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Resources

Websites and Wikis

Tech Ease 4 All

Screenshot of Tech Ease Website.My latest project at the Florida Center for Instructional Technology is Tech Ease 4 All. Funded by a USF Technology Fee grant, this site provides tutorials on assistive technology topics to help  faculty provide accommodations to students with disabilities. In developing the content for this stie, I have taken special care to follow universal design for learning principles. Thus, each tutorial is presented in a variety of formats to meet different learning styles and disabilities, including: closed captioned videos available in two different sizes, large print PDFs that are tagged for screen reader access, and accessible HTML.

Wikispaces Mobile Learning Community

Screenshot of Moible Learning 4 Special Needs wiki.I maintain this wiki as a repository of information related to accessibility and mobile devices such as the iPad. The wiki includes video tutorials, ebooks, case studies, app lists and more. More than 10,000 people have visited in the one year since I created this wiki, and more than 300 have become members. All of the resources are free.

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Screencasts and Video Tutorials

These screencast collections are hosted on USF on iTunes U. Clicking on any of these links will open iTunes and take you to the USF page on iTunes U. If you do not have iTunes installed, you can download it for free from the Apple website.

For my screencasts on IOS accessibility, I have created a channel on YouTube. These tutorials also show some techniques for developing more accessible materials such as ePub ebooks that can be opened in iBooks.

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eBooks

I have written three ePub ebooks focusing on accessibility.  The first one focused on the accessibility features of all Apple mobile devices, ranging from the iPad to the iPod shuffle.  That ebook is organized according to different needs (vision, hearing, organization, etc.) and each section includes some practice activities to help the reader become more comfortable with accessibility features.The ebook  is available for download on my Mobile Learning 4 Special Needs wiki.

I also wrote an ebook on ePub accessibility for a presentation at ISTE 2011, as well as another ebook on closed captioning on the Mac. Both ebooks are available in the ePub format supported by the iBooks app on IOS devices:

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Presentations

I am really passionate about helping people create better presentations. I believe that well-designed presentations can not only improve communication, but also make information more accessible to everyone. Below is an example of a slide deck I used for a recent workshop on presentation design:

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App Lists

I have started using Appolicious to keep some lists of my favorite apps. Since I specialize in accessibility and the use of IOS devices in special education, my Appolicious lists also focus on apps for students with special needs.

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Gear

I use a lot of Apple products (no surprise there, I’m an Apple Distinguished Educator):

