Making Connections Around the World!
Tar Heel Reader is "a collection of free,
easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics (appropriate for
young readers through adults). Each book can be speech enabled and accessed
using multiple interfaces (i.e. switches, alternative keyboards, touch screens,
and dedicated AAC devices). The books may be downloaded as slide shows in
PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format." This is a tremendous resource that
is the result of a collaborative effort between the
Center for Literacy and Disability
Studies and the department of Computer
Science at the University of North Carolina. Visitors can read all of
the wonderful stories or write their own. If you want to write your own
books you need to register with the password: Literacy! with the upper case L
and the exclamation.
www.tarheelreader.org
Ann
Brundige Studio: A wonderful artist and truly creative
author in Classroom Suite, Clicker 5, My Own Bookshelf; Ann Brundige is sharing
her work with all of us. Visit her website for high quality downloads to
run on your favorite software platforms!
www.annbrundigestudio.com
http://www.annbrundigestudio.com/
Storyline Online: A wonderful internet
offering from the Screen Actors Guild, you and your children can hear famous
actors read popular books on-line. The text is on-screen during the entire
story and beautiful screenshots are presented for each page. Go check it
out at www.storylineonline.net.
HK PNET Teacher Resources Website: This
website contains teaching related resources, links and ideas for Primary Native
English Teachers in Hong Kong. For the rest of us, there are many simple
books scanned into PowerPoint. If you have the books, you can download the
stories and run them on PowerPoint. For added emphasis, simply record your
own voice reading the story on each page. Our in-house internet queen,
Adina, found these for us!
http://www.west-web.net/pnet/teacher_resources.htm#Book%20Powerpoint%20Scans
Dynavox Page Share:
Did you know that you can download some pretty
slick games and academic materials for the V/Vmax,
including spelling/math activities for FREE from
Dynavox's website?
From the main page at
www.dynavoxtech.com
just click on Community and Page Sharing. Fun &
functional!
http://www.dynavoxtech.com/pagesharing/
NYC Public Schools
has
another site where the authors are sharing their adapted materials. It has
books and vocabulary exploration done in Powerpoint, Boardmaker and Adobe Reader
formats. Adina found this site which includes social stories and
activities for home, therapy and school.
http://schools.nycenet.edu/D75/literacy/adaptedbooks/catalog.htm
Jefferson
Parrish Public Schools have a
nice selection of AAC materials including games and stories organized by theme.
Go take a look at:
http://speech.jppss.k12.la.us/index.htm
Fisher Price Activities Website:
We used to buy CDs of these activities featuring our favorite pudgy
animals and tots. Now they're available on-line with activities for
infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Very cute on-line games and printables!
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=gamesLanding&mcat=game_infant,game_toddler,game_preschool
Ivy's
Domain- A Place for the Young At Heart
Ivy's Domain is a great resource page with a search engine for coloring pages,
downloadable MIDI (music) files, quotes & jokes, greeting cards to print, fairy
tales, links to on-line games for kids and much, much more! Lots of
great materials for teachers, parents and therapists for activity creation.
A great place for those of us who like to author Classroom Suite and Clicker
Activities! Fun stuff!
http://www.ivyjoy.com/
Orange County Public Schools Assistive Technology Team
A wonderful website of amazing resources (including some great downloads
for Boardmaker). Take a
look at their "workshops" link for excellent downloads!
http://teachers.ocps.net/atteam/page11.html
Baltimore City Schools presents Boardmaker (PCS) adapted
stories:
Baltimore City Schools received a grant that allowed
them to adapt a zillion (give or take a few) of our favorite books to use with
our friends with special needs. These are very well done supplements to
our story books and have the added bonus of giving kids more experience with the
Picture Communication Symbols that they use for communication in their books,
boards and communication devices. Here's the link:
http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/boardmaker/adapted_library.asp
Special
Education Technology-British Columbia:
Wow! This website has a WEALTH of free activities and
books created in a wide variety of software platforms. There are
activities done in Classroom Suite, Boardmaker, Clicker 5, MS Word and
Powerpoint. There are computer based activities and printables to take
with you on your outings. The mission of this British Columbia based
project is "to enhance student opportunities for success by providing access to
curriculum through the use of appropriate educational and communication
technologies." GREAT STUFF!! (shared with us from our friends at Crick
Software)
http://setbc.org/setbc/accessiblebooks/freebooksforyou.html
Help
Kidz Learn:
What
is HelpKidzLearn?
"HelpKidzLearn is a collection of free software for young children and
those with learning difficulties to play online. The software is split into four
sections:• Games and Quizzes• Stories and Songs• Creative Play• Find Out About
Who has made HelpKidzLearn?
HelpKidzLearn has been created by Inclusive Technology Ltd., a commercial
organization providing assistive technology and educational software. Many of
the activities at HelpKidzLearn are free samples taken from our own software
titles."
http://www.helpkidzlearn.com/
CD Drive Emulator Software: Virtual
Drive Pro
"CD Drive Em-what????" you may be asking yourself, but good for you,
continuing to read! Colin's dad, Bob, turned us onto this amazing software
option that allows us to load entire CDs to our hard drive, eliminating the need
to have original CDs in the CD Drive every time we want to run a program.
