TIS & THAT Volume 2, Issue 11
February 14, 2014
In this issue of “TIS & THAT”, we will be celebrating our presidents of the past. Although President’s Day is commonly celebrating George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays, it’s also a time to look back at all of our presidents and remember their contributions that helped shape the greatest country in the world. Along with some APPs that will help us find information on our presidents, we have included some great information you can use in your classroom settings. We hope you enjoy this issue and remember to celebrate on Monday February 17th, 2014.
Newsletter Contributors Scott A. Wiley Business Education Teacher Weir High School, Hancock County Ruth A. Bland, M.S. CCC/SLP Director, Special Education Pocahontas County Schools
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Amazing Assistive Technology The newest Assistive Technologies are making the everyday lives of disabled individuals amazingly better and can provide wonderful opportunities. The West Virginia Assistive Technology System publishes a quarterly newsletter that showcases many of the newest technologies. One of the most recent newsletters featured an App Finder from the Georgia Tech Tools for Life website
http://b.gatech.edu/1aWkG4D. The App Finder permits the user to choose the areas of need, the type of device, and the price. The categories of accessibility are quite comprehensive and the apps are easily downloaded from the web page. Speak It! Speak It reads selected text using Text-to Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.
read. - Then click the icon to start listening. - When it is ready to read, the number of sentences is shown on the icon.  To stop listening at any time click pause. http://bit.ly/MMeOj6
Usage: - First select the text you want it to
Microsoft Office and Print Disabilities The Accessibility Checker included in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint helps users with print disabilities generate accessible content. This checker allows users to fix potential problem areas by identifying those that might be challenging for users with disabilities to view or use.
Talking books can be created in Microsoft Word by converting files to the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) format. This can make information accessible for people with print limitations by using talking books or compatible software. Students can listen to these
books by searching and moving around in them by word, sentence, paragraph or page. More information about how to use these features can be found by visiting and registering with Microsoft Partners in Learning at: http://www.pil-network.com/ or the download at: http://bit.ly/LVKl1o
Powtoon, Flipping, and Blended Learning Powtoon is a free presentation tool that really fits well with the flipping model of instruction. The instructor can easily produce five different types of presentations, a promotional video, slideshow, educational clip, infographic video, and a social clip. Each of the presentations have a choice of 6 different templates. The tutorial is a quick minute or so and the user can go back and view it as needed. After the presentation is complete it is easily exported to YouTube and can be linked into Edmodo or Schoology. This program is great for those instructors that are not just yet comfortable with podcasting and is easily learned with great results. The ease of use and the compatibility with the Learning Management Systems make this program a must for those instructors starting the flipping process. http://www.powtoon.com/
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An Old Program that Promotes Service. Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president and founder of the League of Nations, was committed to service to mankind. With community service in mind, one cannot help but to reflect on a dated program that has a great service focus and also assists with an educational purpose. An all time favorite is Freerice.com. Freerice is a non-profit website that is owned by and supports the United Nations World Food Programme. Freerice.com
has two goals: to provide education to everyone for free; and to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. This educational vocabulary program now supports a text to speech feature and the levels have been boosted so users are challenged and can keep improving their vocabulary skills. Try it with your students, whether it be adults or children. This program will give the user a challenge as well as a great feeling of giving!
News in Different Form(s) What would the news day be like without an article about the President? Sometimes the news is a difficult publication for students with disabilities to understand. Two very different news programs that are available for free are “Here, There, Everywhere” and Newsela.
“Here, There, Everywhere” is a news site where the articles are customized for kids and offer a look at appropriate news topics, inspiring people, and history. http://htekidsnews.com/ Newsela is a news site that will adjust the articles to the
Next Generation Standards and LearnZillion Special Education and the Next Generation Standards are linked together as IEP goals for students must be written with the Next Generation Standards in mind. So where is the special educator to start? If in a co-teaching environment, the LearnZillon site is a fabulous resource for unpacking the standards and identifying resources to use in the regular classroom as well as in the special education classroom. LearnZillion, http://learnzillion.com/lessons, is a free site that equips educators with a collaborative professional learning platform, and offers teachers, students and parents a growing library of high-quality, digital resources developed by expert teachers directly from the Common Core State Standards. The common Core Navigator is a wonderful tool to find great resources as it relates to the standard. Educators can access all areas and the lessons contain slides, parents letters, discussion protocols, and note taking templates.
student’s reading level according to the student’s lexile level. http://www.newsela.com/ Both websites, used in conjunction with Speak It is a great combination to expose students to nonfiction reading that will be optimistic in nature and will be tailored to their reading level.
