ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Pizmo 3 has just been released with a new design which is perfect for iOS 7,  and has some helpful new features. After updating, you will notice a new app icon and a redesigned interface, but the changes go deeper than just a new design. The updated app is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touches running iOS 7. Click here to download Prizmo. Similar to previous versions, Prizmo 3 still allows you to take pictures of text and have the text extracted using optical character recognition (OCR) in order to have the text read aloud using text-to-speech. In other words, you can take a picture of a document and then Prizmo will read it back to you using text-to-speech. Amazingly, whole process takes less than a minute per page. Prizmo 3 also includes PDF exporting and business card scanning.

Prizmo 3 adds a handful of helpful new features including support for dynamic text size, optional faster text-to-speech rate, and one touch multiple page scanning. Dynamic text is a new feature of iOS 7 that allows users to specify a text size that  is easier for them to read.  This text size can be larger or smaller than the default text size. After choosing a text size, all compatible apps, such as Prizmo, will display text in your preferred size. Prizmo 3 also allows users to speed up the text-to-speech rate up to 400% for people who can understand faster speech. Another new time saving feature allows users to scan multi-page documents with a single button press instead of scanning one page at a time. Prizmo 3 is definitely a worthwhile update for all iOS 7 users.

To learn more about the features of Prizmo 3 click here. Click here to view screen shots of Prizmo 3 in action.

The G-Form Extreme Sleeve is soft and flexible while still protecting your devices. As the school year gets underway it is important protect your electronics from the daily bumps and drops that are inevitable for school children. I tested the G-Form Extreme Sleeve 2, but I did not do any extreme tests that would have put my iPad in jeopardy. That being said the construction and feel of case gives me confidence that the protected device would survive daily falls and bumps. I would be slightly concerned if the iPad or other device fell on its corner because the padding seems slightly thinner on the edges. The case is available in black and bright yellow depending on your preferences. The G-Form Extreme Sleeve comes in a number of sizes ranging from 7 inch tablet to 17 inch laptop. If you're sending your child to school with expensive electronic devices I definitely think that the G-Form Extreme Sleeves are a worthy investment. The cases range in price from $60 to $100 depending on the size. To learn more or to order a case click here to visit the G-Form website.

Click here to view images of the G-Form Extreme Sleeve 2.

I guess patience is a real virtue especially when it comes to developing apps for Apple's IOS devices. In the case of the Co:Writer App for IOS from Don Johnston, Inc, the wait was certainly worth it.  Co:Writer for Mac and PC has become to large degree the standard in the assistive technology field for word prediction. I can remember when I first saw Co:Writer for the first time I was floored just how good the prediction algorithms were. It had the uncanny ability to feel like it was reading my Co:Writer for IOS comes complete with a large library of built-in Topic Dictionaries, what happens when the student is writing for example a current events paper on the Civil War in Syria? Not a problem, Co:Writer for IOS can go out to the web and create a Scraped Topic Dictionary on the fly. Wow that is some powerful feature!

Co:Writer for iPad

mind as I demonstrated it on the computer. But what could we come to expect from Co:Writer on an IOS device? With a long history of being the standard by which all word prediction applications are measured could it really provide students with the level of support that they would need? I have to tell you that since its release a couple of weeks ago, Co:Writer lives up to its reputation and then some. I am really floored to watch Co:Writer run on the iPad as elegantly as it does never missing a beat. The word prediction is top rate even when students spell phonetically or leave out vowels. The killer feature as far as I am concerned are Topic Dictionaries and Scraped Topic Dictionaries. Those of us who have used Co:Writer are well aware of Topic Dictionaries that are included with Co:Writer on the Mac or PC and how well they can support students when they are writing a specific topic. Sometimes we forget what a difference it can make when a student is writing when we can provide theme with all those technical and topical words they will need to access. While 

As you would expect you can customize Co:Writer for IOS by determining the base number of words that Co:Writer should access which would depend on the students vocabulary and grade level. You can also set the Text to Speech feature to read letters, words, or sentences and set the rate of the speech. You currently can utilize five different fonts and change the size of the text and utilize a high contrast feature, black background white text. While Co:Writer makes it easy to get your ideas down on the iPad-it also gives you lots of options when it comes time for sharing your ideas. You can send the text to iMessage, Facebook, Twitter or Email. Better yet you can save it to your Dropbox or Google Drive account for easy access at home or in school. You can also copy. paste and print the text directly from the app. Don Johnston, Inc recently added iCloud support which will now sync your files across multiple devices which is a great feature. Co:Writer for IOS also supports external Bluetooth keyboards and will work on the iPhone. For students who need spelling support, having access to Co:Writer on IOS will be a dream come true for them.

To get a feel for Co:Writer for IOS please watch the screencast.

