Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Assistive Technology Success Stories

Elijah is an eight year old that lives in Hana High and Elementary school in Hana, Hawaii. In September 1997, the beginning of his third-grade year, Eli could not yet read. To help him read they used interactive phonics programs. The programs would show a letter and then a picture that would start with that letter. Using the program his reading and writing skills had improved over the year. By the time that the year ended, Eli was reading at the early second-grade level, with a growing sight vocabulary of about one-hundred words.
David is 7 years old and has had a visual impairment since he was born due to albinism. David has had a hand held monocular device since he was three years old. He uses it to read things like street signs. With his hand monocular device, he is able to read at a fourth or fifth grade level even though he is only in the third grade. David also uses CCTV, a closed circuit TV system, which enlarges print or hand-written text.
Jack is 12 years old and he has trouble reading and writing. They found a program called reading for the blind and dyslexic. He can listen to the words being read on his Mp3 player while he reads them in the book. He still used them now but he can comprehend things in text just like the other students. Reading and writing is now so much easier for him.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Reflection

I think that technology is important because it makes things easier to do. Technology has definitely change over the past 5 years because everything is more advanced than it was a few years ago. I think technology will be better in the next 5 years. I think that it all will be easier and faster than before. For schoolwork I usually use the Internet to search for answers that I'm not sure of for some of my classes. For personal use I use the computer to get on websites like itunes or YouTube. I also use my ipod to listen to music and I love to watch movies and TV. I think that I will use the tools that I learned this year because I used to not know anything about computers but now I know a lot of different shortcuts and different websites to use than the ones that I usually use. I would use the widgets and gadgets for lifelong learning because they have different apps that you can use and some are for fun and others can be used to help you in our everyday lives. I probably wont use the Avatars ever again because I don't really like using the Avatars. My favorite thing to create was igoogle or the blog because it was fun to make them ourselves and add the things that we liked. Also, we got to see other peoples and see what they like and what they would use to describe ourselves. My least favorite would have to be the podcasts because we all felt akward talking into the microphones.

1980's Music!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Chirbit

http://chirb.it/nE0x86
http://chirb.it/32wp0s

blabberize and voki

We made avatars for both voki and blabberize. Blabberize was more difficult because you had to fit the mouth areound the picture. Voki was easier because all you had to do was make your person and record your voice.

blabberize