Seedlings Show #71 on 2009-10-08

Join us as we discuss accessibility, Universal Design for Learning, Assistive Technology, and how the publishing industry, especially in the education sector needs to step to the plate and provide mulitple sources of accessibility for a variety of readers and disabilities.

Joy Zabala and Cynthia Curry take us on the journey of AIM and helping us understand how we can provide for our students. The recommendations in the chat will prove helpful.  Check out aim.cast.org  and the aim.mainecite.org

Here are the links in Delicious:

Here is the wonderful chat:

 19:12:59  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Just getting set up. Be back
 19:19:19  bobsprankle  yo :)
 19:20:26  cheryloakes~Seedlings  hi, going to get tea, I'll bring you in the chat with Joy, no sound yet.
 19:23:31  cheryloakes~Seedlings  getting ready
 19:23:41  cheryloakes~Seedlings  hi alice, cynthia, bob,
 19:23:50  Cynthia Curry  hello
 19:23:54  Alice Barr  Hi there
 19:23:58  EricSailers  Hello
 19:24:06  Cynthia Curry  Hi Eric
 19:24:10  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hi Eric
 19:24:17  EricSailers  Hi everyone
 19:25:36  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hi Pattip, welcome
 19:25:55  bobsprankle  hi all!
 19:26:29  Alice Barr  Hi Anne and Patti
 19:26:35  Alice Barr  Hi Eric
 19:26:49  Alice Barr  Cynthia are in Skype?
 19:26:59  AnneFraser  Hi
 19:28:22  AnneFraser  Are you edtech a or b
 19:28:26  cheryloakes~Seedlings  ok, we are nearly
 19:29:37  cheryloakes~Seedlings  OMG, Jeff so good to see you
 19:29:38  AnneFraser  are you a or b
 19:30:00  Alice Barr  A
 19:30:02  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Glad to surface again.  Great topic tonight
 19:30:12  Alice Barr  Not broadcasting quite yet
 19:31:11  EricSailers  I agree Jeff. AT and UDL are close to my heart.
 19:31:36  AnneFraser  am on pc used to be mac what icon should I hit for A
 19:32:01  Alice Barr  On the upper right hand corner under ed Tech A
 19:32:11  Alice Barr  It says Stream Status
 19:32:37  AnneFraser  there are 3 choices
 19:32:39  Alice Barr  Then you have to choose iTunes, RealPlayer or Windows media
 19:32:55  Alice Barr  For the PC you probably need to pick the third one
 19:33:50  Jeff from Ann Arbor  gotta switch browsers see you soon
 19:34:02  bobsprankle  good luck jeff!
 19:35:13  bobsprankle  "everything that is digital is not accessible"
 19:35:14  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hello All
 19:35:37  AnneFraser  Thanks for your help
 19:37:32  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I have been seeing some significant progress during the past few years.
 19:37:45  cheryloakes~Seedlings  How so Jeff?
 19:37:53  stevesoko  I was amazed this week how hard it was to download books for a student from a service that is audiobooks for blind and dyslexic. The key piece of info was burried  deep in a FAQ list. For Blind and Dyslexic folks?!?
 19:38:06  Pattip  @bob good point, there are plenty of digital materials that are not accessible to people with different disabilities (visual, print, etc.)
 19:38:14  Alice Barr  Hey Steve! Nice to see you
 19:38:22  cheryloakes~Seedlings  thanks steve
 19:38:46  bobsprankle  <that was joy's quote... just to be clear, pattip>
 19:38:54  stevesoko  Too some publishers accessible/digital = PDF
 19:39:03  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I have only been getting discs from FRFB&D so far but will be taking delivering of 20 victor streams with flash and digital downloads.
 19:39:15  PeggyG  Hi everyone! Sorry I'm late!!
 19:39:22  bobsprankle  hi peggy!
 19:39:24  stevesoko  Close!
