Two Latest Favorites For iPad

This post is going to be about hardware, rather than the software apps I've mentioned elsewhere. But, if you use an iPad, these two items are must haves.

The first is the Logitech Keyboard Case for the iPad. This works for iPad and the new iPad. This is fantastic if you are typing anything at length (including blog posts). It is a bluetooth device that is easily set up on your iPad, with a battery that is rechargeable. I got mine for $79 at Costco.

The second item is new and really exciting for those of us who love to watch a lot of movies using our iPads. It's from Seagate and is called the GoFlex Satellite. It's a wireless external hard drive to use with the iPad.

It doesn't allow you to save from the iPad (at least mine doesn't), but you can download from it to your iPad AND you can stream movies from it directly to your iPad.

It comes with an adapter to allow you to plug into your Mac to add whatever it is you want to store on it, and with 500GB of space, you can store a lot of stuff.

It operates off of WiFi, creating it's own little "network" from your iPad that allows you to stream to up to 5 devices simultaneously.

The downside to this is you cannot broadcast what you are streaming from it to a tv or projector (at least it's not worked for me), but you can download to your iPad the movie you want and then broadcast from your iPad using your video player.

The Digital (or Virtual) Word Wall

This is an idea I got in 2006 when I first started working in education. I would walk into classrooms and see entire walls filled with paper printed and laminated, containing the vocabulary words for the week. When you consider schools are in session 9 months out of the year (not counting the breaks during the year), that adds up to a lot of paper, toner and laminate. Why can't we do this digitally?

It took a year before I found a way (okay a rough way) to make this happen.

I bought a digital photo frame (roughly 10 - 15 inches in diameter), made PowerPoint slides of technology vocabulary terms, saved them as jpeg pictures, put them on a flash drive and plugged the flash drive into the photo frame. Quite the process, but it worked.

Here's a picture of the finished product:




When I first started this, I did this for the vocab words:

Then I learned how to get the rotation function on the photo frame to work and was able to make a file folder of these:

What would be on my wish list for this?

1. A bigger screen, backlit to make it easier to see in a classroom

2. It needs it's own memory. The photo frame I used didn't have it's own memory, so you had to use an adapter to plug in a flash drive.

3. Wireless File Transfer: Instead of having to plug in a flash drive to transfer the picture files, instead I would love to be able to transfer the files either via Bluetooth transfer, or, with the case of Apple, using the Apple Remote Desktop.

4. The ability to use a wireless tablet or iPad/iPod to remotely control the slideshow and be able to write on top of it, like you do with interactive whiteboards.

Tech For Hand-Function Limitations

This is not new for Apple, but it was a new discovery for me this past school year.

Apple has a product called the Magic Trackpad. Here's the link: http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/



In trying to make students with impairments more self reliant, I worked with case workers and therapists for a student who has difficulty using a mouse. The trackpad on a laptop worked great, but the student had a hard time lifting the MacBook. I saw this and tried it on the student, it worked!

If you don't have bluetooth (required for the Magic Trackpad to work), you can purchase a Rocketfish Micro Bluetooth Adaptor and it works great on Macs with Snow Leopard (even though the packaging only shows Windows).

Link to Rocketfish: rocketfishproducts.com

Tech For The Hearing Impaired Student

As I described with the post on Tech For The Visually Impaired Student, work with the specialist to make sure what you are doing is going to work with what the specialist wants. In this case, it was an audiologist for a student who had recently gotten cochlear implants in both ears and was learning to speak.

Because of how the implants worked, I spoke with the audiologist about what could be done to allow the student to better hear from a computer, without trying to use headphones. The teacher was already using a wireless microphone with a transmitter so the student would be able to hear the teacher speaking. The answer?

From Radio Shack

The transmitter for the teacher's microphone also had a 1/8" port on it, allowing me to plug the student's transmitter directly into the headphone port on the computer itself. The student was learning to speak and chatting away by year's end.

Tech For The Visually Impaired Student

If you read my previous post on the NWEA testing, you understand there are other uses in the computer lab for the basic classes. The issue I was confronted with a few years ago, was how to make the NWEA tests accessible to a visually impaired student.

The first thing I'll make clear here is that I'm not an expert at this by any means. I worked with the visual impairment specialist who was working with the student, in order to get this procedure down.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this will not work on every student with visual impairment, adjustments may need to be made based upon the needs of the student and the requests of the v.i. specialist.

This is what I did for this student:

First, change the display so that everything is enlarged.

Go to the System Preferences by clicking on the apple in the upper left corner. Once there, go to Display.

When inside the Display, choose 640 X 480. If this cuts off too much of the NWEA screen for you, choose 800 X 600.

Click on the Show All button at the top of the box to go to the main menu. Then click on the Universal Access.

This is the area of the computer that allows for additional settings to be made for individuals with disabilities.

For testing you generally cannot use the VoiceOver feature, however it can be turned on and used for assignments.

You can turn on the Zoom. This will allow further magnification for the words, however it will cut off the rest of the text on the screen and the zoom will follow the cursor. Use of this for the student will need to be practiced before they try it for a test.

Display setting changes from a white background to a black background with white text may or may not help the student.

If you are going to be changing these settings frequently, there is a button at the bottom of this panel that will add the Universal Access icon to the top menu bar on the computer screen. This will save you a few steps in getting back to this panel.

Also note the option to add assistive devices. Use this if you are going to hook up a braille reader.

If you look just above the VoiceOver, you'll see some tab buttons. Seeing should be in blue, as that is the panel you are on. If you click to Mouse or Mouse & Trackpad (depending on whether you are using a laptop or desktop computer), you'll find at the bottom a slide bar for the Cursor Size.

Slide the Cursor Size indicator all the way to the right. You'll see the cursor you are using enlarge.

These were the settings we used for this student.

Here are a few other things we used with this student:

We put their NWEA Map Test on a laptop and hooked it up to a SmartBoard® with a projector. This worked great technically, however the student needed to stand so close to the words that they sometimes blocked the projection. They were also tripping over the extended feet on it. My recommendation on this, if you're going to use this for the student's testing and other computerized work, is to get a display that is backlit or LCD.

Something, perhaps, along these lines:

SmartBoard® 8070i

For other work in following text, the teacher can use a document camera to help magnify books and other items in the classroom to help the student be able to see.

Welcome!

Welcome to my educational technology blog. There is so much going on with the field of educational technology that I thought I'd start this to see where it leads.

I'll be posting things that I've done over the last 5 years as well as things others have done.

I work at a K-8 Title 1 public school, running the computers. I am not a fully certified teacher, I am certified as a substitute and am employed as a classified staff member. The campus is primarily using Apple Computers, so pretty much everything I'll be talking about will be based on Macs.

I also use one at home, as it helps me to try things out for the teachers and students.

In the course of a school year I use for projects:

Mac OSX Snow Leopard
iLife 09 (I now have v. 11 on my home computer)
MS Office For Mac 2008
Pixie
Inspiration

I have used iWork, however as the computers for high school are Windows, I've not taught it.

For hardware I've used:

MacBooks and MacBook Pros
iMacs
Mac Minis
Smartboard® Interactive Whiteboards & Airliners
AverMedia Document Cameras
And a whole variety of different projectors and printers.