida
And you can download the books in either text format, MP3 format, to play on your iPod or MP3 player.
You can also download a PDF version of their books.
And you can search by reading level which is really nice.
And that's a free service.
So text to speech programs, there's basically two different ones, I mean two different types,
One is a screen reader which is software that reads the contents of a computer screen out loud.
And then Optical Character Recognition is software that converts a scanned document to a text file, so basically you take a book or a piece of paper,
put it on a flat bed or on a scanner, it scans it in, it manipulates the text, and changes it so it can be read out loud
and you can also move it around or make the text larger or smaller, whatever you need to do.
The most, I listed some of the most commonly used screen readers or text to speech products. Browsealoud is a free web reader, and a lot of websites
at the bottom will say click here and it's Browsealoud enabled.
Read Outloud by Dawn Johnston, I probably use the most, it has, they all have computerized voices but Read Outloud has a less computery voice.
Read Please is a free web reader, I mean text reader, and then they have a version that's a paid version that has more changes you can make to it.
Natural Reader, they have a Mac version and a PC version that's free.
JAWS stands for Job Access With Speech, and that's made for for blind and low vision users as a windowized theme.
And then Thunder is a free screen reader.
The difference between screen readers for someone who is blind or visually impaired versus someone who has a learning disability is
if you can't see at all, you need everything on the screen read out loud to you including the icons and such,
where as if you have a learning disability you probably just want the text read out loud to you.
Any questions?
Okay.
So, for portable reading devices, there's all kinds now, which is really exciting.
We had the opportunity to try out for the last six months, the Intel Reader, which is the one on the top left,
And what you do is you take a book or whatever text you want read, you hold the Intel Reader above the text,
And it takes a picture of it, it converts that picture with Optical Character Recognition,
And then reads the text out loud to you. And on the machine you can adjust the way the text is viewed and the way the text is read.
Really, really helpful.
And the other one that's out I haven't tried yet but I'm anxious to try is called the Pearl and it is by Freedom Scientific,
Very similar to the Intel Reader, it has a capture station, and you go ahead and takes a picture and it does Optical Recognition as well.
For someone who just has trouble holding a book, but doesn't need a book read aloud, the book readers like the Kindle and the Nook are great
pieces of technology that you can download so many books to them and not have to carry them around.
Did you have a question? How accurate are the OCR readers.
It depends, if you're talking about the software or the portable, are you talking about the portable ones?
Okay, with the Intel Reader, it looks pretty good, I found it to be pretty accurate, the only problem I have is the voice is very computery.
You can slow it down or speed it up or enlarge it, but it's still very... if you go on YouTube they have a video demonstration of it that's like eight minutes long,
Or if you email me I can send it to you, it's very... it's computery, that's the only description I have of it.
But the OCR is very accurate, I was surprised.
Okay, thanks.
You're welcome.
And then of course on the iPad now, we have the iBooks that are built in, which are very similar. We also have Kindle and Nook apps which you can download to your iPad.
There are other reading apps which I'm going to talk about in a little while for the iPad or the iPod or the iPhone.
Another one I've tried is the Classmate Reader which is the one on the bottom right, and it has, it's distributed by Dawn Johnston,
it's made by Humanware, but it is, or you can download books to it and have them read out loud, very similar to the Intel Reader.
My biggest problem with all of them is the cost, I'm hoping the cost will eventually come down.
And then finally there are all kinds of digital book players out there, the one that we have that I got to play with for a bit is the Victor Reader,
And it was... This particular one we have was made for someone that is legally blind, and she downloads all her books onto this Victor Reader
and has them read digitally...auditorily, sorry, to her.
Again, computerized voice but not as computery.
You can also get downloads from Recording for Blind and Dyslexic or Learning Ally, you can download to these, and they're actual people
that are... go in a booth and read the books, so if you get the ones for Learning Ally, they're actually human voices.
So the scan and read programs, the Optical Character Recognition that I talked about a minute ago,
I just listed the ones that most people use, which is Kurzweil 3000, and then Kurzweil 1000,
1000 is for blind and low vision, 3000 is for learning disabilities, or physical.
WYNN, which stands for What You Need Now, or Open Book which is their blind and low vision component, by Freedom Scientific.
And then Read and Write Gold by textHELP and Scan N' Read by Premier Literacy,
If you have time to go on the Premier Literacy website, they have a lot of great applications that don't cost a lot of money but I think work very well.
I have all of these, but, I like them all for different reasons.