 19:39:33  Alice Barr  @steve so true, we are always having issues with .pdfs and text to speech
 19:39:37  EricSailers  Steve, if you're talking about Bookshare, I also think that it's not easy to downloadbooks.  I had to call to get support when I learned to do it.
 19:39:40  cheryloakes~Seedlings  hi peggy, we saved a spot for you
 19:39:50  Pattip  @bob my son is vacuuming behind me, so I'm having a hard time hearing :)
 19:39:58  PeggyG  :-) Thanks!!!
 19:40:00  cheryloakes~Seedlings  right Eric, we are tackling it tomorrow for 20 of our students
 19:40:01  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Bookshare is definately not Mac friendly.
 19:40:14  cheryloakes~Seedlings  that is what we have Jeff
 19:40:45  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Bookshare says it can be done but I haven't been able to make it work.
 19:40:49  cheryloakes~Seedlings  http://www.cast.org/about/staff/jzabala.html
 19:41:10  bobsprankle  http://www.bookshare.org/
 19:41:17  EricSailers  I've only downloaded Bookshare books on my PC.  I haven't tried my Mac yet.
 19:41:37  cheryloakes~Seedlings  http://aim.mainecite.org/
 19:41:50  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Jeff please add your site
 19:41:54  stevesoko  Thanks for link we are banging heads a bit.
 19:42:27  Alice Barr  Hi Leanne
 19:42:28  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hi Leeanne_HK, welcome back
 19:44:04  Leeanne_HK  Good morning - a balmy 25¬∞C here in Hong Kong
 19:44:25  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Michigan's AT center www.cenmi.org/mits/home.apx
 19:44:34  cheryloakes~Seedlings  thanks Jeff!
 19:44:37  EricSailers  I'm unable to paste a link in the message window. Any help?
 19:44:47  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I just had to write
 19:44:55  cheryloakes~Seedlings  you need to drag the link to the window where youput text
 19:45:17  bobsprankle  tags!
 19:45:18  PeggyG  @Eric-click and drag the url into a floating chat window
 19:45:27  stevesoko  Anybody playing with textbooks or material in PDF and moving it to Kindle2?
 19:45:44  Jeff from Ann Arbor  http://bookbuilder.cast.org heading toward a dream machine.
 19:45:44  bobsprankle  http://www.daisy.org/
 19:46:16  Cynthia Curry  http://www.daisy.org/
 19:46:21  EricSailers  Got it.  I was wonder if anybody here will be attending http://www.closingthegap.com/conference/ next week? For those who don't know, it's an assistive technology conference in MN.
 19:46:36  cheryloakes~Seedlings  oh, it sounds great, not me though
 19:47:35  Pattip  wish I could do CTG. Not allowed out of state!
 19:48:04  Jeff from Ann Arbor  My SpEd Director got on me to come up with something to help our middle school math students.  Reading Lexile scores showed that 20% of our students had a reading penalty in their math scores.  I worked to get permission from the copyright holder and publisher to build my own audio books and daisy format books.
 19:48:08  PeggyG  I'm really interested in the option @stevesoko--moving PDF to Kindle--have you tried it?
 19:48:41  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Jeff, that sounds great, more info
 19:49:03  cheryloakes~Seedlings  hi kim
 19:49:06  EricSailers  I'll be there at CTG. I thought I'd see if anybody else would be. 
 19:49:10  kcaise  hi cheryl
 19:49:18  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I am contracting with a local theater group to come up with differing voices by race and gender.
 19:49:29  cheryloakes~Seedlings  oh what a great project
 19:50:41  EricSailers  BTW, is there any kind of format to edtechtalk live? I haven't ever attended a session before.  Can we just talk about anything?
 19:50:47  stevesoko  @PeggyG - I have not tried but I have heard that it did not do well with computer manual books, but the person had not tried simple word processed material turned into PDF. Need a spare $500
 19:50:51  Jeff from Ann Arbor  These dream machines are great but I have to give incredible credit to Joy for her SETT process.  It drives a data driven process that helps make the case for the tools and materials our kids need.
