For Special Kids Boardmaker Share Groups

Check these out and add you boards and activities.  These groups are for those of us who work with individuals with severe, profound or multiple special needs.  Activities which use creativity to teach functional skills that also meet alternative assessment standards are especially welcome!

• Language Arts for Special Kids
• Adapted Books for Special Kids
• Math for Special Kids
• Science for Special Kids
• History for Special Kids
• Life Skills for Special Kids

Science Experiments for Special Kids

One of my professional development goals for myself for the year is to ramp up science experiments and writing activities in my classroom.  However simple science experiments are few and far between, add in a quest for picture instructions or easy student response sheets and it is tough to do an experiment!

That's where you come in!  Do you do science experiments with your class of learners with severe or multiple special needs? If every regular reader of this blog (I estimate that to be about 300 people) creates and shares one adapted science experiment collectively we will have access to enough experiments to last us years!

If you create materials in Boardmaker you can share by posting to the Science for Special Kids group on Boardmaker Share.  If you use other authoring software (Clicker5, SymbolMate, PixWriter, Classroom Suite) please post to the appropriate sharing site and then share a link below in the comments.  Alternatively you can email your files and I will post them to the Intensive SpEd Resources Wiki

Here are some wonderful websites full of science experiments to get you started:

• Science is Fun
• Science Bob
• Zoom Sci
• Science for Preschoolers
• TLC Family Science Experiments for Kids
  
• Kitchen Science Experiments
• Hunkin's Experiments
  

Free Boardmaker Boards and Activites List Updated!

Check it out!  Cleaned up and added to for 2011!

Visuals Engine

Visuals Engine from Connectability in Canada joins a number of excellent free visual support and communication board making programs.   Visuals Engine offers a step-by-step online app to make schedule or communication boards with up to 16 squares.  It includes photographs and a limited selection of Mayer-Johnson Picture Communication Symbols. The rest of the site is also worth looking through, with games, information on safety, a resume builder for people with disabilities and more.

2010 Calendars from Mayer-Johnson

Calendars for 2010 are now available for use with the Boardmaker family of software from Adapted Learning.  Log in and click here.  (Adapted Learning is the sharing community for the Boardmaker software series.)

Adapted Learning

I hope you all know about the wonderful Boardmaker sharing resource Adapted Learning. Adapted Learning lets everyone who uses Boardmaker share what they make. In doing so we reduce the work load for everyone. Just this week I logged on and found a fantastic activity about dressing for the weather. Some of my students are struggling with the concept of hot vs. cold and this was just the thing. I downloaded it and made some changes for low vision and voila I had a lesson ready to go!

However I am a little worried when the "Site Activity in the Past Week" section of Adapted Learning's newsletter says "O" for New Messages, Files and Articles. I know we are all busy, but I also know we are all making new things all the time. It only takes a minute to upload something, so why not go ahead and do it? Even if you think you are too new to teacher/SLP/being a para/using Boardmaker, share with all of us. You might be surprised at home much value your activity has for all of us!

Pogo Boards

Update: September 25th, 2009
Pogo Boards now offers a 7 day FULL feature free trial.


Pogo Boards is a new online communication board making resource in the same line of thinking as Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards, which was actually the first, full featured online board making and sharing program.

Pogo Boards was developed by Talk to Me Technologies and had 800+ beta testers (I assume in private beta). They have had 12,000+ people sign-up for the limited use version of the online program since debut a few days ago.

First off Pogo Boards has some quirky, and in what may have been an isolated case for me, very annoying, software and hardware requirements. You must have Adobe Reader (or another Adobe Reading software) installed as well as Microsoft Silverlight (which is not a program most of us have installed, like Adobe Flash or Java). Thus if you are at work, work in a school and do not have administrative privileges you might as well stop trying right here. (That's probably 75% or more of us.)

(The advantage of Silverlight is if you are using Microsoft Office 2007 the interface will feel very familiar, but we are working in education, so chances are you are using Office 2003 or earlier, or you have switched to an online word processing program.)

