ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Nothing could have been better when I was a child than when my mother or father would pick me up a fresh container of Play-Doh. I could spend hours playing with the Play-Doh forming all kinds of animals and structures. And yes there were times when I would leave it out of the container to cure so that I could display my handiwork for my friends and family. So when I cam a cross sugru, a new form of play dough, I had to get my hands on it and check it out. So thank-you Suki from sugru for providing me with a sample of sugru for me to test out. You see Sugru is a self setting silicone rubber that when left out at room temperature for 24 hours cures to a hard but flexible silicone rubber.

Sugru comes in small 5 gm minipacks in a couple of different colors ( red, yellow, purple, black and white) which can be molded in your hands. Because of its properties sugru is a wonderful product that can be used in many different ways. You see sugru is self-adhesive and can bond to aluminium, steel, ceramics, glass, wood, some fabrics and plastics. Sugru has some wonderful properties which makes it ideal for projects that involve repair of items that will be in and around water. Likewise sugru is electrically insulating which makes it an ideal material when doing minor repairs of electrical equipment (ie. power cords). It also handles the hot and cold temperatures well as well as sunlight. Just in case you aren't satisfied with your handiwork, sugru is removable from most non-porous surfaces.

I was fascinated with the possibilities and thought that it would be a lot of fun to create a customized pencil grip using sugru. Getting started was really easy- I opened the minipack, rolled the suru in my fingers and then began to form the suru around the pencil. Once the sugru was on the pencil, I held the pencil as I normal would to create the customized grip that I desired. I then left the pencil out over night and when I returned 24 hours later I had a great custom pencil grip to use. The pencil grip feels great in my hand and has a nice cushiony feel to it. I'm sure many occupational therapists would enjoy using suru in the work that they do with students in the school. Using your creativity the possibilities are endless when using sugru. With a little innovation you will find sugru indispensable for both home and school. Sugru gives you the flexibility to use just one material as you design, improve and customize the things you rely on every single day. Suru has a wonderful website with some great ideas on how you can use sugru- so check it out.

As I shared in my first post, I spent the day with a group of fantastic Occupational Therapists talking about some of the new developments in the field of assistive technology. The OT's at Pediatric Potentials of West Essex were very excited about using the iPad for the students that they see. I was able to do an overview of the iPad and demonstrated some apps that I thought they would be interested Since many of the OT's work with students who have dysgraphia I demonstrated Dragon Dictation from Nuance which is available for the iPod Touch and iPad. Dragon Dictation is a free app that you can download from the Apple's App Store and begin to use within seconds. To use the app simply launch it an press the big "record button." Within seconds your speech is transcribed into editable text that can be sent as an email or copied and pasted into your favorite word processor app on the iPad. Dragon Dictation worked flawlessly and many of the OT's in the workshop were not only amazed but wanted to try it out with some of the students on their case load. Dragon Dictation is a powerful tool for students with writing disabilities. After the text was transcribed, I copied it and pasted it into SpeakiT! a text to speech application with a high quality text to speech engine. Now a student could listen to the text to make sure that there were no errors. Using the combination of Dragon Dictation and SpeakiT! is a wonderful set of tools for students who need writing and reading support.

While I was at the ISTE 2010 Conference I reconnected with the folks at Renaissance Learning the developers of the Alphasmart line of products. For many years I was a big evangelist for the Alphasmart and have used it with hundreds of students who presented with writing disabilities. When Alphasmart sold their product to Renaissance Learning I lost touch with the product line and the new developments but at ISTE 2010 I reconnected with Jan Bryan, Head of Professional Development at Renaissance Learning and she was kind enough to send me a new NEO 2 to review. I now have had a chance to work with a new NEO 2 from Renaissance Learning and have enjoyed spending some time looking at all of the new features as well as exploring the new partnerships they have made. While the NEO 2 looks very much like the original NEO that I had used, under the hood the NEO 2 supports more memory allowing one to run more Smart Applets. The NEO 2 now has built-in IEEE 802.15 wireless connectivity that when coupled with the Renaissance Receiver allows students to quickly send and receive files from the teacher's work station. Using the wireless capability students can now quickly print documents to the default printer that the teacher has set up by simply pressing the Print key on the NEO 2.

