ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Thanks for all of your interest in the upcoming October 2-3, 2008 Intelligent Visual Mapping Conference to be held in the Greater New York City Area. What better way to express to you why you should attend the conference then by putting the reasons in a visual mind map. I would like to thanks two of my presenters Wallace Tait and Chuck Frey for putting this together.




If you have been thinking about attending the conference now is the time to register to take advantage of the Early Bird Registration discounts. At this time we have firm commitments from TPAssist 2007, Mindjet, CS Odessa, PersonalBrain, and Simetech that they will be exhibiting as well as presenting on their products and solutions. It is going to be a wonderful conference- so stay tuned for some really exciting announcements in the next couple of weeks.

Three days at NECC. I spent the last three days at NECC, looking at new technologies, new software and new hardware. Educators have lots to be excited about. HP and Asus were showing off their mini laptops which were both small in stature and price. The exhibition hall was filled with companies tauting their interactive whiteboards and the impact it will have on learning in the classroom. Both Smart and Promethian had some of the largest booths on the floor and had many teachers doing live demonstrations. Mimio was also there showing off their latest release of MimioStudio 6 and the release of the Mimio Pad, a hand held portable tablet. Many of the vendors were demonstrating various response systems and there is definitely a move towards a totally digital classroom. The digital classroom would include an interactive whiteboard, data projector, response system, document camera, and a audio sound field system. Of course Web 2.0 and collaboration was another key trend. Software as a service is here to stay and there were many companies who were showing off their software applications that are hosted solutions right through the browser. Crick Software was demonstrating Write Online and FTC Publishing was demoing WriteIt Live. With Hyperstudio back there seemed to be excitement about multimedia and project based learning. Adobe was showing off their creative tools and showing off Adobe Acrobat 9, which has some very strong multimedia features. It is now possible to embed a Flash video and create a Portfolio of individual PDF's which can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe was also demonstrating Adobe Acrobat website which gives you data storage, Buzzword, and Sharing capabilities. Acrobat.com is a wonderful website and one each and every teacher should set up immediately. Acorbat.com holds much promise for collaboration and all of the tools are free.

I have to tell you that it was quite a thrill for me to spend my lunchtime one on one with Roger Wagner of Hyperstudio. I can remember the first time I met Roger in New Jersey as he was showing off Hyperstudio running on an Apple IIGS. If you have been around educational technology as I have, then you know that Hyperstudio was one of those rare applications that inspired all of us in the early days to think about how multimedia could be used to enhance, engage and teach students about subject matter. Hyperstudio which was owned by several companies in the past couple of years withered on the vine, until now when MacKiev Software purchased the rights to it. With Roger Wagner back and MacKiev Software they have brought back the excitement of the program with a fresh look to it running on Macintosh OSX. I had the opportunity to sit through a presentation and was excited to see that the metaphor of cards and stacks still has been maintained. Looking at the projects that middle school students had completed with Hyperstudio reminded me why this program was so popular and adored by all educators. Having Roger back and giving the software team direction will result in one of the best iterations of Hyperstudio in some time. I hope to do a full review when it is available for testing. In the interim I for one can't wait to use Hyperstudio on my MacBook when it is released. And Roger, thanks for sharing your lunchtime with me- it was a real honor.

SimTech has announced on their website that they will soon release Mindmapper 2008 USB. With Mindmapper 2008 USB you will be able to have access to Mindmapper 2008 by simply plugging the USB flash drive into any USB port on a Windows computer. MindMapper 2008 USB will give you full access to the application and does not need to be installed to run the application. Mindmapper 2008 USB ships on a 4 Gigabyte drive which allows you to save your mind maps on the drive and open and edit them as if it were installed on your hard drive. Here is the information about MindMapper 2008 USB:

Product Introduction

Run MindMapper on any PC: MindMapper 2008 USB Edition is portable MindMapper that lets you run MindMapper on any PC with a USB interface. No installation No registeration or activation It also doubles as a 4GB USB flash drive so you can store all your MindMapper files and other files for your convenience Miniature slim swing-type USB drive Gold plated appearance to give you the best and valuable looking USB device among all your peers Small enough to easily attach to your keychain or mobile phone with the included strap

What's in the Box

USB Flash Drive with MindMapper 2008 Professional Edition built in MindMapper 2008 USB Edition has MindMapper 2008 Professional built in. Think of it as portable version of MindMapper, as you can plug it into any PC and start MindMapper

A couple of weeks ago I had reviewed the initial release of Mind2Chart and found it to be a very easy to use MindManager add-in for project planning. I did make some recommendations to the developer for improvements and as a result of my feedback we now see that many of them have been incorporated into the latest version of Mind2Chart 1.3 which was just released.

Mind2Chart has now been upgraded to version 1.3. Mind2Chart 1.3 is an add-in to MindManager 7 and has been tested to ensure compatibility with the latest MindManager 7 build. Mind2Chart includes the following new features:

- Coloring tasks and color synchronization between MindManager topics
and Gantt bars;
- Master Schedule for the whole project and individual resource
schedules, to specify working days, holidays, individual days off and
vacations;
- Project cost calculation based on the resource costs. New report for
project cost calculation;
- Automatic Task Alignment Tool - allows to reorganize the project
schedule depending on the resources assigned, so resources will not be
overloaded and project will finish at earliest possible date.

Mind2Chart was thoroughly tested for compatibility with Mindjet
Connect®. Such compatibility should enhance collaboration within
project teams when planning and tracking task performance.

My bags are packed and I off to San Antonio, TX for the National Educational Computing Conference. I will have 5 full days of educational technology and meetings with both hardware and software developers. At this conference the hardware and software developers will announce new products and services which always makes this one of the more exciting conferences of its kind. For the conference, I am packing my MacBook, Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, Olympus Digital Camera, Blackberry Curve, and FlipVideo camera. If I have learned anything, attending these conferences, is make sure you bring lots of business cards. I have lots of meetings and look forward to reporting to you from the convention floor-up to the minute news. I have set up my Jott account so that I can use my cell phone to quickly post to my blog. So if you see some minor errors please know that it is the speech recognition that is faulty. It should be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to reporting the news to you- so stay tuned.

For those of you that are considering using Mindjet Connect, take a look at my vignette to give you some insight as to how I have been using it for the last couple of months. I have found Mindjet Connect indispensable for planning the Fall Visual Mapping Conference. I have been able to share my MindManager 7 visual maps, as well as PDF and Word documents in the workspace. When I have needed to I have been able to in real time to co-edit my MindManager 7 maps with my co-presenters which has been really fantastic. So if you have the chance view the vignette to find out how I have been using Mindjet Connect.

Anyone who has been following the visual mind mapping arena for any time certainly has heard of Chuck Frey. Chuck has been a vigilant leader in the field who keeps all of us abreast of the trends and software developments in the field of visual mapping. I for one am grateful for the work that Chuck has done and honored that he will be one of the guest speakers at the Intelligent Visual Mapping Conference on October 2-3, 2008 in the Greater New York City Area. Chuck recently started a new mind mapping blog which I wanted to make you aware of. Once you goto Chuck's new blog you will treated to one of the most informative blogs on visual mapping that you can imagine. So click here to take you to Chuck's new blog.