The next issue would seem that the "basic account" which is advertised as "free" is pretty worthless because you cannot print boards without a watermark across them and it is very limited. They should call it a "limited feature trial membership". Nor is there a 30, 14 day, 7 day or 1 day free trial in which to see all of the site features. Trainers and district purchasers who have asked for full access to show Pogo Boards or determine if the product is appropriate have been told this is not an option. If you do want to take advantage of the "basic account" the registration form is lengthy, which is unusual as most web 2.0 applications have learned that folks do not generally want to fill out long forms just to try things out.

Also the "basic account" is in many ways "nagware" because whenever you try to do anything such as save, print, or even delete or replace symbols you get an error message that you need to upgrade to a paid account to enjoy that feature. I used to have a student who would say, "Nag, nag, nag!", whenever he knew he was being a little annoying about asking for something over and over and all I could think was, "Nag, nag, nag!", while I was using my "basic account".

The boardmaking interface itself is a bit clumsy. You search for your image and then "check" the one you want and mouse click on the square where you want it. Not exactly the drag and drop beauty that is Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards. Nor does it have the features we all know and love from Boardmaker... or maybe it does, who knows with the limited trial.

Another bug is that it took a very long time for each of the computers I tried the program on to open up the Silverlight based boardmaking window. Which is usually fine with me, school computers and special needs software running computers are notoriously slow, however Pogo Boards won't let you do anything else when you have the Silverlight/Pogo Board application open (or trying to open). Thus I couldn't just click to another tab on my browser and read e-mail or my RSS reader. This alone would make me never use the website, so I hope they fix that bug.

Support wise there are online videos for training and place to submit forms with questions.

Finally there is the issue of combined symbol sets, Pogo Boards offers a new symbol set called PiCS, the SymbolStix set by the News-2-You people, images from Google Images and clip art images. Many users may not understand the importance of a cohesive set of symbols (not mixing symbol sets), using the same symbol to mean the same thing across multiple boards and the heirarchy of using photos to picture symbols. This means that shared boards, which is one of the lures to entice subscription, may be of little value and may actually be confusing and cause problems with some learners who have communication and intellectual disabilities.

The cost for Pogo Boards is (buried deep in the FAQ and is) tiered based on the number of subscriptions. One year, for one user, is $69.99. This compares to Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards at $45 for one year. It also compares to $79.99 for one year's access to Adapted Learning's Print Editor (which allows you to change and print boards on the Adapted Learning website if you have a valid license number for a Boardmaker disc).

For my money, were I not already totally satisfied with just using my trusty Boardmaker SDP and Adapted Learning (without Print Editor), I would subscribe to Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards. (Read my original review of Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards, from when it was in public beta trial, here.)

(The only appeal of Pogo Boards to me is the ability to make boards that have Symbol Stix to match my Unique Curriculm, but that is not enough of an appeal to make me join and pay that price.)

Adapted Learning Print Editor Beta

Beta

Adapted Learning has a new feature in open public beta. Print Editor allows you to do basic editing and print any non-interactive, non-zipped board in your "my files" section of Adapted Learning.

In my school the internet connected computers do not print, so I have had some luck using Print Editor to print to CutePDF and then bring that file to the computer with a printer on a flashdrive.

Be aware that when the beta is over the Print Editor will be available only on a fee based subscription basis to owners of Boardmaker v. 6 (or Boardmaker Plus or SDP v. 6)

1,000th Upload at Adapted Learning

Last week Mayer-Johnson's new sharing site hit Adapted Learning hit it's 1,000th upload of a file (or set of files) and low and behold I uploaded it (it was my Letter to President Obama Cut and Paste Activity)! Bob G. at Mayer-Johnson contacted me today and offered me a tee shirt for being their 1,000th upload! I plan to use the tee-shirt as reward for the student in my class with the most stars on our star board which was filled up today! (Big news in our world! In the event of a tie we will have a raffle.)

