Notes on wondering in a world of learning
During the MACUL conference of 2008, I worked on gaming similations and how the work in the classroom. More and more of our student’s are becoming gamers, thus increasing the visual literacy skills. To ignore this development would be done at our peril, thus I am looking at ways that we can use this strategy to help our students look smarter.
In my work with special education students, I have found two tools that have been of great interest and help. They are free and while I don’t have a lot of data to support my impressions, I do have a number of students and families using Google Docs and ReQal.
Google Docs give me students one stop storage for their materials. For students on the autism spectrum or others how like order and predictability, having the same interface at home, at school and with any other Internet connect computer is of great benefit.
The number one dream out there for students who struggle with writing is the Holy Grail of “speech to text” software. Dragon Naturally Speaking is quite expensive and when I give students a chance to use it, 90% of them find the minutia of correcting details more trouble than it is worth. In many of my schools, SOLO Co:Writer, word predication software, is a credible alternative but again quite expensive. ReQall is a free web service where one registers a phone and an email address. After that 60 seconds of dictation on a registered phone can be transcribed and sent to the registered email address. It’s recognition is very good and I use it to had to my to do or great thoughts list as I drive.
I will continue to discuss these issues as I find students working through these tools.
Technorati Tags: Assistive Technology, free tools, web 2.0
It has snowed better than 5″ here and all the schools are closed. Nevertheless I expect by colleague, Michael Smith to arrive soon and off we will go to Rockford for today’s preconference workshop on gaming.
Dave, I can see the connecting of disposable artifacts and I appreciated the chance to participate in this presentation.
When I tried to start eluminate, I became confused between it’s asking for a name for me with a name for the session. That “duh?” was on me.
20 mins. into the session, my audio went out. I got an ellumniate java message telling me there was backed up audio waiting to me played.
I do belive I have a screencast of this effort, that will be the gem of this if it does continue.
Thanks Dave for all of this.
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I am looking forwarding to learning more about online collaboration working with the Future of Education Online Conference.
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I am very excited about the next two days. I am on my way to Ottawa Intermediate School District for the Connecting and Collaborating Conference. Tomorrow I will be listening to Wes Fryer present on Podcasting and Google tools.
Friday I will be having a great time being the in person front man for the EdTechTalk crew as we talk about Building Collaborating Communities Online
I am very excited the Bill Fitzgerald of the drupaled project will be joining us. His work at packaging a drupal install for maximum benefit and ease is gifted. Many educators will be benefitting from his work in the months and years ahead.
I am also using this conference as a motivator to get my online presence working. I am committing to blogging again and want to improve my work with the drupal communities I have established.
This morning I sat through a meeting at one of my schools. A energetic precious young 7 year old girl is unable to speak because of physical and neurological impairments. We have checked out a Dynavox DV 4 Dynavox DV 4 and the teacher has worked hard at programming it. The classroom staff including the speech therapist are witnessing an amazing transformation as this young lady starts sharing expression with the world around her for the first time. It is a awesome blessing to hear of this and makes up for many of those meetings that I facilitate where people leave frustrated.
I am having a blast listening to Will Richardson. He is giving quite the series of talks today. I love his work and following it. Being an early el teacher makes for a different perspective but it inspires me.
Through Dave Cormier, I found that Will was going to skype him for a demo. So I audio skyped Dave so he could hear Will’s talk. When Will called him, Dave was tuned and ready to comment in the flow of the talk. He was able to reference a comment about being in the bedroom which the audience found very funny. This is an amazing way to connect, communcate and share.
My own learning at this minute is being a multitasking author. I have Dave on my audio listening to Will, I am text messaging Dave and Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich, and blogging. In a fit of further glee, I snap a picture of Will and send the file to Dave. I am realizing I need to write light and fast and loose some baggage in order to better this join the web 2.0 world. The Read, Write, Audio and Collaborate Web.
Technorati Tags: EdTechTalk, Skype, Web 2.0