Document camera and WYNN Wizard!!!!

It is not difficult for me to get excited about technology, but this week I am VERY excited about a new discovery that our wonderful tech support guy came up with! We have a bright student with low vision and motor impairments in a 4th grade general ed classroom who needs to have worksheets and reading materials enlarged so that he can see them. Writing is also a challenge and this student does best using an on-screen keyboard on a touch screen. Solution: document camera + WYNN Wizard + touch screen monitor = success! Worksheets or reading materials are simply placed under the document camera that is connected to a computer with a touch screen monitor. WYNN Wizard is then opened, the scan button is pressed, and the worksheet or book appears on the monitor! At this point, all of the wonderful tools in WYNN can be used--enlarging, reading, highlighting, dictionary etc---and the student can answer questions by typing in the answer (using the on screen keyboard w/ touch screen in this case). Quick and easy solution!

Free Mind Software

Today, while waiting to teach a class at CMS, I had a chance to check out a program that is loaded on the computers there called Free Mind. I was very impressed! This program is very much like Inspiration (but is FREE) and would be extremely useful for our students who struggle with organization of written work. I found a tutorial on You Tube that does a great job of explaining how this program works. Imagine how powerful this program would be if paired with Win7 voice recognition. Check it out!

HelpKidzLearn = WOW!

I am so excited about this website that I stumbled across last week!
http://www.helpkidzlearn.com/index.html
It is filled with WONDERFUL activities for students who use switches to access a computer. I especially love the "splat the clowns" activity under the games tab...it reinforces switch timing in a fun way that is easy to understand. There are plenty of games, stories, and activities for all types of student needs and levels, including mouse learning activities. These would be fun activities for switch and non-switch users to play together--the non switch user can simply use the keyboard (space bar).
To access a computer with a switch, you will need a switch interface with a simple jelly bean switch (or similar). Each of our self contained classrooms already have these on one of the classroom computers. If you have an adapted mouse (the type with the holes on the side) you can plug a switch into that and use it instead of a switch interface.

Have fun switching!