It does strike me as odd that it A) took my class this long to fill the star board (every inch of the black background was covered, but still it took a long time, we need to reward more I say!) and B) took so long to get 1000 uploads on the Adapted Learning site. Come on folks! I know you have dozens and dozens of boards on your hard drives, upload them already! Even if you think they aren't good enough, even if you think you are just a beginner, you never know what your board will inspire in someone else. Let's see if we can hit 2,000 boards sooner rather than later! Perhaps you may win a tee shirt! (I uploaded about 90 some odd boards I think, maybe more, that's just under 10% of the total boards. I had a decent chance at that tee shirt - you could have a decent chance at the next one. If tee shirts don't motivate you let the good will of sharing motivate you.)

Mrs. Riley

There is a new Web 2.0 application on the block and this one is just for us! Mrs. Riley It's In the Cards is a communication card/board building application that is totally online. It combines photo symbols, picture symbols and text symbols in grid layouts of various sizes and configurations.

Currently Mrs. Riley's It's In the Cards is in free public beta. You can try it without registering, but will need to register to save or print. I have never seen a more intuitive, easier interface for a communication board software. It beats Boardmaker, Overboard and PhotoSYMS hands down as far as simplicity. Of course what you gain in simplicity you loose in flexibility - at least compared to Boardmaker. If nothing else let this be the next step in the revolution for SPED applications coming to Web 2.0 (I am giving Write Online credit for being first.) I would say that if, once out of free public beta, this site keeps the price down there may be an awful lot of us who subscribe.

This site is definately worth trying out.

Vote for Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs in the 2008 Weblog Awards. You can vote once a day, every day! (Until January 13th.) I say vote one for every post you read!

News-2-You on Adapted Learning

Today another teacher and I discussed how there must be a large number of people on Adapted
Learning (the Mayer-Johnson Sharing Community) who use News-2-You.

To this end I have started a new Adapted Learning Group called News-2-You, my hope is folks will use it to share News-2-You adaptations and extension activities. Please join us.

Vote for Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs in the 2008 Weblog Awards. You can vote once a day, every day! (Until January 13th.)

Updates

Both the Alternate Format Book and Stories Section and the Free Boardmaker Boards and Activities Section have been updated this week.

From a Private E-mail: Admin Priviledges and Boardmaker Frusterations

This is from a private e-mail conversation I have been having with online, it references the frustrations of not having admin privileges on school computers and some special education software companies refusal to take these issues into account.

Isn't it crazy that schools don't install sped software because of "security issues"? Like Boardmaker and Intellitools are going to be problems! I haven't been using Boardmaker very much because I cannot nstall it on the school computer attached to the "big screen" (due to admin privilege issues) and I cannot run Boardmaker Player from a flash drive. Switch It Maker Player, Choose It Maker Player and Classroom Suite Player can all be run from a flash drive, but not Boardmaker Player. I know my school is technically the problem, but why is it Intellitools and Inclusive are responsive to this pervasive issues and Mayer-Johnson isn't?

Would it kill them to design their software in a way that it doesn't need to install files to the registry and therefore is not a problem in all the schools with this issue. I am one of MJ's biggest advocates and they are slowly losing my loyalty.... (with every day that passes that I cannot use activities that my students would find meaningful on the computer of my choice).

It really is amazingly frusterating that just when all these fantastic interactive boards are going up on Adapted Learning so many teachers and speech therapists cannot use them at school because of lack of admin priviledges to either install the Boardmaker series of software or to download and unzip files on school computers. When I mentioned the issues with downloading in schools a Boardmaker rep told me he hopes schools can work out those issues. Well I hope they can too, otherwise people will only use Boardmaker for print activities and use other, easier to share, easier to install softwares for interactive activties. (That's what I do, Boardmaker for printing Classroom Suite or Choose It Maker for interaction.)

PLEASE, PLEASE comment if your school (or your child's school) has these issues. The more people that say something the more likely Mayer-Johnson knows this is a pervasive issues across the US and the the more likely they are to address it!

Visual Scenes - On Display at Adapted Learning

If you have read my previous writing about Visual Scene Displays (VSD) you now that I am an agnostic when it comes to their use in our populations of learners with multiple special needs.

Now there is an article by Phyl T. Macomber on the Adapted Learning site lauding VSDs. Yet there is still no evidence that these work for more than a few users or that they are best practice in speech therapy, special education or AAC.

