Assistive Technology & Transition Discussion On FCTD

I was excited to see Gayl Boswer, AT pioneer, as the moderator and discussion leader for a discussion on AT and transition on The Family Center on Technology and Disability site now through May 8 (Started on April 13).
About the discussion:
"We hope you'll join us ... (and) explore the many facets of planning for assistive technology devices and services as children move through the important transitions in their lives. Whether you're a parent, teacher, therapist, or disability professional, we know you'll learn a lot from Gayl and the many knowledgeable discussion participants."
I have enjoyed reading some of the threads. There is always a lot of good information, and their past archives have wonderful content to review.
You don't have to set up an account or register to read or comment, but you do need to type in a name just to identify yourself online.
Take some time to visit for some great discussions.

All the best to you!
Lon




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Bookshare on No Limits 2 Learning Live

Getting to Know Bookshare Live! Wednesday, April 15 at 1 PM Pacific time.

Betsy Beaumon and Betsy Burgess of Bookshare will be on No Limits 2 Learning Live (Blog Talk Radio) to share about the Bookshare service, what it is, how it got started, what is new, and where they are going in the future.

You can listen in or call in and share comments or questions at 347 945-5431.

The archive will be available on the player in the sidebar after the show is over if you miss it.

Hope to have you listen in!

Lon

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A Cowboy Makes it Work with Assistive Technology

I shook the knarled, arthritic hands yesterday on an Easter afternoon visit, of a veteran cowboy, Dean, who has ridden for 15 brands and taught himself how to rope in spite of his disability.
"I reached the goals I wanted to reach in roping," Dean said.
"And what were those goals?" I asked. He shared that he had joined the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association) and competed in the Elgin Stampede - a regional rodeo in the snow-capped mountains of East Oregon.
"There I was, left-handed, trying to rope right-handed with my hands the way they were. It was my first competition and I had been practicing hard. I had to take pain medicine to rope but I was determined to do it. I entered with a friend in team roping and when it was all done that day-we won!"
He shared his frustrations with having fingers swollen and curled into knots and his inability to grip: "I went on the Internet to try and find someone who could tell me how to button up my jeans. I couldn't push the button through the hole. I spent a whole afternoon "Dancin' around on the Internet" I found handicapped tips, things about wheelchairs, etc. but nothing to help me get my pants buttoned, so I invented something myself."
When asked if he could show me what he made, he left the room and came back with two tools he had adapted. A flat head screwdriver he had heated in his shop and bent into a flat hooked tip, and a long piece of blue heavy wire bent in a "U".
"I just stick the wire loop through the hole, snag the button and pull one direction and then hook the eye-hole with the screwdriver hook and pull the two together."
I shared how ingeniously simple this was and how proud I was of him to make it work on his own.
"I just figure I need to learn how to do things myself. It might take me longer, but I have a great shop and I have all kinds of things I have adapted to pound nails, open my truck door and on and on."
As I left yesterday, I thought about this man's determination to self-accommodate. How I would love to have him share tools and talk about the whole frame of mind that comes with being able to solve problems and be independent. He is an example of what I strive to see for all our students as they struggle to achieve. Whether it is a text reader, a spell checker or an adapted screwdriver - helping students learn how to "make it work" with AT is what my work is all about. This cowboy's tools are a perfect example of what assistive technology is all about - it's not just high-tech computer equipment. Anything that solves a problem and accommodates a disability to make something work is AT. My cowboy friend is an AT designer out of necessity - and a good one to boot!

All the best to you!

Lon

(Dean has given me permission to photograph his tools and inteview him for the No Limits 2 Learning Live show and the website - so look for a great interview and photos in an up-coming edition!)




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New Edition of AT Blog Carnival Up: "Sabotage!"

Sabotage is the theme for the Assistive Technology Blog Carnival hosted by Patrick Black at:
http://teachingall.blogspot.com/2009/04/at-blog-carnival-sabotage_10.html

Patrick, Karen Janowski, myself, and several others have posts linked there. They range from making Rock Band accessible to early experiences with sabotage for learning in the classroom.
Some great reads and great ideas are found there this month.
Thanks Patrick and all those who submitted!

All the best to you!
Lon



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Create EBooks with Your Cell Phone Camera?

Click! Take a picture of that page with your nifty smartphone or digital camera and turn it into a MP3 sound file in 3 steps.

1. Open it on your computer with Top OCR, a free open source program in the Access Apps Suite, or you can download it separately from the TopSoft Ltd. Site.

2. Top OCR will convert your page into text with almost error-free recognition, then read it to you with text to speech.

3. You can convert and save as an Mp3. (You save to .wav first and then click the Mp3 for final conversion - so 4 steps really.)

Sound easy? Here is their short tutorial. Note: They have pdf examples of the finished text files when taking pictures of pages the wrong vs. right way. Interesting.

Here's what they say about using text files you already have:

"You can also use TopOCR to turn the eBooks you downloaded to your web browser from Project Gutenberg or from other web sites into audio files to play on your MP3 player. On the TopOCR Text Window, you'll see a "View" menu item, under that you'll see an item called "Image Window". Simply "de-select" this item, and it reduces TopOCR to only the Text Window. Now you can Copy/Paste from your web browser, or even from other Windows applications such as Adobe Acrobat to TopOCR's Text Window. When you finished pasting the text, simply use the Text To Speech dialog to convert your copied text to an audio file. If you already have a text file on your hard drive that you'd like to convert into audio, simply drag and drop the text file onto the TopOCR Text Window, or use the File Open Dialog to load your document, then use the Text To Speech Menu to generate your audio file. "

I have found it to work great using scanned text or downloaded text files. I have not used my phone camera yet. It highlights words as it reads and can choose from the voices you have on your computer for the sound file conversion and reading. This is a serious tool for something free and should be considered in any school print disability accommodation package of tools. With growing budget issues, a tool like TopOCR can really help.