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“Ask Not What Your Apps Can Do For You……” Now it may not be exactly what one of our great presidents said, but we can have our apps do a lot for us and our students. One of the great quotes from one of our presidents; John F. Kennedy, could apply today and the technology that we live with. We have applications that can help make our daily grind a lot more manageable by helping us organize our lives at school, home and
when we need time to relax. In the following pages are applications that are useful in the school setting, apps for home use , and apps to use when its time to relax and energize the batteries. Some of the apps may have a small price to purchase them but like the former president of Harvard University, Derek Bok said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” It may cost
a small fee for some of the following apps, but for the benefits they provide, they are well worth it. MyScript Calculator, Quizlet, TeacherKit, GroovyGrader, Spark Camera, WordPress, Articles, Dictionary, StudyBlue, Vocabulary for GRE, SAT, ACT, GMAT and Flashcards+.
MyScript Calculator and Quizlet MyScript Calculator, performs mathematical operations naturally using your handwriting. The Free handwriting calculator is for your iPhone or iPad. It’s easy, simple and intuitive, just write the mathematical expression on
the screen then let MyScript technology perform its magic converting symbols and numbers to digital text and delivering the result in real time. Quizlet has no predetermined curriculum. Students define what they need to
TeacherKit — Groovy Grader—Spark Camera TeacherKit is a personal organizer for teachers. It enables teachers to organize classes, and students. Its simple and intuitive interface enables teachers to track the attendance, grades and behavior of students. Groovy Grader; is an App designed to replace your paper grading calculator. Groovy Grader provides more flexibility, convenience and ease than other popular slide graders. It can be configured to work for 100’s of questions and has the option to display the grade as a whole number or with one decimal place. Spark Camera; lets you make memorable videos at a very impressive speed. It easily captures clips and you can apply one of the ten striking filters. You can also add a song from your library and then share your work of art with friends and family through a variety of social-networking services.
learn, and Quizlet provides the tools. Quizlet can help Art History majors learn paintings, Spanish students learn their verbs, and 5th graders learn their spelling words. Quizlet wants to build software that any learner can use.
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WordPress— Articles— Dictionary WordPress: with WordPress you can moderate comments, create or edit posts and pages, view stats, and add images or videos to your blog. Articles: is a Wikipedia reader for your iPad, iPad mini, iPhone and iPod Touch. It is very easy to use, just enter a search term and let Articles find the Wiki entry you are looking for. Use the integrated maps feature to learn about interesting places and historic events around your current location, or anywhere else in the world. A fun feature is to shake your device and let Articles find an entry for you. Mark interesting entries you want to read in the future and search text in the currently open document. Dictionary.com: this is a top rated app with trusted reference content from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. One of the great features is that it works offline, no Internet connection needed when searching words.
StudyBlue StudyBlue; can be used by teachers but can be introduced to your students so that they can make, study, and share mobile flashcards, study guides and quizzes. The three best features is that StudyBlue is mobile, social and free.
Millions of students have used StudyBlue’s powerful, fun, and easy to use web based flashcard system to improve their learning and get better grades. You can pick a flashcard deck, flip through the flashcards one at a time, guess
the answer, check to see if you got it right, and then at the end check your score. You have the option to go back and restudy the whole deck again or focus only on the flashcards you got wrong. You can also track your progress over time.
Vocabulary for GRE, SAT, ACT, GMAT As important a good vocabulary is in ensuring success in school, college and life, it’s also one of the most dreaded tasks. Learning new words is actually a lot of fun! It’s wonderful and liberating when you come across difficult works while reading or listening and you already know them! This state of the art application let’s your students build vocabulary at their pace. It speeds things up when things are getting too easy for them and slows down when it’s getting too tough. Some of the words will be easy for your students to learn and some will be very difficult. This combination will be totally unique for students. Sometimes they will think they know a word but won’t and vice versa. The vocabulary app will let them cruise through the easy words and focus much longer on the difficult ones.