Here are some of the claims in the article:

• "Visual scene displays organize and depict vocabulary in scenes relevant to the communicator"
• "Research shows that visual scene displays offer more immediate success for emerging communicators and for many individuals with communication deficits due to congenital or acquired disabilities."

First, I wonder if these scenes really are relevant to our students who use them to communicate. How many of our students with significant physical challenges have looked in cabinets for food, looked in a closet for certain articles of clothing or even climbed into their own bed to indicate they are tired? Those things are not necessarily relevant to our students, at the very least they are no more or less relevant that selecting a symbol of "food" to get to choices of food, selecting a symbols of "clothing" to get to clothing choices or selecting a symbol for "feelings" to say they are tired. More over these scenes are usually cartoon drawings or photos of somewhere our students have never been. In my experience and from many research studies we know that our students do not generalize well, thus how likely are they to generalize a cartoonish bedroom with a bed that looks nothing like theirs for their bedroom or a random movie theatre that looks nothing like the local theatre?

Second, there is the claim that research shows that VSDs offer more immediate success for emerging communicators and for individuals with disabilities, yet no studies are cited. There are only five published studies about VSD. Four done on individuals with aphasia and one on a small sample of young children with autism. (All of these are cited here.) Truthfully we do not know if VSDs are better for emergent or communicators with disabilities and we won't until more research is completed. Right now VSDs are a guess for our learners. However, it seems safe to say that VSD is a good choice for aphasia.

Macomber also decribes how to design low tech VSDs to use. She says of these:

• VSD's "Empower the communication partners to be much more active in the communication process – it gives them something to talk to their AAC user about by referencing the real-life environmental image,"
• VSD's "Reduce the cognitive demand for symbol learning – it is easier to learn communication symbols displayed in the context in which they are used, as opposed to numerous squares,"
• VSD's "Improve the motivation of not only the AAC user, but also the team implementing the tool because it makes sense to them and they see successful communication quickly"

She is clear that her experiences show these things to be true and it is difficult to argue with experience. Here are some experiences of my own. Students are less likely to use their communication device if they do not know exactly what in a visual scene display is "selectable". Students tend to use communication devices based on location, much like how we dial a phone. When using a visual scene display you move the burden of communicating from thinking about what you want to say and allowing muscle memory to select it (be it with direct select, head or eye tracking) to looking at the scene and determining what is a symbol and if that symbol will portray the message you want. Communication symbols can be learned in many ways that are possibly more contextual that a VSD. A language rich classroom and home, with picture symbols labeling everything and symbolic literacy experiences in the classroom are also contextual. Context is a broad word and visual scene displays are not the only way to create context. Clicking on "morning circle" and then seeing 6, 12 or 32 symbols that relate to morning circle is also contextual. Finally comes the issue of motivation. Motivation for communicating needs to come from a desire to communicate, to get needs met, to create social connection, to regulate and refuse, to get a point across.

My goal is to have all my students communicating because they are motivated to do just that and to see communication partners engage because they want to have a conversation, want to connect with a student. A student in my class came to me with tons of VSDs on her device and she only used the "feelings" page, which was not a VSD. The SLP eliminated the VSDs with enormous, unprecedented success. The student's parents have told us many times about how much more this student is communicating, how she is voluntarily turning on the device in the morning, how she is "talking" about her classmates on days she is home sick. We have seen her learn to order at McDonald's and explain to the physical therapist why she is terrified of the stairs. In fact she is insisting on taking her device with her to PT so she CAN explain that. Visual Scene Displays increased the cognitive load for this student. VSDs confused her. VSDs confused her parents and her staff. The data collected on her AAC use indicate a 75% increase in her use of the device since the elimination of VSDs. A more logical, traditional grid system made all the difference.

In short, VSD might be great for some learners. Research says it is worth a shot for those with aphasia and possibly those with autism. Yet traditional displays are great for others. We, as educators, therapists, AT specialists and caregivers, need to fully assess the student, how the student relates to the world, the student's ability to generalize, the student's grasp of general knowledge to determine whether or not VSDs, traditional displays or some other type of set up is best.


“Sections were reprinted from Phyl T. Macomber’s free AT Solutions At-A-Glance Newsletter. Subscribe at http://www.PracticalATSolutions.com.”

