ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a real need in today's society for students and individuals to become more adept at both understanding and creating visual graphics that depict information using graphs, mind maps,
charts, and pictographs. We are all bombarded with all kinds of information and data that is much more easily digested when put into a visual or graphic form. Many of us were first introduced to these type of graphics in the USA Today. It certainly was a point of departure from other newspapers as we learned how to decode the meaning of these artistically created graphs and charts that appeared in the paper. For many, it was a new way to digest information and make sense of an enormous amount of data in a condensed format.

But what tools are out there that can help students, educators and business people create well designed graphics without the need to be a professional graphic artist. While there are a number of applications that come to mind for creating educational and business graphics all assume some degree of artistic ability which may not be the case. One application which I was recently introduced to called SmartDraw 2008 takes a very unique approach to designing your presentation graphics. Using both templates and wizards you can produce professionally looking graphics within minutes of opening the application. SmartDraw 2008 is a Windows based application that will run on Vista, XP or Windows 2000. Before I write about SmartDraw 2008 I would like to thank Laurence Favrot, from SmartDraw for providing me with a copy of SmartDraw 2008 to review. SmartDraw 2008 is a comprehensive business and educational graphics application that supports creating the following types of graphics:

• €Flowcharts
• € Org Charts
  
• € Project Timelines
  
• € Gantt Charts
  
• € Marketing Charts
  
• € Bar Graphs & Pie Charts
  
• € Forms
  
• € Floor Plans
  
• € Scheduling Calendars
  
• € Mind maps
  
• € Mapping applications
  
• € and much more.
  

SmartDraw 2008 unlike other applications has you start with the end point in mind as you first select the template for the graphic that you are going to create. For the purpose of this demonstration I have decided to create a timeline. So first I select the Timeline SmartTemplate from the list of available templates. Once I have selected the a timeline template, I am presented with the template on the screen and can now use the SmartPanel to add individual
elements to my timeline. Setting the timeline's start and end times is easy to accomplish. I found the the process to be very intuitive and straightforward. If you do need assistance you can click on the Help icon and the Smarthelp panel will open to guide you through the process. One of
SmartDraw's strengths is the way it formats the graphic for you creating color styles and schemes that always produce professionally looking graphics. By simply selecting the timeline element I can apply a consistent color theme to my timeline with a click of the mouse. Because it is so easy to do you can easily test out different color themes to see what the results are
before printing out your graphic. Another strength of SmartDraw 2008 is its tight integration with Microsoft Office. With a click of the mouse I was able to transfer my timeline to Microsoft Word. For that matter I could have sent it to Excel, PowerPoint or saved it as a PDF file to share with others. SmartDraw 2008 has an extensive library of graphics to choose from which I was able to use to adorn my timeline. For someone who was new to SmartDraw 2008 I quickly became comfortable with the Smart Template and SmartPanel approach as was able to complete the timeline rather quickly.

There are hundreds of SmartTemplates to choose from when you first launch the
program, which gives you lots of starting out options. I did take a look at the mind mapping options in SmartDraw 2008, which is a new feature. While SmartDraw 2008 does give you the option to create and print mind maps it is not an ideal tool if you are planning to use your mind maps to manipulate or organize your information.

One of the new features of the latest upgrade to SmartDraw 2008 are LiveMaps
which lets you pull live map data off of the web and include it in your graphic. Using the Tele Atlas maps you can zoom in and select satellite view or hybrid views. I found it very easy to integrate the maps into my presentation graphic- and it is certainly a powerful feature that has been included in SmartDraw 2008.

Overall, I found SmartView 2008 to be an easy to use application for creating professionally designed graphics without the need to be a graphics artist. Using the system of SmartTemplates, SmartPanels, and SmartHelp moves you through the process of designing your graphic with all the right scaffolds in place. It is nice to know that the supports are in place if you need them or if you are more inclined you can manually design your graphic. If you are looking for one drawing program to help you communicate information in a professional manner then I would suggest you take a look at SmartDraw 2008. With SmartDraw's large SmartTemplate and graphics library I'm sure you will find a place for SmartDraw 2008 in your presentation toolkit- I know I have! If you are interested in trying out SmartDraw 2008 you can download a trial version from the website.

A lot of my readers have purchased the Fly Fusion Pentop computer from LeapFrog this holiday season and have been having some difficulties installing the software. I just received this email from LeapFrog that I wanted to pass along this information to you.

	Question
	What should I try? ..trouble with Fly Fusion downloads, Admin account, Flyworld and/or the Fly Store.
	Answer
	Thanks for being one of the first FLY Fusion Pentop Computer Users! Due to extremely high seasonal demand for FLY Fusion, many FLY Fusion users have had difficulty accessing FLY World, our FLY World Download Store or with their Admin account set up. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We have been working on these issues, and have made improvements that should help our users. As a special thank you for your patience, we want to offer our community of users a special gift! Please go to the FLY World PC Application, log on and click on the Download Store tab. We are offering 4 special downloads for use with your pen as a way of showing our appreciation for your patience and support for FLY. We will be providing updates on our FLY World Support site as we continue to release improvements to our online services. Check back on www.flyworld.com/support for updates, or call our Customer Support line directly at 1-800-701-LEAP (5327). Thank you for your support of FLY! The FLY Fusion Team

It has been a great year for the AssistiveTek Blog and I want to thank my readers and business sponsors for their support! I trust that 2008 will be even better with new and exciting Web 2.0 technologies. I think that this will be a pivotal year for software developers as they try to bridge the gap between their traditional software applications and software as a service model. I think that you will see many software publishers begin to build hooks into their software applications that will make it easier to publish documents, mind maps, and monitor projects on the web with true collaboration. So look for some exciting posts on the AssistiveTek Blog in the coming months. I once again plan on following new and exciting technologies that help to empower you in the work that you do. So stay tuned for more reviews in the areas of visual learning, mind mapping, project management, assistive technology, and Web 2.0 technologies. All the best to you and your families in the New Year ahead.

For those of you that would like to share your mind maps there is a new website that lets you do just that. You can go to Mappio.com to upload your FreeMind or MindManager mind maps. The developers of the site would like to make Mappio the "YouTube of Mind Mapping." Registration is free and it is a great way to share your ideas and mind maps. Once you upload your mind maps you can tag them and decide if you would like to make them public or private. If you find a mind map that you would like to use you can simply download the file and open it with the your mind mapping application. Mappio is certainly a great resource for those that are new to mind mapping or for those that want to get a idea of all the creative way that mind maps can be used. Take a look at it and let me know what you think.

I came across VozMe the other day and wanted to share this resource with you. VozMe lets you convert text into a mp3 file which is an easy way to create text to speech on your computer right within your browser. You simply paste text in the window and VozMe does the rest creating your mp3 file. Give it a try!

With the recent release of MindManager 7.1, I created this screencast to show you some of the new features that have been added to this release.

Here is the link

Here is another screencast showing you how you can move your project management data from Project Kickstart 4 to MindManager 7 Pro. You will notice how easy this process is!

Click here to view the screencast