 19:50:51  EricSailers  related to AT and UDL, of course
 19:51:39  Pattip  Totally agree with Joy's point. As adults we have the flexibility to choose the methods that meet or needs at any point in time. Kids in school don't have that choice
 19:51:44  PeggyG  just read some instructions about converting PDF for Kindle--sounds interesting but may not work on my Mac. http://www.novapdf.com/kb/send-pdf-to-kindle-213.html
 19:51:48  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hi Eric, this chat room is for this particular show and topic. However anyone who takes the webcast academy class they can have their own show and topic
 19:52:10  bobsprankle  right on!
 19:52:17  Jeff from Ann Arbor  My math publisher is giving our district permission to hand out the audio books to all of our students who request it.
 19:52:29  cheryloakes~Seedlings  nice Jeff
 19:52:55  Jeff from Ann Arbor  BTW Joy mentioned I was head of Michigan's A
 19:52:57  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Im
 19:53:03  PeggyG  these are such exciting alternatives we're hearing about!!
 19:53:04  Leeanne_HK  @Jeff - nice I wish our publishers would do that. Do they do this because of legistation or are they just being nice?
 19:53:17  EricSailers  Ok @cheryloakes. I wasn't sure if Cynthia and Joy were going to present.  Or if we just chatted with them.
 19:53:24  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Jeff Deitrich in the head.  I am Jeff Flynn an AT consultant from Ann Arbor.
 19:53:38  Pattip  One of my son's math textbooks is available totally online this year, Nice for those who forget their book, but also nice for accessibility reasons
 19:53:43  cheryloakes~Seedlings  if you listen to A you can hear them are you hearing hte broadcast/
 19:53:52  stevesoko  RFBD was not difficult (actually very helpful on phone) but was my first experience and I was amazed that it was so complex and that teh DRM was so tight.
 19:54:13  Leeanne_HK  Kids don't have to be special needs to need content in different formats
 19:54:22  Jeff from Ann Arbor  When I confronted them with the reading scores that show their book was so hard for so many they relented and gave us permission to build the audio/daisy books.
 19:54:26  PeggyG  excellent point Leeanne!!!
 19:54:27  cheryloakes~Seedlings  got it Jeff Flynn
 19:54:41  stevesoko  Yeah Jeff!
 19:54:45  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Actually they were quite open to it.  But won't let us share anything.
 19:54:59  Leeanne_HK  @Jeff - how did you get the reading scores for their textbook?
 19:55:23  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Hi Matt M
 19:55:35  matt montagne  hey cheryl
 19:55:47  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Not sure.  Our reading consultant came up with lexile scores of each of the 12 workbooks.  Every ms student was tested for reading.
 19:55:48  Alice Barr  Hi Matt
 19:56:08  matt montagne  hey there alice
 19:56:58  Leeanne_HK  @Jeff - thanks for that - I'm working with my special needs coord this year on an audio project - would be interesting to see what the lexile scores are for our textbooks
 19:57:18  Jeff from Ann Arbor  worth asking leeanne
 19:58:15  EricSailers  Got the audio now
 19:58:30  cheryloakes~Seedlings  eric I hope it makes more sense now.:-)
 19:58:39  EricSailers  Definitely
 19:58:44  stevesoko  We are actually looking across 4 different services w/ 4 different ways to get books downloaded in audio formats.
 19:59:03  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Evening TimH
 19:59:12  timH  hello there
 19:59:12  Alice Barr  Hey Tim
 19:59:18  Jeff from Ann Arbor  @Stevesoko like to know the four by four you are talking about.
 19:59:19  timH  how are you guys tonight?
 19:59:27  Alice Barr  Great!
