My dad, my son, and my grandson!

It has been way too long since my last post!  There are many reasons, but the biggest is really something quite wonderful.  I have new lenses in both eyes, and this has restored the fabulous long distance vision of my youth.  I’ve been tempted to say “…it was just cataract surgery”, but that would not be accurate.  It was an example of the many miracles of modern medical science.

There was, however, a price to be paid.  For more than three months–from the time of the surgery in my first eye, until I finally received a new set of prescription progressive glasses–there was constant strain in looking from computer screen, to paper pages, to people and back again.  The weariness never seemed to go away, and it was almost more than I could do to keep pace with the essential responsibilities of my day job.  So, I haven’t been blogging.

For what feels like my first post ever, I’ve decided to reflect just a little about fathers, and especially about my own dad.  This is an ‘edublog’, but I believe it’s imperative never to lose sight of the reality that education is supposed to be about far more than school!  When it comes to learning, families matter on many levels.

We’ll celebrate Father’s Day tomorrow in Canada.  I’m the proud father of two adult children.  Our daughter Anjali made me proud in a fresh way this week, as she flew from Vancouver to London, en route to a three month stint as a volunteer nurse on the ‘Africa Mercy‘, a hospital ship currently docked in Freetown, Sierra Leone.  This coming Tuesday, my son Aaron will be going out of his way to visit my dad, who lives 3000 km away from Aaron’s home here on Vancover Island.  That makes me proud, too.

We don’t choose our parents, but I am blessed to have a truly wonderful father.  My dad was a minister who went to his first church two weeks before my birth.  He has always modeled authenticity and integrity, living through the week what he preached on Sunday.  I have learned much of incalculable value from my dad’s example.

As  a boy, I learned much about our world from his answers to my questions.  On the verge of my own 60th birthday, there are still so many things I know because “that’s what my dad said when I was a boy.”  He was a veritable fountain of knowledge–about history, about how things like electric motors work, about how crops grow, about the reasons for seasons, and about countless other stuff.

Dad was always there for me, and I knew that, whether I wanted him to be there or not.  He never imposed himself on me, but I could always count on him to be there.  He was even there when I attended boarding school a thousand miles from him and our home in Calcutta, as I did for 10 years from the age of 7.  Without fail, dad wrote me a letter every single week that we were apart.  He wrote individual letters to each of his four children!

I could go on for a long time and never say it all.  Suffice it to say that my dad deserves to be honored, and I’m glad Father’s Day has brought this into focus again.  Here’s a video that I put together on the occasion of Dad’s 80th birthday in  2008.  I made the video with exerts from Dad’s own 8mm cinematography between 1952 and 1972–in Southern Ontario, in rural West Bengal, and in the Himalayan foothills.  The focus is sometimes pretty soft, but the film helps to keep the memories bright and warm.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  And thanks for being who you are.  I could never have asked for anything more!

[eType is another option for free word prediction that you may wish to check out. I wrote about it HERE.]

Last month I wrote about MyStudyBar, a suite of literacy tools for the PC. This loads as a floating toolbar so the tools can be available to the user from within any program.  The toolbar can be downloaded and run from a USB flash drive on any computer.  This week, Craig Mill of RSC, has announced the release of Version 2 of MyStudyBar.

In this post, I want to draw attention to the powerful free word prediction application, ‘LetMeType’, that is part of MyStudyBar.  I’ve long been eager to know of effective free word prediction; and this seems to fill the bill.  Word prediction is a tool that I believe ought to be introduced to all learners.  Typically, only individuals with identified learning difficulties are given the opportunity to use it, but there are many others who would find word prediction helpful!

I’ve embedded Craig Mill’s tutorial screencast about ‘LetMeType’ here because I couldn’t possibly do a better job of describing it. I recommend that you view the video in full screen mode.

MyStudyBar is a floating toolbar of free open source applications that can be downloaded and then easily installed on a flash drive for use on any Windows computer. In his introductory video overview, developer Craig  Mill makes the important point that although these applications are intended primarily for learners with “literacy difficulties”, the tools have the potential to support ALL learners.  To this proponent of UDL, Craig’s statement really resonates.

The MyStudyBar toolbar offers applications for mind mapping, screen masking, word prediction, a talking dictionary, text to speech, and voice recognition.  (The voice recognition requires the built-in speech recognition that comes with Windows Vista or Windows 7.)  I’ve embedded Craig Mill’s overview video here.  In follow up posts, I’ll discuss each of the tools on MyStudyBar.

It is worth mentioning, that MyStudyBar does not have to be run from a flash drive.  It can also be installed on any PC and run from the desktop.

For reading online content with Internet Explorer, the best option I’ve found is the free Natural Reader toolbar, which will also read in Microsoft Outlook, OpenOffice, Google Docs, etc.  A huge bonus with Natural Reader is that this software is available for both the PC and Mac. I believe the best text-to-speech option for reading content in Microsoft Word, at least on a PC, is the free and versatile WordTalk toolbar.

Free online text-to-speech options include AudioPal, iSpeech, YaKiToMe, vozMe, and probably more.   Today I want to write about the  downloadable stand alone option that is included as part of the AccessApps suite that can be run on any PC from a pen drive.

DSpeech is free text-to-speech software for the PC, that offers a set of useful features in an intuitive user interface.  DSpeech is similar im many respects to ReadPlease (2003) and Speakonia, which I wrote about here more than three and a half years ago.   Overall, I think DSpeech would be my top pick of the three.  Of course, the only opinion that really counts is that of the user, so please try all three.