One of the features which I was eager to try out was sending and editing Google Doc files. With so many schools moving to Google Docs this would allow students access to their files in the cloud that they could access and edit from their NEO 2. With the Renaissance Receiver plugged into my computer I was ready to now try to access my Google Docs in the cloud. Connecting to my Google account and my documents was a cinch and within seconds I was editing one my Google Docs and sending changes to the cloud. With this feature teachers can create assignments and students can access their files both at home an at school. Connecting the NEO 2 to Google Docs was straight forward and easy to do. While some educators may argue that the screen size of the NEO 2 is too small- I have always seen it as an advantage for certain students in helping them to stay focused and not being as distracted by all of the other features that one might find on a laptop computer. With the ability of the NEO 2 to connect to Google Docs all kinds of writing activities are now possible. This is certainly an impressive feature to say the least and one that many teachers and students will be glad to have access to.

One of the new applications that I was really impressed with is the 2Know! Toolbar student response software application. Using the NEO 2 as a responder, teachers can quickly set up adhoc questions using a variety of different formats to query their students. With NEO 2 and 2Know! Toolbar, you can ask multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, numeric, and even short answer questions, and students respond immediately. Once students respond, the teacher in real times can automatically see the tallies and student responses in a graphical format. During the workshop I was able to try the 2Know Toolbar with my NEO 2 to demonstrate how it could be used in the classroom. What I liked most about the 2Know! Toolbar was the ease of setup and the quick feedback it provided once my participants responded. Unlike other responder systems I really liked the fact that students could type short answer responses on the full size keyboard that could be instantly evaluated by the teacher. The NEO 2 offers a lot for possibilities now for both teachers and students and it is clear that partnerships that Renaissance Learning has made have paid off in terms of new features and functionality. It is exciting for me to see that one of the tools that I evangelized, continues to grow and develop and provide students and teachers access to technology in ways that were just not possible with earlier iterations of the device.

All in all it was a full day at Pediatric Potentials, but one that was filled with all kind of possibilities as we explored a range of new technologies to support learning in the classroom and at home. If you are thinking about bring these tools to your school or classroom send me an email to see how I can help you out.

On Monday, I had a chance to work with a group of Occupational Therapists at Pediatric Potentials of West Essex, LLC in Livingston , NJ. I have worked with Laurice Kalb, OT, and Owner and Director of Pediatric Potentials for over 10 years and consulted to her in developing Computer Campus, a division of her occupational practice that is dedicated to helping students with learning differences to maximize their potential using the computer. At Computer Campus, students can learn to type and use a wide array of different technologies that can help support their learning in the classroom. It has been awhile since I had visited her center and worked with her wonderful group of occupational therapists to show them the latest and greatest technologies.

I was able to start the day talking about trends that I see when looking at the intersection of special education and educational technology and we spoke about the impact of Universal Design for Learning, Web 2.0, and Cloud Computing to get the day going on the right track. Introducing them to the world of Google Docs was a real eye opener for them and you could see the wheels were turning as to how they could incorporate these tools in their practice. The rest of the day was dedicated to showing them so new and exciting technologies that I have been exploring and talking about its application in the classroom.

The group was very interested in taking a look at how they could use the Livescribe Smartpens in their practice to teach students how to take notes. I did a demo of the Echo Smartpen and described the various ways it could be used not only for taking notes but as a tool to support students who may need some audio supports for learning and for taking tests. In the first scenario I printed a map with the counties of New Jersey directly onto the dot paper and then simply added some dots. Once the dots were added I hit the Record button and then recorded some facts about the counties. This really brings the page to life and can be a wonderful support for students who learn best by providing them with this type of material. In the second scenario, I showed them how they could cut up the dot paper and place a small audio dot on the page next to a test question and record the question so that a student with a reading disability could access the test independently. When you think how huge that is both for schools and for the student you can begin to see the value that tools like the Echo Smartpen can bring to the classroom. With a little creativity and imagination the Livescribe Echo Smartpen can provide a student with a wide range of supports in their learning and that's even before you think about pencasts!

Exploring ways that teachers and therapists in the practice could use the Echo Smartpen to create pencasts was just another seed that I know will germinate with them. I had a chance to demo how to share a pencast by uploading it online and how to acquire the link or embed code to place it on their website. The therapists in the room with intrigued with the idea of pancasts and how they could use it to help demonstrate ideas and concepts. I closed by showing them how to use the MyScript Handwriting Recognition plug-in to turn their handwritten work to editable text in Microsoft Word. To say the least it was very exciting to experience all the energy and interest in what I was demonstrating.

In part two of the blog post I will talk about the rest of the day and how we explored the Apple iPad and got reacquainted with the NEO 2 from Renaissance Learning. Wow we did cover a lot of ground. To be continued........