The Living Schoolbook

In 2003 when I went to the Closing the Gap conference I learned about a metadata standard  

The Resource Centre for Academic Technology at the University of Toronto is helping to develop "accessibility specifications" for elearning objects.

Typically learners access educational content (learning objects) in a limited number (usually 1) of formats. Textbooks are difficult to get access to in any other format, transcripts of videos are often not available, etc. By separating content from presentation and control, learners with disabilities may be able to access content more readily.

This was an energetic group of educators from Massachusetts.  Here was what I wrote:

The take away message from this session was that dreams and expected outcomes of parents of students with severe disabilities (as determined by a survey on a listserv of those parents) have very little to do with national and state standards. To align the wants of parents and the standards, this group published a top ten list of tips to do it. They mapped each of these tips to Massachusetts standards.

This was a flood of ideas from this group who has been integrating high and low tech assistance to learners with disabilities since 1974. Step-by-step scripts for phone conversations, ways to use Boardmaker to create photo albums to help kids who can't understand the math behind money, and education of the public about issues for the mentally disabled were all covered and more. I really could not take it all in because I lack the background in elementary education. However, they listed a couple of resources that seemed worth sharing:

When I wet to the Closing the Gap conference in 2003, I was really amazed by what teachers were doing with software that I already knew.  I had used each of these pieces of software, but the combination of the two in this manner really caught me off guard.  When I came back to Syracuse I told quite a few people about this.  In fact, I still am telling people how cool this was.  Here is what I wrote. 

Voice recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking has been used to allow people with motor disabilities to write on their computer by dictation and give commands to the computer to control it. Users typically go through a training process where they read text from the screen to "calibrate" the speech recognition software. The longer the user uses the software, the better the recognition becomes and fewer errors are made. In practice, the use of voice recognition software with those with motor and speech disabilities has been difficult and yielded poor results.

When I went to the 2003 Closing the Gap Conference I received an introduction to Intellitools.  Here is when I wrote:

Intellitools (www.intellitools.com) has made a suite that includes Intellipics, Intellitalk, and Intellimathics. The new suite is different from the old versions because of new authoring tools that make it very easy to create your own activities (either from scratch or from templates). The suite is still in beta testing but will be shipping soon. The part I thought was interesting is that the suite can be installed as a client/server model. The server allows students to authenticate and get their Intellitools activity assignments/quizzes and submit them for instant grading with reports sent to the teacher. The client/server model is supposed to work with Mac Manager (or a mac without Mac Manager) or on a Windows machine. I don't know how common this product is, and I hate to advocate for any one vendor, but this suite seems to have a lot of great features. Word prediction is built into their talking word processor. Symbols can be associated with words, activities can be created with images and toolbars from scratch or from a variety of templates that come with the software. The open-ended nature of this suite makes me think it would be a suite the School of Education could use to illustrate the types of features that make software accessible as well as for students to use to create their own activities and take to the schools during their student teaching.

In 2003 I thought the concept was very nice.  I spent a little time here "lobbying" about the way that the components were great at facilitating learning for kids of varying abilities.  I still think it was great, but we never did end up getting a copy of it for our "loaner laptop" fleet.  Our teacher prep students have the opportunity to borrow a laptop and take it out into their placements.  These laptops have a variety of assistive technology software titles on them, and I still think that Intellitools would make a nice addition.  As an aside, it looks like that company has been acquired by Cambium Learning.  

One of the first items I saw at the Closing the Gap in 2003 conference was an application that was a lot like Boardmaker. This is what I wrote about it.

The Mayer-Johnson company has made available on the web a series of templates that make the creation of new activities using the Speaking Dynamically Pro software faster. The session was a hands on lab with SDPro and they assumed some knowledge of the software prior to the session. I had never used SDPro or its companion Boardmaker, but found the interface intuitive and easy to use. I quickly learned the software and we created our template-based product (a Halloween book with animations, spoken text and links between boards) in a hurry. The templates are FREE and available from their website.

I visited the Closing the Gap Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota in October 2003. I put together a web site to share what I learned with others, specifically the faculty and students in the Teaching and Leadership department at Syracuse University.

I went to the conference with a technical perspective, interested in the new tools of the trade in assistive technology (AT) and augmentive and alternative communication (AAC). I was able to sample only a handful of what was there, but I feel like I did a good job of getting the meat out of the conference.

I have a secret... there is a gap between technologists and educators.

The Living SchoolBook is in its 11th year of operation.  We have been here in the School of Education for 11 years.  For 11 years we have making changes to the culture of educators in higher education and K12 environments.  

We are still addressing gaps between the two cultures.  

I confess that my background places me more in line with the technologists than the educators.  While in the Navy I was constantly required to be diving into manuals and schematics to figure out the specifics about how the technology worked.  What did it do, why did it do it and how does that relate to the procedures I needed to execute with clockwork precision on a daily basis.  When you are the new guy on a ship you are unqualified to do any job on that ship until you can prove that you possess the requisite knowledge to perform the job.  Until that time, you are considered "DinQ" ("Delinquent in Qualifications") and your life onboard was difficult.  As a “DinQ” your job in life was to become “unDinQ” and pull your weight onboard by standing a watch you were qualified for.  You were expected to do work to get the knowledge you needed or suffer a lot of jibes from the crew and your supervisor.  You were pointed towards the nearest manual and told to get qualified.  The responsibility was yours.

Yesterday I heard a podcast where the speaker discussed an application for the Mac that allows users to make comic strips from their photos.  While listening I really didn't understand the "irrational exuberance" about this product.  After all, putting bubbles on pictures doesn't sound like a technical feat worthy of a new software purchase, does it?  The software is called "Comic Life" and is sold by a company called Plasq.

I downloaded the free trial and tried it out.  I really enjoyed it.  The interface was simple and dare I say "engaging".  It tied in nicely with the iPhoto suite and I was able to quickly create a little comic about our group.