Get in Touch with Your Wild Self and Write!
by Samuel Sennott
So its Friday afternoon and your students are getting a little wild. Go with it! In fact, go right to www.buildyourwildself.com and have them create their wild selves. Here is my wildself that I made.
What a terrific fuel for creating a story. With countless options for a character and [...]
AAC Intervention Tip of the Month
by Samuel Sennott
Have you ever checked out the excellent resources at the AAC Intervention website by Dr. Caroline Musselwhite and Julie Maro? The tip of the month feature is terrific. I have found fabulous and very useful resources there, including literacy support materials, simple accessibility ideas, AAC resources, AT resources, and more.
The [...]
Listening to Research as MP3 Files on Your iWhatever
by Samuel Sennott
I have been listening to PDF research articles converted to MP3 files on my iPhone on my early morning walk, in the car, and in the evening working out. As teachers of many kinds, we work hard serving our students. We work tirelessly preparing, teaching, caring, and assessing. Many [...]
Dragon Naturally Speaking for Mac
by Samuel Sennott
What terrific news! The best voice recognition software comes to OS X.
ITWire reports that Dragon Naturally Speaking will be released for OS X by Macspeech, replacing iListen. Significant discounts will be given to licensed iListen users. So start digging into those AT Team boxes and scour the attic, basement, or wherever your old [...]
Apple Announcements
By Samuel Sennott
Were you hoping for the Apple PDA/Tablet with a 1.5 times form factor as the iPhone? I sure was and my hopes were dashed. I was also dreaming a bit, hoping for the Macbook tablet. Yet, based on the evidence described today, I think it is on the way. [...]
Macworld: What Will It Bring?
by Samuel Sennott
I am so excited about the Macworld Expo keynote tomorrow. Out of all the possible new products, I am really hoping for the release of an Apple tablet. It seems unlikely at this time, yet I think it would be so terrific for special education. The research and practice I [...]
Reporting on the Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards Using the Wiimote
by Samuel Sennott
You can use your Wii remote, a projector, freely shared software, and some led light pens to create a multi-touch interactive whiteboard. I read about Johnny Chung Lee’s project on terrific Weblogg-ed and echo Will Richardson’s sentiment about how terrific it is to see the free and open source sharing involved [...]
Color Talking Word Wall Template with Apple OS X
by Samuel Sennott
Good news! TextEdit does allow you to color the cells in a Table.
I provided directions in a section of the updated guide to using the Talking Word Walls. Here is the text from the mixed(visual and text) directions:
Part Two: Working with the Colored Template
1. The colored TextEdit template is [...]
Apple Computers Allow Talking Word Wall
by Samuel Sennott
You can utilize the OSX Voice over feature to create a personalized word wall system that has simple text to speech by clicking or arrowing into the letters or words on the word wall.
Doing a daily word wall practice as part of a systematic phonics instructional program is a terrific way to provide [...]
AAC: Display Characteristics That Support Aided Symbol Use: Color & Animation at ASHA
By Samuel Charles Sennott
This session foreshadows the influence that digital natives will have on the AAC systems and software systems we use in special education. Additionally, the research focus on clearing the unnecessary access challenges with traditional AAC systems is terrific. Seeing the presenter, Lacy Donofrio, speak about authoring her lessons in [...]