Post-note Update 4/8/09:

The Access Apps version of TopOCR is older - it does not have the Mp3 encoder. If you download the latest version of TopOCR from the website, it has some updates that improve its sound recording. The newer version allows you to convert text to a sound recording using any available voice you select so that the sound file has that voice. The older version on my computer defaulted to Microsfot Sam as the voice for recordings no matter what other voice I chose.

I just deleted the old Top OCR files out of the Top OCR folder in Applications on the jump and replaced them with the newer files from the TopSoft Ltd. site. I downloaded right onto the jump. I found though that I ultimately had to use Audacity (in Access Apps as well) and convert the .WAV to an Mp3 from there. The Top OCR program wasn't finding an extension needed even though it was there. USing Audacity was a quick converter method - not that much more of a step really. Once you get the newer version out of the way, you will have a nicely working setup. I hope Top OCR can fix the Lame extension bug so the Mp3 encoding works better though. Also, Access Apps is working on a newer updated suite right now.

All the best to you!

Lon

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Planned Sabotage as an Opportunity for Opening Communication

I thought I would share a little about my thoughts on and uses of planned sabotage to promote learning and development. I know that in my own life, whether planned or not, situations that had me "up against the wall" so to speak, forced me to come up with new strategies and problem solving - in ways that built new abilities that I might have otherwise been unmotivated to learn or try.
In this spirit, I think about those students that I work with in assistive technology and how I use sabotage with them. I think that the first time I began to think this way was when I attended a Linda Burkhart day workshop. For those of you who don't know Linda, she is a fireball of ideas and strategies for severely disabled children who seemed to be "locked out" of the everyday world because of multiple disorders.
Linda showed us video of her using planned sabotage to get a reaction out of children who were otherwise non-communicative. She worked to find the thing that was the hot-button for a child and then would take it away to get any indication of how they asked for it back. Was it screaming? Was it shaking? Was it working the tongue? Working in this method (I am giving you a short version) she found the initial indications for communication to start on cause and effect and intentional communication.
Since then, I have been using that kind of technique when I work with a team and we are looking at how to "crack the code" for a child. I have seen some wonderful things also come out of this technique using a multi-sensory assement as laid out by Jane Korsten in her "Every Move Counts: Clicks and Chats" materials. She has found that mama's perfume can bring an acknowledgement - but sometimes it is through a sharp smell like Pine Sol or something that a student doesn't like. How about a sour taste on the tip of the tongue? This sounds cruel to some of you maybe, but it is a starting point to find how a chidl reacts and communicates dissatisfaction.
I found an interesting chapter in Google Books on planned sabotage. The book is: "Parenting Your Asperger Child" byAlan Sohn Ed.D and Cathy Grayson M.A.
They share in Chapter 10, on pages 204, 205, 206 that once you settle an asperger student into a safe routine and get them relaxed and comfortable, you can start to manipulate that routine in subtle ways using planned sabotage to begin to teach flexibility, problems and solutions and good and bad choices. The student subject they shared about was able to mainstream to a regular classroom and learned coping strategies to face day to day issues that come up.
I hope you will look at Linda and Jane's sites, check out the selected pages on planned sabotage and think about how this can help you in your work.

All the best to you!
Lon




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Facilitating Assistive Technology: Working with Families as Experts

A few weeks ago, I had a parent contact me, concerned about some options we were presenting for her child using assistive technology. She shared that she felt she was the expert on her child and that we were moving in the wrong direction.
Let me state that, #1: We would not have done anything until a meeting with the parent, and #2: we were looking at some options for accommodating curriculum at school, not new access, a new wheelchair, new routine, etc. She had heard round-robin through the assistant about our ideas and was emphatic that we not try them.
I keep going back to her comment that she was the expert on her child. I had positive and negative emotions on that one. I have been turning it around in my mind and have all kinds of thoughts on it, but today I attended a webinar with Roberta DePompei, Ph.D. from the Unversity of Akron in Akron, Ohio. Her presentation title was "Working with Familes after Traumatic Brain Injury: Families as Experts." (It will be available on the TBI Educator website in a few days if you would like to view and listen to it.)
I believe, as Roberta does, that there is a lot of valuable information that parents have to give. The traditional assumption is that professionals are the experts with technical resources and knowledge, but Dr. DePompei shares that there are TWO other experts - the student who lives in the diability and the people who live with the disability. She shares that when you are in doubt, consult and trust those living with the disability, in this case, traumatic brain injury - or after brain injury.
Now to my parent a few of weeks back...
I would hope that I present myself as a professional who values the input and significance of the student and the family. If not, I need to work on it because I do believe in it. A good assessment is made by a team of professionals and family members. When professionals disregard the information that parents and a student can contribute in decision making, diagnosis and assistive technology considerations, then the implementation can run into snags and waste everyone's time (and money).
I hope you will take Dr. DePompei's suggestion to heart in your practice and allow parents and students to give their perspectives and be recognized as the experts they truly are. They have a lot to contribute. Now I need to re-address these affirmations to the families I see and work with.
All the best to you!
Lon



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