 20:00:13  matt montagne  It is real simple...information wants to be free
 20:00:31  Alice Barr  Great point Matt
 20:00:35  matt montagne  test
 20:00:45  Alice Barr  Publishers need to work on that
 20:01:19  matt montagne  information wants to be free
 20:01:37  timH  on Matt's point. Free is a must read: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905/r...
 20:01:44  Jeff from Ann Arbor  We found that with 753 students needing adult support of some kind out of 3800 middle schools student we found it will be cheaper to build our own.
 20:01:54  matt montagne  I've stayed away from the Kindle because of the proprietary nature...I feel if I buy an ebook that I should be able to read it on any device I own
 20:02:01  PeggyG  there are more and more books on Amazon now available for Kindle--it really helps to click on that link to tell the publisher you want it :-)
 20:02:05  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Audio/daisy book
 20:02:21  matt montagne  Openness will ultimately prevail
 20:02:22  Alice Barr  Hi Coleete
 20:02:33  Alice Barr  ColetteC Hi
 20:02:38  cheryloakes~Seedlings  http://udlspotlight.wordpress.com/category/lisa-parisi-co-teaching/
 20:02:46  PeggyG  you can listen to all audible.com audio books on your kindle :-)
 20:02:48  stevesoko  RFBD, Bookshare, a service from our local library, and now Audible for Kids. As the tech guy I am being called in to help make them work as classroom staff are trying and failing. Even as a old spec ed teacher it seems like we are throwing spaghetti against the wall to find stuff.
 20:02:49  cheryloakes~Seedlings  here is a blog about what 2 teachers are doing in their classroosm
 20:02:55  ColetteC  Hi Alice :)
 20:03:12  matt montagne  @tim...I read Anderson's free this summer...great read
 20:03:18  Alice Barr  I agree steve have been struggling all year
 20:03:26  Pattip  @ matt, I agree that I'd like it in multiple formats, but it's great to have it on my ipod so I do buy Kindle books
 20:03:56  matt montagne  absolutely a great point about what is right for learners with special needs is often right for all learning
 20:04:03  PeggyG  Kindle books can also be added to your ipod/iphone-I love that feature
 20:04:12  matt montagne  @Pattip...one proprietary format for another there ;-)
 20:04:17  Leeanne_HK  Do we need to be using the copyrighted material? Making our own is much easier now.
 20:04:50  Leeanne_HK  We are getting our parents to read novels for us to put onto ipods for students to take home for english literature
 20:05:02  matt montagne  @Leeanne...now we're talking! Why not make it part of our job to create our own free texts.
 20:05:13  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Right on Leeanne, I think that may be where much good work will be done.
 20:05:30  matt montagne  a major problem with the kindle in school is that page numbers don't translate to the book page numbers...
 20:05:35  Leeanne_HK  I want a tech to do this for my school -- get rid of the photocopy lady and get me an eBOok lady
 20:05:48  bobsprankle  yes, matt, and not really good for notes either
 20:05:56  cheryloakes~Seedlings  great idea Leeanne
 20:06:06  matt montagne  we have a student that has all of her english books on kindle, but also bought all of the print books because she needed to be able to follow the in class discussions
 20:06:25  PeggyG  that's true Matt-page numbering! but it is nice to make the print as big as we need it to be able to read it :-)
 20:06:43  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Pearson is the publisher who is giving us permission to build our audio math books.
 20:07:00  matt montagne  @Peggy...the UDL/accessibility gains are awesome with eReaders...no doubt
 20:07:08  bobsprankle  that's great, jeff
 20:07:12  Leeanne_HK  there's a piece of software I saw at BETT09 - it connects to scanner and once you scan in text it will read the text to students
 20:07:37  matt montagne  we have one Kindle in our library and we just ordered a sony reader today...we'd like to do a side by side comparison (and have students give feedback as well)
 20:07:41  PeggyG  amazing Leeanne! is it computer voice and is it easy to understand?