  • 13 inch Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and 750 GB hard drive. I got this laptop in mid-2010. It has a 2.4Ghz Intel Core-2 Duo processor, rather than one of the new i5 ones. I’ve updated to Mac OS X Lion and for the most part I’m happy with how it runs on this laptop. This is my main laptop that I take with me everywhere (presentations, school, etc.). In addition to Mac OS X Lion, it is also running the following software: iLife ’11, iWork ’11, Final Cut Pro X, Aperture 3, Lightroom 4, Screenflow (for screen recording), MovieCaptioner (for closed captioning), Photoshop CS 5.5 and Acrobat X Pro. I occasionally run Windows 7 under Fusion 3 when I have to do training or tutorials that require me to do so. The major upgrades to this laptop since I first bought it have been adding more memory (up from 4GB to 8GB) and upgrading the hard drive from 250GB to 750GB when I started to run out of space. I purchased the memory online from Crucial.com and the hard drive from OWC.
  • Dell 19 inch widescreen monitor: yes, I know it’s not an Apple product, but it was a lot cheaper than a Cinema display and it does a really cool trick in that I can flip it on its side so that I have plenty of space for reading long PDFs for school without the need to do a lot of scrolling.
  • 13 inch White Macbook, 3GB RAM, 250GB hard drive. This is my old laptop that I still use at home as my desktop replacement. The battery is dead, but since I keep it plugged in all the time it’s not a big deal. I got this computer in 2007, so it’s getting a little old, but it runs the recent OS X Lion upgrade just fine for surfing the web and other light tasks. Since I am now used to the trackpad gestures on my other laptop, I had to purchase an Apple Magic Trackpad that I used with this laptop.
  • iPad 2: I got this device through my job and use it mostly for demos during presentations. I am using a red Gripcase to protect it (Disclosure: I was provided this case for testing).
  • 4th Generation iPod touch, 8GB. I am currently using this iPod touch as my backup recorder during research interviews. I use the Blue FiRe app as my recording app. I also play a few games on this device.
  • iPod Classic, 80GB: holds most of my music collection. I don’t use this as much anymore because I like cloud services like Spotify and Pandora so much.
  • Wacom Graphire tablet: I thought I would use this gadget more, but I generally don’t do much to my photos when I import them into Aperture or Lightroom and I don’t use Photoshop too much these days.
  • Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad: the Bluetooth keyboard makes VoiceOver easier to use on the iPad (mostly entering text, everything else is pretty easy to use without the keyboard). The Trackpad is something I bought to use with  my white Macbook so that it has multi-touch support in Lion.
  • Logitech RF Remote: I can’t present from my laptop without this little gadget. It uses radio frequency so that you don’t need a line of sight with the laptop when presenting. It also includes a red laser pointer if I ever have to highlight something on the screen for my audience.
  • Western Digital 1 TB MyBook hard drive: this was the Time Machine hard drive I used until recently to keep weekly backups. It has since run out of space and I keep it stored away in a drawer as an archive.
  • Seagate 2TB Go Flex hard drive: this is a new hard drive I purchased for Time Machine backups.
  • Seagate 2 Go hard drives: I have a couple of these I carry with me for large files. The nice thing about these is that you don’t have to carry a bulky power brick, as they get power from the USB port.
  • Apple TV: Love this device for listening to podcasts and Internet radio, along with the occasional movie rental. I also use it for presentations since it can mirror what is displayed on an iPad 2 or iPhone 4s.
  • Apple Airport Extreme: provides wireless coverage that never goes down. Very happy with this wireless router.
  • HP OfficeJet 4100 all in one printer: for the occasional print job.
  • iPevo Point2View: I don’t use this much anymore, but this USB camera came in handy in the past when I had to do iPad demos and mirroring was not yet available. I’m sure I can find an educational use for it (use it for macro shots of leaves and other small objects?).
And my photography gear:
  • Nikon D3100: I love this camera. It’s small and light, and it takes great pictures at 14 megapixels. It also does video at 1080p (the sound is not so great, but I’m using a Zoom H-1 recorder for audio to make up for it.).
  • Nikor 18-55 and 55-200 DX lenses with VR: these are great lenses that did not break the bank. The 18-55 was included as the kit lens with the D3100 and the 55-200 I purchased for less than $200. I am actually not as happy with the 55-200. It does not have enough zoom for me when I want to take pictures of birds and other wildlife, and it feels slow to me as well.
  • Nikor 35mm f 1.8 DX lens: I love the low light performance of this lens, and the depth of field is great too. Right now this is my favorite lens and I’m using it for everything from portraits to video (when I do use the DSLR that is).
  • Fuji S2 Pro: This was my first DSLR. It takes great pictures, but it is really heavy and bulky. It does have a couple of nice features, such as the ability to use AA batteries and the fact that you can load it up with two memory cards (even if they are Compact Flash).
  • Nikon 70-300 lens: this lens does not have auto-focus when mounted on the D3100, but I sometimes take it with me for the extra zoom (with the crop factor it is equivalent to 450mm at the long end).
  • Kodak Zi8: a very portable Flip-style camera I use for taking quick videos. I dont’ use it as much now that I have the D3100, but it’s a good backup. It also takes decent 5MP stills outdoors.
  • Canon A530: point and shoot camera capable of doing 5MP. I keep this one for my daughter to use.
  • Nikon wired remote for D3100: for those long exposures.
  • Manfrotto light-weight tripod and ball head: this is not the sturdiest of tripods, but it was only $90 and as a bonus I got a nice bag that I now use for my laptop.
  • iPhone 4S: this is the favorite piece of technology I own. It has become my camera of choice because it is always with me and I also use it to stay up to date with technology through Twitter, RSS and more. I got the 16GB and now regret it because I do take a lot of pictures and also hoard apps so I’m always running out of space. My favorite photography apps for the iPhone are Camera+, Instagram and the new iPhoto app from Apple.
  • Olloclip: this is a neat little gadget that adds three different lenses to my iPhone (macro, wide angle and fish-eye). I have become addicted to this lens for adding something different to my iPhoneography.

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