ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

I had the pleasure of  presenting with my colleague Dr. Patricia Schall today at the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English Conference which was hosted at the College of St. Elizabeth. It was exciting to be part of this conference since I usually present at special education venues. The keynote speaker Andy Cohen who heads up the Bridge Film Festival at the Brooklyn Friends School shared with us some of the video's that students who participated in the file festival have crafted over the years. It was truly inspiring to listen and to watch the stories unfold on the screen. Andy shared that students used many tools to create the videos and shared one of then called GoAnimate, which he demoed for us. When I saw the ease of use and the potential of GoAnimate I signed up for a free account and gave it a whirl. Even with the free account you are able to create animated videos that are sure to capture your audience's attention.

Using GoAnimate, it is easy to create eLearning assets and engaging materials that can be embedded into your website or blog. If you upgrade your account you get to select more move makers and the ability to upload to YouTube. Having tried GoAnimate I have to say wow! it is extremely easy and intuitive to use. Within minutes I had created my first animated video which was so easy to do. I am definitely going to explore the possibilities of GoAnimate and look to use it in my graduate classes for projects. I was anxious to share GoAnimate with you and so I am embedding a short but unfinished video so you get an idea of what is possible. I hope to complete this one so stay tuned! Enjoy!

Accessible Books by AssistiveTek on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

I would like to thank the folks at Satarri, Inc for sending me the Swivl to review, which arrived this past week. The Swivl is an innovative product for the iPhone 4, 4S and iPod Touch 4th generation that lets you capture video without the need for a camera-person. The Swivl is comprised of two different units-the Swivl base and the Marker. The Swivl base is a motorized turret that houses your iPhone and allows the base to communicate with the Marker which can follow your movements as you record. Set up was a breeze at the company provided a Quick Start Guide that got you up and running quickly.

To get started I downloaded the free Swivl app to my iPhone 4S, placed the provided batteries (nice touch) into the Swivl base and Marker and then seated the iPhone on the Swivl base and plugged in the connector. I powered up the Swivl base and the Marker, opened the Swivl app and hit the record button to start the video recording. As I moved around the Swivl followed me which made recording a snap. The actuators in the Swivl base are very quiet and barely perceptible. I should note that the Marker in addition to being used as a way to track your movements, includes a high quality digital microphone that is used in the recording process. Once you have finished recording you can quickly upload your video to YouTube directly from the Swivl app which makes this a great tool for bloggers, educators, or anyone that wants to incorporate more video into the work that they do. Having the freedom to move around while doing your videos and not be constrained is really a fantastic feature. The Swivl is easy to use and I know that I will be doing more video blogging with it in the future. So if you find yourself wanting to do more video work and you usually work on your own, this is the perfect gift for you. You can purchase the Swivl on the Swivl website or on Amazon.com.

Below is the video that was captured using the iPhone and Swivl with Medium Video size setting in the Swivl app. The Notes for this video were captured using Quartet Kapture, a digital flip chart capturing tool. For more information about Quartet Kapture click here. Please let me know how you might use Swivl?

TurboScan is a app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The app uses the built in camera to capture a document and convert the image to excellent quality PDF files. TurboScan is $1.99 in the App Store. The app will not work very well with the iPad or iPod Touch because they do not have high quality cameras like the iPhone. The app has a simple interface that is easy to learn. It allows you to capture documents by taking a picture with your iPhone camera or import one from your album. TurboScan also has an option to take three pictures of the document for better accuracy. TurboScan also allows users to scan documents that are more than one page.

Once you have taken the picture of your document TurboScan detects the edges of the document and makes a PDF file. The apps has a few sharing options but not as many as JotNot Pro. The sharing include email and a really nice option called "email to myself" witch allows to quickly email your self the documents you have created.

Once you have your documents on your computer you can open them with Kurzweil to use all of Kurzweil's features such as read aloud and note taking. The PDF files created are crisp and clear.

Click read more below to see more pictures and videos of TurboScan.

Document made with TurboScan click for full size

  

Kurzweil 3000 is a great tool for reading text from the web or printed material. With Kurzweil you can scan a document and it will recognize the text (OCR) and read it back to you. If you do not have a scanner near by and need to read a printed document you can use a digital camera to import the picture to Kurzweil. Watch the video above for step by step instructions. When you open the JPEG file in Kurzweil it will recognize the text within the document and read it back to you. Also you can use Kurzweil's great annotation options to alter your document. When using this method the picture of the document must be clear with the document in the center of the picture. When using this method the OCR quality is below average but is still better than nothing.

Kurzweil 3000 is writing and reading software that has many great features. Kurzweil is available for both Mac and PC, but the PC version has more features then the Mac version.  Kurzweil has optical character recognition. (OCR) What this means is that a document that is scanned can be read back to you.  As the words are read aloud, they are highlighted.You can turn off the sound if you just need help with tracking and not decoding.  There is an option to speed up or slow down the voice, and the pace of highlighting according to your preference. Kurzweil comes with a few computerized voices, but more can be added.


Once the document is scanned it can also be annotated with text boxes, highlights and circles. This allows you to do anything you could do with hard copy print material. Kurzweil is great for completing worksheets, tests and quizzes. If a document contains many blank spaces Kurzweil has a feature to add a text box on each blank. This feature can be found under tools and then fill in the blanks.

 Kurzweil is also great for writing. It has spell check, word prediction and web layouts. One of the best parts of writing with Kurzweil is that the text is read back to you, which is a great editing tool. Kurzweil has a built in dictionary for quick reference. Another handy feature is "read the web" this feature allows a web page to be read aloud with out copying and pasting the text in to Kurzweil. With read the web a toolbar appears with a read button a the bottom of your browser. To read the web simply select the desired text and press the read button. Kurzweil is a great tool for reading and writing. To learn more about Kurzweil, click here visit the Kurzweil webpage. For a video about Kurzweil's virtual print click here. Stay tuned for more Kurzweil tips, tricks and videos.

Care Giving which is a partner of Intel and GE will be giving away an Intel Reader to someone on their Facebook page, stay tuned for details. The contest is not currently happening but check back for a post when it start. The winner will be the person with the most votes. The Intel Reader is a great assistive technology device that takes pictures of text and then reads it aloud. I will be doing an unboxing of the Intel Reader in the next couple days.

I had a chance today to come across Vidly- which is a video tool that can be used with your Twitter account. Using your webcam you can record up to a ten minute video with Vidly, add your Tweet and off it goes to Twitter to post your message with a link to your video. You also have the option to upload a video in several different video formats. I found Vidly easy to use and completed my first Vidly video in minutes which is now posted on Twitter. You can also get the embed code for the video and place it on your blog or wiki and share it that way. You can watch the video in the post. What a great tool to use for educational purposes. Think of all of the ways you could use video in an instructional setting- it boggles the mind what you can do- even with an inexpensive webcam! In this video, I talk about using Papershow in the college library with my class. Enjoy!

I came across Animoto today and wanted to share it with you. It is a web site that lets you upload your pictures, select your music form their library and then puts the whole thing together for you. You can see the sample video in this post. It is very cool and with a click of the mouse let me embed it in my blog. Try it out and let me know what you think!