This is a screenshot of WYNN, I just want to show you on the left, is the scanned in page of the book, Mutiny on the Bounty,
And then on the right is the same book but altered and changed where you can change the font, you can change the size,
You can spread the words out, away from each other or the sentences away from each other, you can have it read out loud, you can do all different things with these programs.
That might make it easierto read for someone that has, whatever their issue is with reading whether it be a learning disability
Or if they physically can't hold the book.
So, portable literacy tools are, there's a lot of them now, and basically what they are
Are software that's loaded on a flash drive, and they have what's called a floating tool bar,
Which hopefully I have a picture of in here, yeah, the two things on the bottom are different floating tool bars,
One is from Premier Literacy, from their Key to Access, so I'll go ahead and start with them.
Premier Literacy has a couple of different portable versions, their Premier to Go has 11 tools on a USB flash drive,
And then their Key to Access which I have has those same 11 literacy tools on a flash drive but it also has a built in MP3 player and digital tape recorder.
And that's about 350 dollars for all of that or 379 I think.
What's nice about that is you can take it from class to class or you can take it to a library or if you don't have a computer you can take it anywhere with you.
Plug in the flash drive, the tools pop up, you don't have to install anything, you can use it right there from the flash drive.
And they have tools like an e-reader, a talking word processor, they have something that converts text to audio,
They have a scan and read component, and lots of other tools but those are the biggest.
Another one I found is Claro Read, which is the toolbar on the bottom. It has things like a homophone checker, nice spell check,
It has built in word prediction, if you have time I would say investigate to see what works for you,
Or if you're in the area that has a technology center where you can come try things that's what I would do.
Diana did you have a question?
What is the cost?
I don't know but I will look it up if you give me a minute.
We have twelve hundred pieces of software here, it's hard for me to remember what's what, but if you give me a minute I'll look it up for you.
In the mean time does anybody else have any questions?
We'll move on, I'll get to you in a minute.
Claro Read also has a couple different ones, and it depends on which one you get.
Trying to get my other computer to open, but...
I will look it up by the end, so that we can move forward, is that okay?
Where'd she go... Okay, no problem.
If I forget, remind me, kay?
Okay. So before we go to apps, does anybody want, have any other questions?
I have my laptop opening, trying to look up Claro Read but it's not going. Okay here we go.
Karen did you have a question?
Diana it looks like, if you go to the EnableMart website, it looks like it depends on how many licenses you buy...
Oh wait this isn't the USB one, hang on...
Karen did you have a question? I can see you're either writing or typing or... maybe not.
No. Okay.
So, apps for reading support, there are all different ones, out there, so I'm just going to highlight a few.
There are the free book readers that you can download like iBooks that come with the iPad, the Kindle, there's also the Nook.
There's an app that's free called Free Books, and I don't know why they picked this number but it's 23,469 books that you can download for free,
And then it comes with an e-reader that reads it out loud.
One of my favorite reading apps is called Read 2 Go and it's by BeneTex, and it was made to go with the Bookshare membership,
But you can also use it with other DAISY books or other books...
And what is does is you can open or download whatever books you want to and you're able to manipulate the speech, the font size,
the background color, the text color, the highlighting color, you can highlight it word by word,
sentence by sentence, you can... it does a lot for the nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents which is kind of a lot for an app.
Fully worth it, and it does a lot of things for a lot of people. You can slow it down and speed it up,
Again you can change the background color, you can change the font size, I really really like it.
Mkay, so, for vision enhancement,
I just went ahead and put some things for vision or low vision, what some accommodations might include.
Screen magnification software, screen readers like we talked about earlier or Optical Character Recognition software,
CCTV's or portable magnifiers like the one on the picture here, talking dictionaries or large print, and large print keyboards,
we have a lot of keyboards here that uh, larger letters, white letters on black print and such.
I found a couple, I looked at the popular screen magnification software like Magic, by Freedom Scientific,
Or ZoomText by AiSquared, and WinZoom.
But I found two free downloads, being non-profit we're all about free, two free downloads,
One is the iconico magnifier, and one is the virtual magnifying glass, which is like you're looking through a magnifying glass,
That little square up there on the picture is that one.
And then of course there's free magnification built into Windows and Mac operating systems, you just have to go into the accessibility features to turn them on.
And then, there are all different types of magnifiers, there's desktop magnifiers,
There's CCTV's like the one on the top right where you put something under it and it enlarges, we have one here that we use a lot.
We have the portable magnifiers which are nice, like the one on the top left, you can take it with you if you need help reading a menu or whatever you need help with.
And then there's little hand-held magnifiers.