Adobe Presenter 9 just might be one of Adobe's best kept secrets. As a long time Adobe Presenter user it is really exciting to see the evolution of this product and watch as the feature set grows. Adobe Presenter 9 has to be one of the best releases and one that will enable subject matter experts, teachers, and instructional designers to develop full blown courses with audio, video and multimedia. For those of you who may not be familiar with Adobe Presenter, it is a plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint on Windows, that adds a full set of new features to PowerPoint making it easy to create eLearning modules. For those of you who have been using PowerPoint for years, having access to Adobe Presenter 9 will afford you opportunity to quickly turn your presentations into full fledged eLearning assets that can be published to Adobe Connect, a Web server, or your Learning Management System.

Adobe Presenter 9 Toolbar

As a subject matter expert, Adobe Presenter 9 lets me package my eLearning material in a very professional manner that is ready to be hosted on our college Learning Management System (Moodle). I will talk more about that a little later in this post. One of the new features to be added to Adobe Presenter 9 is Adobe Presenter Video Creator which opens up all kind of possibilities for creating high quality instructional videos from your desktop without the need to know a lot of about editing or videography. Being in the field of assistive technology, I want to applaud Adobe for making Adobe Presenter 9 a truly accessible tool for students with a range of visual, motor, hearing and learning disabilities. In fact, Adobe Presenter Video Creator lets you create Closed Captioning videos on the fly utilizing their proprietary speech to text engine when creating the video. Adobe Presenter 9 adds Section 508 compliance which is a welcome addition.

Once you install Adobe Presenter 9 it is easy to get started on crafting your eLearning material. The workflow could not be any easier, open up you presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint and click on the Adobe Presenter tab which now open up a whole new world for features for creating your materials. Depending on my goals there are times when I will add an audio narration to the slides which can be done simply using my built-in microphone on my laptop. There is always the option to import audio and utilize an external microphone for better recording quality. When it is time to sync the audio to your text Adobe Presenter 9 provides you with an easy to use feature to accomplish this. To spice up my eLearning material, I will often include one or two of the built in interactions that can be found in Adobe Presenter 9. Sometimes I will add a Word Search or a Jigsaw Puzzle to engage and have my

Interaction Types

students interact with the material in a fun way. Adobe Presenter 9 includes over 12 different types of interactions which you can add to your presentation. Having access now to both Characters and Scenes opens up the possibilities when using Adobe Presenter 9 to create scenario based eLearning materials. In fact of the newest features that is found in Adobe Presenter 9, is the Insert Scenario Interaction which lets you drop in a pre-set scenario whereby all of the characters and scenes with the associated paths have been programmed for you. This is ideal for doing what-if scenarios and gives your participants the option to test out what they have learned. At this

Insert Scenario

point in time the characters and scenes are slanted towards business and I have provided Adobe with my feedback that they need to include more characters and scenes that are relevant for K-12 and Higher Education. Despite the need for more relevant characters and scenes this is still a powerful tool to utilize as you put together your eLearning material.

OK, so I added my slides, audio narration, some interactions and maybe even some video-now I would like to assess what my students have learned from the module. From my perspective as a

Quiz Question Types

professor it is important for me know that my students are grasping the information and key concepts and what better way to do that than by adding a quiz to the material. Adobe Presenter 9 makes it easy to add a quiz and now includes 9 different types of questions that I can add to a quiz. One of the most asked for features, Drag & Drop was added to Adobe Presenter 9 which opens up all kinds of possibilities for assessing my students. While adding a quiz has always been a standard feature, I am particularly excited by the addition of the Collaboration feature and the Student Analytic Dashboard that was recently added to Adobe Presenter 9. With the Collaboration feature tuned on students can engage in an ongoing conversation about the material and learn from one another as they are interacting with the material. Adobe makes this feature easy to use and it doesn't require that you have a Learning Management System in place. Once this feature is turned on all users will see a question mark on the bottom of the learning module that they can click to view and ask questions. This is a great feature to get students more engaged and gives them the opportunity to learn from one another. One of the other benefits of Adobe Presenter 9 is that it supports Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) which makes it ideal of uploading to Moodle. Setting up the SCORM package is a cinch in Adobe Presenter 9 and when I am done I can upload it as a ZIP file to Moodle and my students can view the material and answer the quiz. Moodle handles the Adobe Presenter 9 SCORM files exceptionally well and will automatically report the students quiz scores to me.

The feature that I am most excited about in this release of Adobe Presenter 9 is the Student Dashboard which takes Adobe Presenter 9 to a new realm for me as I deliver more content online to my students. Adobe has done a masterful job of providing me with a way to monitor my students progress as they work on a learning module. I just started back teaching and have put up my first

Dashboard

module to see how this feature would work and all I can say is wow- this truly gives me a snapshot of where my students are in the module and if any of them need some assistance. The Dashboard is extremely visual and I have found easy to use. The heat map of where my students are in the process of completing the module gives me a quick overview of their progress. At any time I can email or share their progress directly form the Dashboard. Adobe Presenter 9 also gives me the capability to set an Intervention date that alert me of students who are not progressing through the eLearning Module- this giving me the opportunity to intervene. Having access to the Dashboard is a tremendous feature and one that I know I will take advantage throughout the semester. Kudos to Adobe for building this feature in!