P.S. Have you voted?

Boardmaker Dreams

Mayer-Johnson just sent out a survey about what people would like to see in Boardmaker 7. Here are somethings I would like to see:

• Boardmaker Player available on a flash drive
• Pre-programmed commonly used variables or a variable glossary you can use
  
• Instant thumbnails of saved boards for easy finding
• "About this board" button to click when you open a board that shows if it is interactive, if it is programmed for scanning and who the original author was (if that person chose to include that when they shared the board)
• A symbol that you can paste into a cell that automatically shows the copyright information
• Better voices, especially child and teen voices in Plus and SDP
• Many more templates, such as the Accessible Book Collection templates for picture and chapter books and lots of worksheets that can be print or interactive
  
• More symbols for things like sports teams, all of the steps of various task analysis including putting on different kinds of clothes, self-care, self-transfer, community and vocational activities
• Wizards that an non-intrusive to do things like make cause and effect switch activities, "choose it" activities, accessible books, schedules, communication boards
• Spell check when programming the boards
• More symbols of specific adaptive equipment (like how they now have a accurate symbol for a Rifton Gait Trainer), even if they just look through catalogs of the larger adaptive equipment companies for ideas (also see a list of symbols I would like in the Slideshare embedded in this post)
• Able to rotate images and cells (for making folded books and materials)
• automatically fit, align and justify text in buttons according to user settings
  
• a setting to make all text the same pre-set font on a board
• a menu bar item to automatically take you to Adapted Learning and another to publish your board Adapted Learning
  
• a point system that gives you rewards for publishing boards to Mayer-Johnson sharing (like Intellitools)
• a "zoom" feature for when you are making boards in a multiple board layout (can't tell you how many typos and simple errors I make when I create large, multiple page boards because I cannot see what I am typing)
  
• integrated "Make a Face" and for added flare it could work from digital images of people turning into PCS images -- oh-la-la
• integrated photo editing
  
• a feature that alerts you when the new addendum comes out, lets you link to the MJ website, purchase the addendum, download and install and and have the CD follow in the mail
• a way to designate ASL or SEE when using the sign addendum and you have both installed
  
• menu bar item that allows you to set Symbolate to be primarily in PCS, Widgit, picture this, ASL or SEE (if you have those addendums)
• worksheet templates in the templates folder including matching, spelling, cut and paste, tracing, scissors, and other basics

And a huge dream... online Boardmaker Plus (like Write Online).

Fun Things We've Been Up To in Kate's Class

We have been having a rocking good time in my classroom lately. Here are some of the things we have been up to:

• Playing Hoops on the Help Kidz Learn site. Set on "easy" you still need to wait until your player aims to score a basket. We had the student nearest to the computer use a wired switch and the student further away use the Jelly Beamer. Only one of my students is a regular switch user and he has been kicking some rear end in this game. We adapted it for low vision by simply having all the staff shout, "now!" for the student with visual impairment.
  
• Learning about and playing dreidel using Classroom Suite, our new Jelly Beamer and the LCD Projector on the big screen (we don't have a SMART board.) The Hannukah and driedel activties were downloaded from the Intellitools Activity Exchange. We listened to the information about Hannukah and driedels and then we switched over the the driedle cause and effect activity, from the same author on the exchange and passed around the Jelly Beamer to spin the driedel. We played three times today and the same student won every time!
• Making "stained glass" candles for Hanukkah (yes, I know it isn't until December 21st) using the free symbol based directions from Slater Software, which we posted on the "big screen" via the LCD projector and used the Jelly Beamer to scroll down the directions as we worked through each step.
• Reading Hoover's New Wheels, also downladed from the Intellitools Classroom Exchange and played a yes/no comprehension game.
• Working on 1:1 correspondence, counting and greater than/less than using Power Point Presentations based on the counting candy canes presentation available from Jefferson County Schools. We do this on "the big screen" as well, and even without a SMART board it is very, very fun. One of my student inparticular is VERY motivated to point to things on the "big screen" and his accuracy increases by merely using it.
  
• Playing "Christmas Squares" another power point from Jefferson County Schools with customized holiday questions to continue our work on yes/no.