You know all those programs that require you to have the CD in the drive in
order to run? With this software, you can simply load the information from
the CD into a file on your hard drive and run the software WITHOUT THE CD IN
THE DRIVE! What a great option for those of us who aren't so gentle on
our CDs! This program doesn't work on all CDs but a few less to break is a
good thing! Go check it out at:
http://www.farstone.com/software/virtualdrive-pro.htm
ABA Educational Resources Unlimited:
This is a great website for ABA activities, data collection sheets, pictures,
drill cards and more. Go check it out at:
http://www.abaresources.com/free.htm
Autism Internet Modules
The Ohio Center for Autism
and low Incidence has created some amazing training modules available on-line
for FREE. These are great resources for training partners, teachers,
families and friends about effective interventions for people with autism.
I'm very impressed with the quality of these presentations. Go check them
out at
www.autisminternetmodules.org
"The Ohio Center for Autism and Low
Incidence (OCALI), in partnership with the Autism Society of America (ASA) and
the Nebraska Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Network, is in the process of
developing a series of 60 online modules on ASD. Modules will address myriad
topics, including characteristics, diagnosis, interventions and supports,
transition, and employment. We are requesting feedback from potential AIM users
as we work to finalize the structure for the modules."
Microsoft Office On-Line: free, free, free!
A
company with loads to give, Microsoft has endless free downloads of clip art,
educational and fun templates, educational powerpoint templates and MORE.
Michelle found an adorable paper doll template and I've had a blast sorting
through all of the wonderful clip art. Great stuff, and did I mention,
FREE!!!
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX100647101033.aspx?pid=CL100569831033
Priory Woods School Website: free, free, free!!!
I've finally had a chance to really play around on this
website. I'm more impressed than ever! This is an amazing school
whose team shares hundreds of switch activities with all of our favorite themes
including Finding Nemo, Madagascar, Axle-F Crazy Frog and the Black-Eyed Peas,
just to mention a few! They also have interactive talking story
books, their own educational programs and their curriculum to
share. I mistakenly reported that the team here used
PowerPoint. Actually all of their switch activities are done in Macromedia
Flash Player. They do have a template you can use to create your own
stories in Power Point.
All of their programs operate with a range of assistive
input devices including switches, touch-screens and pointing devices. Make a
little space on your hard drive and have a blast downloading from:
www.priorywoods.middlesbrough.sch.uk
News-2-You:
A
weekly on-line newspaper for beginning/low readers and individuals with special
needs. This is a newspaper and much, much more! There are three levels of
newspaper available each week: simplified, regular and higher (over 180 oages
each week). Additionally, a fourth level—the advanced—is published on a
monthly basis. All levels also come in Spanish and in a speaking version. Each
newspaper is symbol-based to reinforce readers' understanding and use of their
symbolic language. Newspapers include a recipe, joke and comprehension
activities ("games"). The Joey's Locker component supplements the newspaper
with either a cartoon comprehension game or an adapted storybook. Subscribers
also receive a set of weekly worksheets targeting academic goals such as
spelling, sight words, early math skills and writing. In addition on-line games
and supporting Intellitools activities are available. A GREAT bargain for the
classroom. News-2-You can be used as the basis for your entire weekly
curriculum. Fantastic!!
www.news-2-you.com
Learning Magic Incorporated:
Learning Magic is a wonderful company that
produces amazing quality computer activities and non-fiction, academic content
for our kids. Their activities run on Intellitools and My Own Bookshelf
currently. You can visit their website to learn more about their wonderful
products. You can also download freebies on a wide range of topics
including science, social studies, nature and more from their
"Goodies" section. Activities are designed for students of all
ability levels with new offerings monthly. A few of the most
striking aspects of the products are the superior photography/videos and the
wide range of academic subject areas (CONTENT material for social studies and
science!!!). The materials are appropriate for preschool to adults.
Go take a look!!!
www.learningmagicinc.com
Lessons4All.org
Lessons4All.org
is a wonderful resource website devoted to helping teachers create
literacy-based thematic units and lessons to support their students with
differing learning needs. Lessons 4 All includes teaching tips with
resources, free downloads and links for those teachers who want ideas for
making their own materials and ready-to-use materials available for
purchase.
Lessons are now available that help teachers align to grade
level standards and assist with Georgia Alternative Assessment. Look for
content area (social studies, science) that are adapted for special needs
students. Creators Juanita Pritchard and Keeli Bowen have created
wonderful products that help meet the new stringent requirements special needs
teachers are now facing.
Materials include printable games, reading and writing
activities, math activities and electronic storybooks. We're going to
start adding our own "Tech Bundles" of Classroom Suite based
activities in the near future to this company's offerings. Look out for
our goodies!
Serving Up Success, Inc.:
Serving Up Success is a curriculum designed in
the trenches of one of our local high schools' special needs classrooms.
The culmination of several years of work has produced a high quality curriculum
around the daily operations of a coffee shop. The first model
program, The Mountain Top Cafe at Kennesaw Mountain High School, is a
legitimate business that is operated by students in the mild-moderate
intellectually disabled program. Creators Kellie Bramblett and
Stephanie Barber have designed a wonderfully comprehensive curriculum that
teaches special needs students "functional, transitional and vocational
skills" IN THE REAL WORLD! No more pegboards for these ladies!
The Serving Up Success curriculum is now available for purchase.
Visit www.mountaintopcafe.com
for a more thorough explanation of the rationale, target audience and offerings
of this curriculum- and some GREAT photos of our kids!
www.mountaintopcafe.com