 20:07:49  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Mac's Preview software reads pdf'
 20:07:52  Jeff from Ann Arbor  aloud
 20:08:05  PeggyG  I'd be interested in that comparison Matt!! very interesting!
 20:08:06  Alice Barr  IS the BETT09 like Kurzweil?
 20:08:11  Jeff from Ann Arbor  hearing everyone great
 20:08:11  Leeanne_HK  You can then save the file as an mp3. voice isn't too bad - you can choose accent and speed of reading
 20:08:36  Leeanne_HK  BETT is big London tech in education show - more like ISTE NECC
 20:08:41  PeggyG  the computer voices are definitely improving!! Macs seem to do it pretty seamlessly!
 20:09:22  Alice Barr  @Leanne we use Kurzweil to do exactly that bit is so much $$$
 20:10:51  Leeanne_HK  can't remember name and price -- wasn't too big as it was doable for my school. BETT09 had a big focus on Special Needs this year so there were several UK software developers offering programmes that read back text to kids.
 20:10:57  PeggyG  I'm looking forward to the time when all of our textbooks are available online through open source :-)
 20:12:04  PeggyG  sounds like the same kind of awakening that is happening to print newspapers! they are having to change to electronic newspapers
 20:12:12  Alice Barr  And music?
 20:12:22  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Jeff do you have an opensource education online movement in MI?
 20:12:39  cheryloakes~Seedlings  right peggy
 20:12:41  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I am not aware of it.
 20:13:22  Alice Barr  Hello C4
 20:13:24  Cynthia Curry  Hi C4
 20:13:26  cheryloakes~Seedlings  hello C4
 20:13:27  Jeff from Ann Arbor  In fact in the past few years, things have tougher with not being able to share our home made resources.
 20:13:44  PeggyG  good point Jeff!
 20:13:58  PeggyG  copyright can be so challenging!!
 20:14:22  cheryloakes~Seedlings                                     hi csitterly
 20:14:40  cheryloakes~Seedlings  citterley:-)
 20:14:43  csitterley  greetings everyone
 20:14:49  Alice Barr  hi csitterley
 20:15:03  csitterley  Hey Alice and Cheryl
 20:15:27  ColetteC  New teacher who grew up digital may still not know how to integrate tech into curriculum to support learning
 20:15:41  cheryloakes~Seedlings  yes coletteC, they will be first to say
 20:15:47  Alice Barr  I agree Collette
 20:16:09  Pattip  the teachers in training in the assistive technology course I teach may be good at "technology" (Facebook, texting, web surfing) but don't have knowledge of using tech for educational purposes
 20:16:15  csitterley  Absolutely agree-was tech director and worked with many new teachers who were resistent to using tech for learning
 20:16:46  Jeff from Ann Arbor  One challenge facing me in the coming weeks is to create multimedia/multliteracy projects that can be standardized for
 20:16:48  csitterley  They were happy with Facebook etc for themselves, but not thinking about the pedagogy
 20:16:57  Jeff from Ann Arbor  tier one RIT interventions.
 20:17:01  Leeanne_HK  we need to make these things easier for the teachers -- a well trained tech is worth their weight in gold
 20:17:08  cheryloakes~Seedlings  oh, Jeff, that will hard
 20:17:32  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I want to fight the tyrany of text.
 20:17:36  Leeanne_HK  would love to stay and chat - but students call. Have a great Friday everyone
 20:17:49  bobsprankle  goodnight leeanne!
 20:17:51  Alice Barr  Bye Leanne Thanks for coming
 20:17:55  PeggyG  thanks so much Leanne for sharing your resources and ideas!!
 20:19:46  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Today I scanned a 420 page History book for 6th grade.
 20:19:48  PeggyG  @Jeff-good luck with that project for tier one interventions! That would be awesome!!
 20:20:06  Alice Barr  JEff How did you do a 420 book in one day???