When it comes time to publishing my course there are lots of options for output-you may want to consider uploading it to your Adobe Connect account, a web server, a LMS, or as a PDF that you can distribute. I have always been impressed with the options and the look and feel of the course when it is packaged within Adobe Presenter 9. Adobe Presenter 9 gives you complete control over how your published course will look and how users will navigate through the module. I for one like how Adobe

Published Adobe Presenter 9 Module

Presenter 9 creates an index and the sidebar, but if you choose you can completely remove that and utilize your own system for navigating the module. Adobe Presenter 9 also makes it easier to attach accompanying documents to your learning module which are then easily accessible to the learner. Adobe Presenter 9 opens up all kind of new possibilities for teachers, instructors, and eLearning professionals that are looking for ways to utilize their legacy PowerPoint presentations. With a little seat time you will be up and running using the powerful features in Adobe Presenter 9 to publish your courses to the web or mobile devices (IOS and Android apps are available). Adobe has added a number of new features to the recent release of Adobe Presenter 9 which makes this application even more powerful without the steep learning curve. As I said in the beginning Adobe Presenter 9 may just be the best kept secret in Adobe's suite of software applications -but I have a sneaking suspicion that they know they have a real winner on their hands with this release, and I'm sure they will do all they can to get the word out going forward.If you would like to try Adobe Presenter 9- Adobe has a 30 day trial version that you can download from the web.

Please look for another post soon on the Adobe Presenter Video Creator which opens up all kind of new possibilities.

Let me start off by saying I have always been a big fan of the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard and have watched it over the years evolve to a very robust and powerful solution for the classroom. The MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard from its inception is pure genius- simply affix the Mimio Bar to a whiteboard and within seconds you have an entire interactive whiteboard system at your disposal.
Not to date myself but when I was first introduced to the Mimio many years ago the big attraction was capturing ink from whiteboards when using dry erase markers- so you can see how quickly things have changed. Having the opportunity to try out the latest solution from Mimio- the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard was really exciting from the un-boxing to the point of actually using it in the classroom. The MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard is now packaged in a beautifully designed high tech looking box which when opened reveals the newly designed white bow shaped MimioTeach bar. The MimioTeach is elegantly designed and has that high tech look we have come to expect from these type of products. On the MimioTeach itself there are two buttons and one Power/Status LED light, and on the left side of the bar is the docking station for the stylus which is firmly held in place with magnets that are inside the MimioTeach bar. The two buttons on the MimioTeach are designated for Calibration and Launching the tools and the Power/Status LED light on the front gives the user feedback that the bar is on and communicating  properly with the Mimio Hub, which plugs into the USB port on your computer which supports both Mac and Windows.

It is nice to see that a lot of thought has gone into the un-boxing experience and getting up and running. Once you open the box there is a ten step visual prompt on the inside of the box cover that moves you through the getting started process. From installing the MimioStudio software to doing a firmware upgrade on the MimioTeach bar the process was smooth and flawless. Following the visual steps was easy and straight forward and within minutes I was up and running. While I was familiar with MimioStudio and using the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard solution I wondered what it would be like for my students to use the system who were not familiar with the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard system. So during one of my summer classes that I teach, I decided to bring it in and have my students set it up and get it up and running.Using the visual set-up guide and the MimioStudio Guide, which I gave to my students, they were up and running without a hitch. Many of my students commented that they could not believe how easy it was to use the MimioStudio software and utilize right out of the box. My students found the software and using the stylus to be very straight forward and many of them were surprised at the cost effectiveness and the functionality as compared to standalone interactive whiteboards that are often installed in classrooms and cost thousands of dollars. My students enjoyed using the MimioStudio software and the vast array of pictures and interactive media in the Library to craft some quick pages in the notebook.  Teachers can also add MimioVote, MimioCapture and MimioView to round out this classroom offering. Having access to the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard gives teachers the flexibility to create interactive and engaging lessons that students of today expect from their teachers. Having access to the  MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard gives teachers a great starting point that can grow with them as they need more functionality. Considering the austere budgets that schools have to work with the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard is a powerful and full featured classroom solution that is easy to install and use right out of the box. As I like to say, if you have a whiteboard in your classroom you are half way there to providing your students with an exciting and engaging interactive learning experience-now all you need to add is the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard.

Please look for another post about the MimioTeach Interactive Whiteboard and the MimioMobile app for the iPad coming soon!