Assignment 4 Assistive Technology

Computer Tools to assist those who have difficulty accessing and reading information on line

One of the things I struggle with the most is using the Internet with my low readers and students with reading comprehension skill. I am always looking for ways to help them access information from websites. I have experience using lots of assistive technologies and unfortunately most students are embarrassed to use them. I have a visually impaired student that the district paid to have a magnifying device like the Intel reader device and he only will use it at home. My hearing impaired students will not bring their amplifying boxes to class so they can hear the teachers lectures. It is insane but there you go. I love the 1 click download from answer.com site and can’t wait to tell my students about it. I am also writing a note with the information on it to send home to parents. I am also going to try to contact some of my former students that I know is now trying to make it in college classes. Because I am aware of so many different costly assitive technologies and my district has provided us with many of them I am choosing to research free and low cost technology to use with not only my special ed students but those gray area students as well.

My blog will be an assistive technology resource blog that teachers can look to for quick and easy ways to help the students access Internet and other reading materials.

1. Teachers and web designers who create educational material for online access can help by following these 5 steps for designing accessible web sites at http://www.ataccess.org/rresources/web/5firststeps.html
2. If you want to test your web site you can run it by Bobby at http://www.cast.org/bobby
3. Teacher/educational sites can use readability formulas to assist low readers. Microsoft Word has one in the spelling and grammar function. Click on Tools than Options and then click on the spelling & grammar tab. Under grammar click and check the readability statistics. When you do spell check after making corrections it will give you the readability statistics of your text.
4.Provide barriers for people with vision difficulty. See suggestions at http://www.ataccess.org/rresources/web/vision.html
5.Provide barriers for people with hearing difficulty see http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/access/index.html
6. Free Assistive Technology Software: Izoom web, Wordtalk, Letmetype, System Access to Go, Power Talk, ClickNType. http://wac.osu.edu/conferences/emrc08/free_at.html7. Bookshare Reading Tools: http://www.bookshare.org/readingTools
8. Read Please software http://www.readplease.com/
9. Free Read Please downloads http://software.informer.com/getfree-read-please-software-review/10. Students often have difficulty typing in URLs so sites like http://tinyurl.com helps with creating shorter URLs for students to use when ask to go to a certain site. Also, at http://fur.ly site you can attach several websites all in one URL.
11. Sites like Keepandshare.com and Ikeep bookmarks.com help student manage and easily bookmark sites to review as needed.
12. Glogsters.com is a creative way for students with low writing skills to create information from web sites linking them to pictures.
13. One very helpful site that can be use to assist students in learning is livebinders.com. I use it to keep things together also.

With all the budget cuts I am always looking for free assistive technology that can be used in the classroom. Ease of use is important not only for students but for teachers. Training teachers is costly and time consuming. We have very little time these days for leaning new things. If you would like to see the Writer's I use with my students check out this site. http://writerlearning.com/