From Key Board Shortcuts to Shortcut Stickers

Both Karen Janowski at Ed Tech Solutions and Sam Sennott at AllTogether have shared lists of keyboard short cuts for various operating systems and programs, including shortcut cards to post near the computer.

Now you can also order "Gmail Shortcut Stickers". These stickers adhere to the correct key on your keyboard so that you always have a visual cue of what short cut is what. All you have to do is send a self addressed, stamped envolope to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

P.S. A quick google search can find you keyboard stickers for many common programs, like Photoshop.

My Voice is My Power: Part Six, A Mother's Story

This guest blog entry has been circling the special education/disability list servs and is a perfect addition to the "My Voice is My Power" series of entries.

The guest blogger is Denise, mom to Brandon who is a nineteen year old young man who speaks with an alternative communication device. When Denise and I corresponded about posting the story as part of the "My Voice is My Power" series she told me, "Originally when this was sent it was only sent to those who know me and my son and my family. I did not include his age, but I think it adds importance to the story because it shows its never too late to have that moment. It was the singles best moment of my life as his mom."

The Story:

After finishing dinner with Allen and Brandon, it was just B and I left sitting at the kitchen table. I was so tired (after all it was 7pm!) that I put my head down on the arm of his wheelchair. I positioned his hand and fingers on my head and hair so he would have that “sensory” experience of feeling my hair as his fingers would move (and I would get a gentle head massage!). The armrest was actually quite soft and comfortable and we stayed in silence like this for at least five minutes. (I probably even dozed off!)

All of a sudden I heard a voice…Brandon’s digitized voice from his Dynavox.

“I LOVE YOU.”

I looked up at him stunned, and as the tears formed in my eyes (as they are as I again retell the story), he just started smiling and laughing. Brandon knew what my reaction was going to be to what he said, even before he saw the look on my face. He knew how happy he made me with those three words. He knew that what he had said was going to make me cry “happy tears”. He thinks it is funny that I cry “happy tears”.

So together we shared our unbelievable happiness…me with my tears because my son had given me this amazing moment…and B with his laughter and smiles because he knew that he had given me this moment. A moment that will last forever.

So you see...no matter the circumstances...you never really know what can make someone happy, nor in what form that happiness will manifest itself.

It’s different for everyone but should be experienced and shared by all.

I hope that my story made you happy whether it stays with you for a moment or a lifetime...

Whether you smiled and laughed, or had tears in your eyes…or both...I hope it touched your heart...

His voice is his power!

Here is the video that inspired the "My Voice is My Power" series. It is worth a watch... even if oyu ahve already seen it.

2008 Edublog Awards

Thanks to a nomination by the wonderful Patrick Black at Teaching All Students this blog (Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs) is up for a 2008 Edublog award in the category of Best Individual Blog. Please go vote, forward to your friends and family to have them vote. Have your students vote. This is one of the few special education blogs nominated in any category.

P.S. It is likely December 8th that this blog will also be up for "Best Education Blog" in the 2008 Weblog Awards (we were nominated 8 times).

New Activities at Help Kids Learn

Have you all been over to Help Kidz Learn lately? They have three fun new SWITCH activities! I have been using the Advent Calendar in morning meeting and this afternoon spent some time playing with the Mosaic Painter (a great way to teach mouse cross scanning) and Hoop Stars. Hoop Stars, even set to "easy" had a bit of a challenge. Tip - you have to wait for your player to aim before you "shoot" (hit the switch).

Customer Service

For the record I think that some of the A.T. providers out there have the best customer and support services of any type of company. (Too bad the phone company, for example, can't take their lead.) Today I had folks at both Dynavox and Ablenet spend copious amounts of time helping me figure out that the parts ordered and delivered for a student's switch and switch mount cannot work together. Which was a relief, in a way, because I was starting to think there was something wrong with me that I could not figure it out.

Followed by Ken at Ablenet (thanks Ken) helping me to figure out exactly what to do about it. Ken and I came up with a plan and in the end the SLP, parent and I (coordinated through multiple phone calls) decided that we will be returning the switch and mismatched mounting plate for a different switch with a matching mounting plate (things work better if all the parts match). Ken was kind enough to give me the item numbers so I can be sure when we re-order it is correct.

On more set of phone calls tomorrow to finalize the exchange with Dynavox and we will be in business. Finally. It took me weeks to find a three hour block in my schedule, during business hours, to make all these calls! (Tough to find time around all that darned teaching!)

Maybe the return will be ready to go in time for the student to mail it himself during community based education this week!

On an unrelated note today my order from Ablenet for a Jelly Beamer and the new Read, Write and Grow software came in! I played quite a bit with the Jelly Beamer. So cool! Wireless is definitely the way to go. I can't wait to do a math lesson I have planned tomorrow and not have to worry about how far the cord will reach when I pass around the switch! More on Read, Write and Grow soon.

Running Programs from a Flash Drive

One of the challenges of working with technology in a school system is that you often don't have "administrative" privileges on computers to run or install software and because software that is vital to our classrooms is often not vital to the rest of the school we have come up with creative solutions.

One solution is to run smaller and somewhat simple programs from a flash drive, thus altogether avoiding the need to install programs to a computer. This isn't easy because most software isn't designed to be run from a flash drive.

One solution (and this is likely one of many and it only works on Windows) is to use a flash drive with a U3 system (like the SanDisk drives). U3 is an operating system that allows programs to run directly from the flash drive. However programs must be converted to work with U3 and as you can imagine many of the programs we find useful with our students are not available in u3 compliant format.

Luckily there is some free software that can convert (smaller, simplier) programs to be U3 compliant. It is called Package Factory. To make everything even better their is a tutorial on Techbytes. I spent a couple hours trying to convert two programs over the weekend and today at school one of them worked instantly running off the drive. The other one... well I am not sure I can make it happen but I will give it a try soon.

I haven't tried all of the programs below, but they might be worth a shot:

• Switch It Player
• Power Point Viewer
• Watling View Switch Games
• HiYah Activities

Also I did get the Classroom Suite Viewer that comes with News-2-You membership (and with Aimee Solutions Programs) to work.

Another Online Timer

Here is another online timer to use for counting down break time, transitions, time in position devices or what not:

• Timer (with or without music)

add to these formerly mentioned timers

• Class Timer
• IDEAS Timer
• Toastmasters Speech Timer
• Cool Timer