With DSpeech, text can either be typed directly into DSpeech, or it can be pasted in from the clipboard.  A plugin is available for opening pdf files in DSpeech. DSpeech creator Dimio’s website indicates that DSpeech is available in 13 languages besides English.

With DSpeech, it’s easy to change the voice, volume, pitch and reading rate while reading.   I was pleased to note that DSpeech automatically used my default text-to-speech voice. A set of keyboard shortcuts has been pre-programmed.  DSpeech will turn text into audio files (MP3, WAV, or OGG).

I didn’t test this feature, but apparently you can combine voices when text includes dialogue between characters.  A basic voice recognition system has also been built into DSpeech, and this enables the user to construct a dialogue in which he or she participates.

Here’s a view of the DSpeech user interface.

]]> http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2010/01/25/d-speech-text-to-speech-on-access-apps/feed/ 2 http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2010/01/21/webanywhere-because-the-web-is-for-everyone/ http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2010/01/21/webanywhere-because-the-web-is-for-everyone/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:19:10 +0000 Paul Hamilton http://paulhami.edublogs.org/?p=1893 Continue reading →]]> “The goal of the WebInsight Project is to learn what impedes access to the web and develop technology to improve access.”  It is some of this technology that I’m writing about today.

WebAnywhere from WebInsight is a web based screen reader that offers  blind people access to the internet from any computer with a sound card.  This is a screen reader that provides access only to the internet, but it means that a blind user does not have to be at his or her own computer in order to go online.  WebAnywhere is open source software, and it is free to use.

As a light-dependent blogger, I’m not really competent to evaluate a screen reader for blind internet users.  So, I’ll embed a video that does a terrific job of presenting WebAnywhere.

Today’s post was prompted by a request earlier this week from one of the learners I support, a gifted  11th grader who is incapable of producing written output with pencil and paper. He asked me if I knew of software that he might use for drawing diagrams.  There are countless learners in classrooms everywhere who can be far more effective on drawing tasks with digital tools, so I’m sharing the application from Access Apps that can be used for drawing diagrams.

Dia is free open source software for Linux and Windows that is intended for drawing diagrams.  The developers say it is “roughly inspired” by Microsoft’s Visio.  I have downloaded and installed the program, but I have neither the time nor the talent to test it extensively.

Dia appears to be a powerful but stratightforward program with an intuitive user interface.  It comes with considerable built in help, including a Quickstart Guide.  The user interface is shown below.  Additional shapes can be downloaded from the Dia website and incorporated into diagrams as required.

SEN Teacher “…provides cost-free teaching & learning resources for students with special needs and learning disabilities.” That’s how this major repository of special ed resources sums itself up. (SEN is the acronym from the UK that stands for Special Education Needs.)

SEN Teacher offers a substantial collection of “printable” downloads. There are links to websites that provide information about a wide range of disabilities. There is also significant list of websites that offer free online resources. Jane especially appreciated finding links to Tinsnips and Ispeek here.

Finally, there are numerous links to freeware download sites. The free software listed here includes programs to help develop basic mouse and other computer skills, programs to practice switch use, programs that support curriculum, and much more. There are even a few programs by SEN Teacher itself (eg. 1-5 Counting, 3D Shape Venn, Buried 3D Shape, Girl Face Matching)

The screenshots below show the free programs listed by SEN Teacher and the helpful way in which these are organized on the site.

Speaking Of Speech is a major online resource for speech/language pathologists and teachers who are “interested in the speech and language development of children”. It is a place where professionals can share ideas, lesson plans, materials, and even IEP goals.

Among other things, the materials exchange houses printable Boardmaker games, communication boards, and social stories that can be downloaded free of charge in pdf format. Some of the resources are helpfully organized by theme and according to school level. Your contributions to this exchange are encouraged, with clearly stated guidelines.

Pat Mervine, the experienced SLP behind Speaking of Speech, has created an invaluable resource that deserves to be well known.

ReadTheWords.com is a free and extremely versatile online text-to-speech service which allows you to enter text with the keyboard, to copy and paste it, or to upload text files in a variety of formats from your computer or from other websites.

Speech is generated quickly, and you then have a choice of 15 high quality voices whose reading rate can be varied easily. You can listen online, download an mp3 file for use offline, or embed your speech file elsewhere online. It was very straightforward to embed the audio player from ReadTheWords.com on a wiki page. Unfortunately, it isn’t so straightforward on edublogs, and I haven’t been able to embed it here on my own blog.

ReadTheWords.com offers text-to-speech in French and Spanish as well as in English.

do2Learn is a website that offers an extensive set of resources designed specifically to support the learning of fundamental skills by individuals with special needs. This site offers products for sale, but it also provides a significant number of helpful teaching and learning resources that can be downloaded free of charge. There are also some free online activities that support learning.

Resources available for download include symbol sets to help learn and communicate about daily living skills, pictures and symbols for creating social stories, visual maps, practice guides for learning to print and write, a variety of step-by-step art activities, as well as sing-along songs and interactive games to help learn basic skills.

Do2Learn provides resources about disabilities for teachers and families. Of special note is the “FASD Toolbox for Teachers”. This is a collection of effective classroom strategies for supporting learners with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder.