by Samuel Sennott
Russel Cross recently posted a great list of accessible books on the ACOLUG (Augmentative Communication Online Users Group) Listserv. Check it out:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ – project gutenburg – html, text (FREE)
http://www.ebooks.com/ – ebooks – Microsoft reader, Mobipocket, Adobe
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/ – University of Adelaide – html, txt (FREE)
http://www.ereader.com/ – ereader – ereader format (use with Palm, Mob, Mac, PC) – has best DRM I have seen IMHO – can copy as much as you like but must enter name and credit card number every time.
http://www.fictionwise.com/ – Microsoft reader, Mobipocket, Adobe, Palm reader, fiction wise reader?
http://www.amazon.com – Adobe, Microsoft reader
http://etext.virginia.edu/ebooks/ – Microsoft, Palm – (FREE)
http://manybooks.net/ – eReader, PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Doc, or zTXT (FREE)
http://www.memoware.com/ – Formats, so many it insane (FREE) http://www.memoware.com/mw.cgi/?screen=help_format
http://www.pdabookstore.com/ – Memoware bookstore – many formats
http://www.pdabookstore.com/servlet/mw?t=help_help&si=4
http://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks.htm – Adobe (FREE)
http://www.adobe.com/epaper/ebooks/ebookmall/index.html – huge list of pay sites using Adobe
http://www.awe-struck.net/ – romance & sci-fi – HTML, PDF,Rocket, REB, Microsoft Reader,Pocket PC PDA, Mobipocket, EBookman, Hiebook
http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_e…p?CurrentPage=1 – PDFs (FREE)
http://www.powells.com/ebookstore/ebooks.html – Microsoft, Adobe, Palm
http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/ – Rocket-eBook, Hiebook, Adobe PDF, MS-Reader, Mobipocket, iSilo, Franklin eBookMan, and Palm Doc.
http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/ – Microsoft, Adobe, Palm
http://www.bob-e-books.com/ – Microsoft, Rocket, Softbook
http://esspc-ebooks.com/default.htm – Microsoft PC Reader, Mobipocket
http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/ – PDF, RTF, HTML (Free?)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/clas…oks/index.shtml – HTML (FREE but only Dr Who books?)
http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/151ABB2…/en/Default.htm – Adobe, Microsoft, Mobipocket
http://www.ebooks3.com/ – html (FREE)
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by Samuel Sennott
Things are surely getting interesting with the release of WebAnywhere, the screen reader on the go. This just may be a sign of things shifting to the power of open source/ freeware and the University connection aspect of the AT work. I look forward to speaking with some friends who are blind about this. I was on and using this screen reader in less than one minute. Check it out.
Pulled from various parts of their website, found at: http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/
WebAnywhere: A Screen reader on the go
Launch it: Try the WebAnywhere Alpha Release
Please read our WebAnywhere Paper for more information about the system.
A 2008 presentation by a team member on the project:
WebAnywhere: A Screen Reader On-the-Go, 2008
Presented by Jeffrey P. Bigham on 10/15/2007. Link: WebAnywhere PPT.
The cheat sheet:
You interact with WebAnywhere using the keyboard. A selection of keyboard commands that are currently supported is listed below. Pressing SHIFT in combination with them reverses the direction of the search, searching backward from the current cursor position instead of forward from it.
- CTRL-L – move the cursor to the location box where you can type a URL to visit.
- Arrow Down – read the next element on the page.
- Arrow Up – read the previous element on the page.
- CTRL-H – skip to the next heading.
- CTRL-I – skip to the next input element.
- CTRL-R – skip to the next row by cell when in a table.
- CTRL-D – skip to the next column by cell when in a table.
- Page Down – read continuously from the current position.
- Home – read continuously, starting over from the beginning of the page.
- CTRL – silence WebAnywhere and pause the system.
by Samuel Sennott
I envision a bookshelf/ launcher that is powerful, flexible, open and user friendly across multiple platforms. It is so needed right now, but as we explode into the Bookshare age it will become vital. I have some pretty cool workups to share over the coming weeks, but see the one created for the Accessible Book Collection for a proof of concept: http://alltogether.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/a-bookshelf-for-the-accessibile-book-collections-ics-formatted-books/
by Samuel Sennott
Check out the videos we have collected during our AAC writers camp. Below is pulled from the wikispace demo created as a part of the framework being developed. http://otot.wikispaces.com/Writing+Setups
To reiterate:
- You can so powerfully build background knowledge in the Guided Reading and Self Selected Reading Domains.
- Videos are a powerful motivator in the writing process, especially for beginning writers
Writing Setups
Under Construction, Check Back Frequently for Updates: 5.29.08
More Videos and Directions Have Been Added (Thanks Team) 6.4.08
You are at Writing Setups—————– Alternative Pencil Directions ————–Get Lesson Directions
Animals
- Dancing Dogs
- Talking Dogs
- Wild Horses
- Animal planet-pig performance
- Einstein the bird
- Very Smart Animals
- Penguin in Japan
- Big Spider
- Giant Tarantula
- A Bee Keeper’s Video
- Bee Brood
- Eating Insects
- Labrador Retriever Puppies-Siesta
- Chloe Licks a Popsicle (Chocolate Lab)
Art
- Sand art
- Animal Planet Sand Art
- Julian Beever Chalk Drawings
- Music Flipbook
- Sand Sculpture 2006 Austrailia
Books
Music
- Blue Man Group
- High School Musical Bloopers
- High School Musical- Something New
- Beat Boxing Flute
- Chris Brown & Elmo
- Double Dutch Bus
Sports
- Awesome Cheerleading Stunts
- World Figure Skating 2008
- Awesome Gymnastics
- Tennis Fashion
- Slow Motion Tennis
- Wii Tennis
- Manhattan Beach Surfing
- How to play dodge ball
- Play dodge ball
- Wii Golf
Cooking
- Amazing Cooking!
- Disney’s Pass The Plate
- Pass The Plate- Spinach
- Pass The Plate- Mango
- LazyTown – Cooking by the Book
- The Wiggles – Fruit Salad
Nature
Other
by Samuel Sennott
One to One Thousand is a concept that I believe will powerfully help the field of special education. The basic premise is that if a thousand people each work for an hour on a project with agreed upon standards, then they can create something that one person working for a thousand hours, could never create. It gets pretty in-depth from there, but I am excited to share how the theory is shaping up in some upcoming presentations, papers, and webcasts.
That being said, it is fun watching the theory unfold over on the terrific collaboration between UNC’s Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and the Computer Science Department, the Tar Heel Reader. Look at how quickly an open source library of books is growing, by checking out a snip from a post on the site’s homepage:
“The graph below shows the amazing growth of the collection thanks to the contributions of many authors.
| Total | 4 | 14 | 20 | 66 | 164 | 180 |
| Week | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
We’ve had 66111 page views from 1470 different computers worldwide.”
by Samuel Sennott
In the context of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication course, it is often challenging to teach the subject matter framework information, general device knowledge, device programming, as well as all of the intangibles such as Velcro strategies and light tech board hacks and modifications. As more and more information and research comes onto the scene coupled with the ever expanding list of mid-tech to high-tech speech generating devices, we need to start finding ways to compact the information. One clear focus of assistive technology research for the foreseeable future is looking at ways to get massive amounts of framework and technical knowledge to students who are often busy either in full time school programs or both in a combination of school and employment settings.
Personally, I am being called on in an ever greater way in the speech language division I work in to provide training and tutorials to students in the graduate degree program. While it is important to have a personal touch and bring the concepts to life, it has been helpful to find ways to not reduplicate training and efforts.
Here is one resource my friend Amir Shasavari and I created. It is authored in Keynote, but here is the PowerPoint version. The focus is to help train people about the relatively new Tango! AAC device from Blink Twice. Here at Nova Southeastern University, we are finding it a helpful resource for training graduate students in Speech Language Pathology in their diagnostics as well as their AAC course.
The presentation/ tutorial has features that are important for both online learning and for self study:
- linkable information that goes out to increasingly rich levels of media (video, more directions, downloads)
- solid navigation tools inside the tutorial
- a uniform look and feel to the whole user experience
I hope you find this resource useful and consider the importance of this topic.
Download the tango tutorial in MS PowerPoint
Click the image or here to go to the online flash version.
by Samuel Sennott
Children, teenagers, and adults need books to be able to learn to read and getting accessible books to them is the goal of the Tar Heel Reader. This open source library of books that are switch accessible, talking, internet accessible, and downloadable will grow exponentially due to the terrific job Gary Bishop, a computer scientist from UNC Chapel Hill, has done designing the Worpress powered interface. This combination of efforts between computer science and education is phenomenal. He presently teaches a course in Computer Science focused on accessible software and hardware. Karen Erickson, Gretchen Hanser and Gary Bishop have been meeting and collaborating for quite some time. It is inspiring to me to see as an example as I emerge into the research phase of my teaching practice. From earlier efforts from this team of computer scientists, The Tar Heel Typer and Dance Dance Revolution mods, to the present and into the future, they surely serve as a powerful example of what we can do as educators to team up with computer science programs. Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver have worked tirelessly on the concept of creating accessible texts that are age appropriate, rich in quality, and powerful in the literacy instructional process. See the Beginning Literacy Framework by Karen Erickson, Caroline Ramsey Musselwhite, and Ruth Ziolkowski to understand types of texts helpful to early readers. This project has the potential to make texts available to people in a way only possible with the advent of the internet and the concepts behind the Read/Write web and Web 2.0.
I believe in this project and concept with all my heart and am more than happy to be now seeing it come into the world. As I step forward from teacher to both teacher and researcher, I have seen a very powerful lesson: combine your dreams, visions, gifts and technical skills with others who have other dreams, visions, gifts, and technical skills and you can create and help more than ever imagined.
So start getting these books to your students and start authoring. Remember if one thousand people each work for one hour on a project with agreed upon standards you can create…
Go to the Tar Heel Reader
Let’s See the Books and How it Works!
Here is how you choose a book.
Here is a page from a book:
You have multiple options for accessing the books:
- on the web
- download the PowerPoint File
- Open Office Impress File
- Flash File
Speech can be enabled or disabled.
Switch Scanning
Switch Scanners can access the books with various keystrokes, including most of they keys on the keyboard. (soon to be optimized to go forward and back)
The power of this project is in the exponential amount of material to be available for all types of individuals learning to read. I have been working on this concept quite a bit and I believe that this is a One to One Thousand scenario. One key concept is the availability of age appropriate texts on an unprecedented level.
Here is how the book building process works:
- You use images from the Creative Commons section of Yahoo’s Flickr.
- The images are automatically cited. See how it works here.
- You add your text to each page you create.
- Add some keyword tags, such as words about the content, if it is an enrichment, transitional, or conventional text, or anything else you would like.
- Click to post your book. A talking book that is switch accessible and and able to be downloaded offline is created.
- It is that simple. No more PP notes citations, large file problems, conversion nightmares! Hallelujah.
Let us rally behind this amazing project in a way never before seen! Let’s go! We can do it all together!
Go to the Tar Heel Reader
by Samuel Sennott
As there is much big news to report on the accessible books front, I will be cleaning out the closet of all the drafted posts of this type. Check out this engaging book. Direct selectors can use the navigational arrows, and switch scanners can use the arrow keys to navigate.
Download the Book
skateboardersride.transistional
Download the Talking Book
skateboardersride.transistional.talking
Build Background Knowledge and Writing Motivation with Videos
Skateboarding Bulldog Tyson
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-abbze6T3Cs
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziDeUbifKIM
Skateboarding Tricks
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FrISkXDElQ
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf3n4pqsboE&feature=related (Super Slow Motion!)
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b10b3JZmC-E&feature=related Best Tricks Ever 2
by Samuel Sennott
In the writing camp I have designed and am leading for AAC users, we have been utilizing the terrific Accessible Book Collection. Many of you may know that Linda Bastiani Wilson, Darlene Brodbeck, and Patti Weismer have been leading a project to bring the picture books in the Accessible Book Collection into both Intellitools Classroom Suite and Clicker 5 formats. This terrific project was presented at Closing the Gap in 2007. Here is a bookshelf prototype I have designed that may prove to be useful to you if you have a membership to the collection.
Download the Directions and the Bookshelf:
http://otot.wikispaces.com/Accessible+Book+Collection
by Samuel Sennott
I have had creating a video guide to using a step switch on one of my someday/maybe task lists for a few weeks now. I meant to do this in response to how much trouble people have with using this device, especially when they are learning about both the old and new styles. I was very pleased to stumble upon a set of how-to-videos that highlight a number of Ablenet products. I think this is a terrific resource for AAC or AT labs in SLP, Special Education, AT, OT, and any other teacher training programs that benefit from clear and easily shared training resources. Thanks Ablenet! Click the link or image to play the video.
Step-By-Step with Levels Video
Here is the link to the How-to-Videos page on the Ablenet site: http://store.ablenetinc.com/press/multimedia.aspx