And then there's a couple of apps that I found that I use, one is found ICanSee, and then one is called
Mirror 3-in-1 and that's free as well.
And they can be downloaded to either the iPhone, the iPod Touch, or the iPad, but they have to have a camera in them to work.
So, not the iPad one.
Any questions?
So weird not to be able to see everyone.
This is a really cool app that I tried out last year, oh thank you! Two hundred and ten dollars.
Thank you Karen.
It's on my wish list.
Sorry, cool app, Zoom Reader, I saw at See Sun last year and was so excited to go back and when it was ready and downloaded, and right now it's only available for the iPhone, it's not available for the iPad or the iPod touch.
So those of you that are lucky and have your iPhones 4 and up, you can download this app, and you actually take a picture, you can snap a picture of something,
It'll convert it using OCR software, and then read it back to you.
And I tried it, you can change the voice and different things, and you can also control it with the voice.
I tried it at See Sun it works great, and I'm just bugging them to death until they make it work on my iPad or my iPod Touch.
Okay. Any questions before we go to the next session? Section, sorry.
Okay, computer-aided writing.
We'll talk a little bit about abbreviated expansion, graphic organizers, talking word processors, word prediction, and voice recognition.
So abbreviated expansion is typically software that allows the use of abbreviation for frequently used words and phrases.
The example I like to use is if you type in your name and your title all day long, on all different things, you can go ahead and have
An abbreviation and you know I could do LFM for my name, Laura Simmons-Martinez, and every time I typed LFM,
It would come out my whole name which would be nice.
There's an example of Pen Friend over on the right, and it gives you examples of abbreviations like eg, is for example.
You can also, if there are frequently misspelled words, like their example, h-t-e is t-h-e, I have a couple of clients that
They have words that they commonly misspell, so you go ahead and key it in so if they do that it comes up correctly.
The only caution is that if you're really trying to spell something different, it may auto-correct for you.
So the different products, there are so many out there, I went ahead and those two websites on here that talk about abbreviation expansion or abbreviated expansion
The bottom one, the customtyping.com has tutorials and lets you try different ones of the abbreviated expansion programs.
Graphic organizers and outlining programs, there's a lot of different ones out there, but they're very helpful to get your thoughts organized
Or for someone who is very visual it helps with the organizing of ideas and getting those ideas then turned into writing assignments.
There are all different software products out there, Inspiration, Draft Builder, Smart Ideas, and the one I use the most which is probably Draft Builder,
There are templates that you can open like persuasive essay or compare and contrast or something as simple as a book report,
And it helps cue the writer in on what... it helps pull information out of them.
There are a few apps that I found, Simple Mind, Idea Sketch, and Total Recall, that work on mind mapping.
Talking Word Processors, basically with a talking word processor whatever you type in it speaks out loud,
Usually most of the talking word processors also you can change the font and the background color and the foreground color and the text and all that.
And the ones I have listed, those that are used probably most often, and I wanted to point out Word Talk, which is a free add on from Microsoft Word.
The talking word processor I used the most is probably Write Out Loud, because it has a lot of cool tools in it, and it's a nice, easy user interface.
There's a built in Franklin Dictionary, there's a bibliographer that has a wizard that helps you write bibliographies,
There's a phonetic spell checker and a great homonym checker in there.
Lately I've been getting a lot of calls about contextual spellcheckers, which are programs that check the grammar and the spelling and the punctuation and such
A lot of word processors just check the spelling and nothing else.
And these three that I've found work on checking these things in the context of the sentence that you're writing which is pretty cool.
Ginger Software, you can download and you get free for thirty days and if you decide to purchase it you can purchase it.
Whitesmoke Writer, I just found this one and I like it a lot, it does so many, it's the picture on the right,
Is the Whitesmoke Writer, it has a lot of cool and built in tools and templates as well.
And then there's another one called Ghotit, which is made for students with learning disabilities or dyslexia.
This is a picture of the Ginger Software, and in the middle it says red it senses for correction, the thing with Ginger, though, you have to be online to use it.
Because you type it in, it goes up into the cloud or wherever it processes it, and then sends it back.
So this is supposed to say the judge ruled against him, and they spelled judge like that, djadje.
So, it works really well for unusual spelling mistakes.
I do have a lot of creative spellers, as I call them, where a normal spellchecker will not pick it up, but this one seems to.
Word prediction programs or word completion programs, I usually explain them like when you're doing texting how the words pop up for you to choose,
The ones that are made for persons with special needs, usually are contextual spellcheckers, or they're word prediction programs that, like Co:Writer,
It won't predict a word that can't follow the last word you typed in, if that makes sense.