For Christmas I would like either administrative privileges (or at least an administrator to install a few things) on the computer connected to the LCD projector or a way to make Boardmaker Player run from a flashdrive like Classroom Suite Player can. That way we would have a world of Boardmaker Activities to use on the "big screen" in addition to Classroom Suite Activities.

Adapted Learning Uploads

I just uploaded about a dozen boards, including games, recipes and holiday activities to Adapted Learning. My username is teechkidz if you want to search by person. Membership is free, try it out now.

In case you have missed the announcements Adapted Learning is the new sharing site for Boardmaker, Boardmaker Plus and Boardmaker SDP by Mayer-Johnson.

Adapted Learning Opens Tuesday

Adapted Learning, the new Boardmaker sharing website from Mayer-Johnson comes out of beta testing and into general use Tuesday (but you can sign up now).

As a community of people who support learners with special needs we should be very excited. A lot of time and effort went into this site and the designers really listened to the beta testers to make it everything it could possibly be. Beta testers were encouraged to upload as many boards and activities as possible (I have put up 66 and plan to add more tonight) so there are already lots of boards and activities to download and use. I am pretty excited that one of my board sets, a Now/Next schedule flip book, was chosen as an Editor's Highlight (that link probably won't work unless you are logged into Adapted Learning).

Feel free to use the "friends" feature to add me as a friend once you get online, my user name is teechkidz. I already sent out friend requests to some other bloggers and work colleagues.

P.S. Sorry about any confusion I caused when I originally posted this saying beta ended tomorrow. Opps. I am just very excited.

Adapted Learning

Sorry there is no real blog entry tonight, I have spent the past several hours messing around on the Adapted Learning beta site. Everyone is really in for a treat when it goes live in a few days! Sign up now!

Mayer-Johnson Announces New Sharing Site

Mayer-Johnson, the makers of Boardmaker, Boardmaker Plus and Boardmaker Speaking Dynamically Pro have announced a new user sharing website to open in 30 days, although you can register now (for free) and get announcements about its development. You can also take a Flash video tour of the site (although I cannot get the tour to load).

Mayer-Johnson has been preparing for this site for some time, interviewing the founder and moderator of the Yahoo Boardmaker Group and designing the website since early June. The sharing section of the current Mayer-Johnson website is extremely under utilized and it is hoped that this new site will attract more users and an active community like those at the Intellitools Activity Exchange and Crick's Learning Grids.

I am sure that Mayer-Johnson has already planned out their new site, but here are some suggestions I would have:

• keep the "experts" to a minimum because it can be overwhelming to post boards and activities when you feel others may be judging you
• encourage users to interact with one another, for example the Intellitools Activity Exchange allows users to comment on one anothers uploads but...
• don't have (or use a positive way to have) users rate activities, the Intellitools Activity Exchange has a way to rate posted activties, but hardly anyone uses it, instead they often suggest ways to improve an activity or mention bugs in the comments so they can be fixed, this is much more in the nature of educators
  
• intergrate professional development/software support with exchange area by allowing "experts" to lead a tutorial on an advanced feature with sample boards and activities to really look at how it is done (Yuichi does this really well on the Yahoo Boardmaker List)
• make the the archives or library of uploads searchable by features such as "scanning for switch users", "low vision", "AAC Board Set", "Printables", "Schedules" as well as grade levels (early intervention through adults as well as Life Skills, ESOL, etc) and features such as "auditory scan", "optimized for touch screen", "optimized for interactive whiteboards" - the Intellitools Activity Exchange does this very well, Learning Grids doesn't which is the primary reason my Classroom Suite software gets a lot more use than my Clicker 5 software
• allow the search feature to search "free boards only" if you include boards for purchase in the exchange, nothing is more frusterating than needing a free activity for next weeks lesson and getting links to boards for purchase
• limit advertising, but make sure to announce new products, associations with vendors, etc.
• consider a section to share Dynavox 3100, Series Four and V board sets
• and while doing all of this make sure the site is fast!
  

The most exciting thing about this to me is the possibility of having uploaded boards stay online and available for download indefinately.