ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

What other profession do you know of, that would sacrifice a whole day for professional development without pay? Welcome to the world of teaching and the un-conference model which is turning the world of professional development on its heels. Today more than 200 teachers arrived at Richard Stockton College for a full day of professional development with a focus on educational technology . The day started off with a Kidspiration Maps and iReadWrite. Both programs were very well received and offer students a great deal of support in the area of written language.
series of quick 20 minute presentations by teachers on all kinds of interesting technology topics. I presented in one of the 20 minutes modules with a focus on reading and writing apps for struggling students. In the 20 minute time period I was able to demo the recently released apps:

If you have't taken a look at the Kidspiration Maps which was recently released, I urge you to do so. It incorporates a great deal of features which adhere to the concept of Universal Design for Learning. Kidspiration Maps allows students to use text, pictures, and audio recordings to express their ideas. Teachers will love the way they can give students audio instructions and students will just love the colorful library of high quality vector based graphics. For those of you who like to kick the tires, their is a lite version of Kidspiration Maps that you can download and test out.

iReadWrite offers students a great set of tool for writing which includes word prediction, text to speech, dictionary, and homonym checking. This is a powerful app with exceptional word prediction. Please take a look at my complete review of iReadWrite which I did when it was released.


In the afternoon I was fortunate to be able to present with Mike Marotta a long time friend and assistive technology specialist where we delved into the accessibility features on the iPad and had a chance to take a look at some of the other apps for students with reading and writing disabilities. During the course of the day we demoed: CoWriter app, Clicker Docs, Clicker Sentences, Inspiration Maps, Book Creator, Voice Dream, Learning Ally app, and AudioNote. This was a great day of presenting and our participants went home with a new appreciation of how the iPad could be adapted and used in the classroom to better support students.

I have been using a new tool called Edcanvas which is a great way to share information and links which I showed today.

This past Friday I spent the entire day working with elementary school teachers in New Jersey showing them how to use Kidspiration 3 in the classroom. Within a two hour period all of the teachers were introduced to the Picture, Writing, and Math View. The teachers were quick to learn how to use the program and the intuitive interface found in Kidpsiration 3 which really helped them along. With the addition of the Word Guide and the Math manipulatives, Kidspiration 3 is clearly an essential piece of software for the elementary school classroom. Many of the teachers were excited to explore the Activities and Online Lessons to get more ideas on how this tool could be used in their classroom. With the text to speech support and the graphic representation of information Kidspiration 3 is an ideal tool for students whose learning preference is visual. Kidspiration 3 is also ideal for use with interactive whiteboards- and remember if you are working with young children you can move the tools to the bottom of the screen. Many of the teachers were really excited with the possibilities and thoroughly enjoyed using the Math tools that are now built into Kidspiration 3. If you have not taken a look at Kidspiration 3 in awhile, I would urge you to take a look at it and download the Trial version that is available from the Inspiration web site.

Today Inspiration, Inc. announced that Kidspiration 3 will be released on February 6th. Kidspiration 3 adds lot of new features which really make this a very substantial upgrade. Kidspiration 3 will now allow students to use the expanded Symbol Library with over 3000 pictures as well as searching the symbol library for pictures when connected to the web. Kidspiration 3 now included Word Guide which is an online dictionary and thesaurus which is great for language development. Kidspiration 3 now includes an extensive visual math tools which makes it an ideal tool for interactive white boards. Teachers will have access to color tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, fraction tiles and fraction boxes. Once I have had a chance to use Kidspiration 3, I will give my thoughts

If you are looking for top quality writing templates for Kidspiration and Inspiration then you should be aware that they can be downloaded from the Inspiration Software, Inc website. The templates are derived from the Strategies for Writers 2008 textbooks which are published by Zaner Bloser. The Inspiration and Kidspiration writing templates compliment the Zaner Bloser writing program-but could certainly be used as a standalone.