 20:20:12  csitterley  One of the best learning opportunities we had was when we put an ipod touch in the hands of a student who uses it to submit assignments because she can't manage handwriting-teachers saw that and were amazed and learn from her
 20:20:15  Jeff from Ann Arbor  When the book is in pdf, then we can do a lot with it.
 20:20:33  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I have a document feeding scanner that handles 25 pages double sided.
 20:20:48  Alice Barr  WOW!
 20:21:05  PeggyG  very exciting Jeff!! was that an expensive scanner?
 20:21:22  Jeff from Ann Arbor  @csitterly - glad to hear it .  Myh district just got 800 ipod touches.
 20:21:32  stevesoko  Jeff - model and or link on teh scanner if you have it please?
 20:21:44  csitterley  Wow Jeff-1-1 with students?
 20:21:52  Cynthia Curry  Accessibility of Kindle http://bit.ly/3qdNtw
 20:22:00  Jeff from Ann Arbor  One can get a doc feeding scanner for a few hundred dollars.  Fujitsu seems to be the leader.
 20:22:17  cheryloakes~Seedlings  http://aim.mainecite.org/  http://www.cast.org/about/staff/jzabala.html
 20:22:22  Alice Barr  Hi erin
 20:22:23  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Our guests URL
 20:22:25  EricSailers  Cynthia mentioned the idea of creating an alternative text tag in a document. How can that be accomplished?
 20:22:31  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Yes we are setting up projects with 1 to 1 ipod touches.
 20:22:35  cheryloakes~Seedlings  www.aim.cast.org
 20:23:07  Cynthia Curry  @EricSailers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_attribute
 20:23:23  Jeff from Ann Arbor  I just set up a young lady with an ipod touch with progect2go software costing $600 with speakers replaceing a $10K dynavox machine.
 20:23:41  EricSailers  Thanks Cynthia
 20:23:47  cheryloakes~Seedlings  aim.mainecite.org
 20:24:17  stevesoko  Eric - it is usually a feature in the web publisher. I use Dreamweaver and when I insert a picture on a web page it part of that process.
 20:24:24  PeggyG  maybe a conversion site to convert docs to pdf?? :-)
 20:24:26  cheryloakes~Seedlings  http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/product?id=4310
 20:24:30  EricSailers  Thanks Steve
 20:24:40  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Great show!!!
 20:25:10  Alice Barr  http://engagingparentsinschool.edublogs.org/
 20:26:03  Alice Barr  http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/09/12/how-to-get-a-discount-when-...
 20:26:21  Alice Barr  wheelof.com/lunch
 20:27:21  csitterley  Bob-don't see the link in the chat
 20:27:56  Pattip  glad to be here live. I usually listen to the podcast, but wanted to hear Joy live. Thanks!
 20:28:04  EricSailers  I want to share http://www.uquery.com/ for an iPod touch app search engine. I think it's more accessible than the iTunes store.
 20:28:09  Jeff from Ann Arbor  God Bless the Elfs.  Wishing you a fast night.
 20:28:35  csitterley  I missed the first half so I will definitely listen in, as usual- thanks for the work you all do
 20:28:39  bobsprankle  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/greenguide/infinite-photograph
 20:28:46  csitterley  Thanks Bob
 20:29:11  PeggyG  What a fabulous show--AGAIN!! :-) you really packed so much valuable information into this session!! Thank you!!
 20:29:47  bauwarter  Thanks so much.  I will listen to the podcast on my way to school tomorrow morning.
 20:29:54  cheryloakes~Seedlings  Thanks to you all, goodnight
 20:29:59  stevesoko  Thanks guys -great show again!
 20:30:00  kcaise  good night all!
 20:30:24  Cynthia Curry  night
 20:30:38  EricSailers  Thanks everyone!
 20:30:44  Pattip  Thanks!
 20:30:57  PeggyG  Thanks Eric for sharing your resources!
 20:30:58  Jeff from Ann Arbor  Good night
 20:31:00  csitterley  Night
 20:31:19  bobsprankle  goodnight all!!!