ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Some students may need tests and quizzes in an electronic format for various needs. Teachers may be hesitant to distribute tests and quizzes ahead of time because of academic integrity concerns. With Microsoft Word you can encrypt tests and quizzes and securely distribute them to students who need electronic documents. With an encryption document  the student is unable to open the document without knowing a code. The teacher could email a student an encrypted document for a test the next day. Then on the day of the test the teacher could simply give the student the code to unlock the test. This ensures students will not have access to tests and quizzes before hand, but also ensures that the test will be ready and available so the student who needs the electronic version gets it at the same time as all of the other students.  To learn more watch the video above. For more Microsoft Word tricks click here and here

I want to thank LaCie for sending me a iamaKey USB Flash drive to test. Looking at the design of the iamaKey USB Flash drive you feel like saying to yourself "How come I didn't think of this?" With so many different USB flash drives to choose from today in the marketplace, Lacie has created an inspiring design for their latest USB Flash drive that takes the form of a key. If you are like me you probably have several USB Flash drives in your desk, in your briefcase, or in your pockets. Inevitably you will misplace or lose one at any given time. So the idea of creating a USB Flash drive in the form factor of a key is really fantastic. Simply place the iamaKey USB Flash drive on your keyring and you are ready to go.

The iamaKey is scratch as well as water resistant and has gold connectors (Gold SIP) making it very durable. The iamaKey is extremely thin and lightweight and supports High speed USB 2.0 read transfer rates of up to 30 MB/s; and write mode of up to 10MB/s. The iamaKey USB Flash drive is compatible with both Windows and Macintoshcomputers and is available in a 4GB and 8 GB model. I had a chance to test the iamaKey USB Flash drive this afternoon and it worked beautifully-the transfer rates when copying and moving files were very fast and having the ability to place it on my keyring is really a dream come true. Now I know that when I need access to one of my files I can always count on it being on my keyring. The 4GB model of iamaKey is $17.99 and 8 GB model is $27.99. Lacie has added two additional USB Flash drives with a key form factor which they are marketing as LaCie itsaKey and LaCie Passkey USB Flash drive. The LaCie PassKey includes both a USB Flash drive as well as a micro SD card reader.

I'm sold on the iamaky USB Flash drive, and now all I need to remember, is not to try to use it to open the door to my home with it :-) Give it a try and let me know what you think.