So if it doesn't make sense, it's not going to predict it.
There's also Read and Write Gold, there's a word prediction component to it.
Word Q, Premier Predictor Pro, ProtoType and SoothSayer, they are all word prediction programs.
There are also a couple of word prediction apps that I use.
ZenTap Pro, and Typ-o.
And the difference between them, I know there's kind of a big price difference, is Typ-o reads out loud.
Does anybody want questions before we go on?
Okay so for voice recognition, basically you talk into the microphone and it prints out, and for years we've had problems with speech recognition for,
Especially children if they - or persons that have any sort of speech impediment, or different speech pattern or accent.
They are getting better, I went ahead and listed the most popular choices.
Dragon Naturally Speaking, ViaVoice, Speak Q.
I personally love the Dragon Dictation app for the iDevices.
It's free, and the accuracy is amazing.
I've only ever had one person whose speech pattern it wouldn't recognize, but everyone else's worked beautifully.
Only drawback is you do have to have wi-fi, in order to use it.
But you can't beat free.
Mkay, I listed some apps for writing support that I like, all of these that are listed right here are free,
There's a Dragon Search, which is a voice activated web browsing program, which is kind of cool.
You can put in, you know, find me whatever and it will look for it.
There's the Merriam Webster Dictionary, it's powered by the same Dragon program I was just talking about, where you can actually
If you don't know how to spell the word you can say the word and it will look for that word for you.
There's also the Wikipanion which is access to the, to Wikipedia through the iDevices which is kind of nice.
And then Google Translate will translate to and from just about any language and then read it out loud to you.
Which is nice...
And then, does anybody have any questions on anything that we've covered?
This is my contact information, and I just changed my email address so if anybody already has it, please switch to this one
It's laurasm@taskca.org
And if you have any questions or you want anything specifically please feel free to call or email me.
I just wanted to thank you Laura, this has been tremendously informative and helpful.
Oh thank you.
Thanks.
Haha, thank you.
Um, Laura?
Uh-huh.
Will you email us the recording or, I know you said that at the beginning I just can't remember.
Hi, this is Karen, I will send out the recor- a link to the recording and post it on our archives webpage once it's... they have to process it, and then they send me an email to say that it's done and then I'll send you the link,
And then I'll send you where you can find it on the archives page so if you want to view any of the other webinars we've done...
I'll also send out versions of the presentation and Laura did a document that lists all the resources, so I'll send those out along with the link to the archives.
Thank you both so much, oh good, okay.
You're welcome.
Alright, goodbye.
Thank you Laura, this has been great.
And I'll mention one thing real quick but I'll follow up with an email, I just worked with a gentleman who runs disability services at UC Davis,
And he has launched a lister of where we can all get together and post our information about mobile apps that we like for iPad, iPod, and Android devices,
And so that hopefully will become that central location where people can go and see, you know, what's worked, what hasn't worked,
Who is it working for, who is it not working for, you know, that kind of thing.
So I loved that you've brought up a bunch of iPad, iPod, type apps in your presentation.
So I'll send out that information.
That's the big thing right now.
It is.
Thank you so much Karen.
Yeah, especially for kids that they get older and need to be really independent about having a communication device,
It's great when it's integrated into a computer.
For people who are on Facebook, there's a really cool open group on Facebook called iTeachSpecialEducation,
And it's all about using iDevices in special education, and they're always posting like, free apps or discount apps or opinions and things like that.
Do you remember what group is called?
Yeah it's called iTeachSpecialEducation, little i and then teach, all one word.
Thanks.
No problem, yeah it's a really nice group.
And it's nice to get feedback and opinions from them.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Thank you so much Laura, this was a great presentation.
You're welcome.
So much information.
It was wonderful.
It was so weird not to be able to see people.
I know.
You get used to it after a while.
Oh okay, talking to myself now.
And you know I attended one presentation where the presenter actually had people write on their slides, so you can use the pen and the highlighter,
So he was like, "write down your comments" as we're presenting.
So there's all kinds of fun things you can do.
Oh, yeah I would like to look at this. That's awesome.
Yeah, I like how it was really fun.
Because it doesn't really mark up your presentation, it just gives people a chance to interact.
Yeah, yeah, Sam used to pass things around and letting everyone play with it and it's this differenced.
Yeah that's a good point.
Well thank you again and to everyone happy holidays and happy new year.
Yeah, happy holidays everyone.
Thank you, bye Karen.
Bye Laura, bye.