Newsweek ran an article on Jan 16, 2009 about some software the asperger/autitic kids were enjoying using. It was designed and marketed for architects, but their kids pick it upa nd ran with it. The application is called “SketchUp.” The Newseek article is:

Kids With Autism Love This Software

This stuff was such a hit that Google (who owns the application) started “Project Spectrum” within its “Google for Educators” to make it more available. At their website you can try it out for free, join a users community, and there is a manual of lesson plans. Plus a couple of videos of projects kids have done. The link to Project Spectrum is:

http://www.google.com/educators/spectrum.html

Here is one of the SketchUp videos:

Okay, so sometimes I need to be “hit with a 2X4″ before I see the connections between things — especially things that are outside my usual scope of activities. Or, as my son would say, “Dad, you need a little 2X4 technology!” (Yes, he used to watch the “Kids next Door” cartoons :-)

One of our student teachers metaphorically hit me with a 2X4 the other day when she was presenting at our end of the year student symposium. She was discussing teaching foreign language vocabulary and conversation skills to high school students. Well, a couple of weeks before a colleague had pointed out a few software applications. I looked at them and thought, “Interesting, but I don’t know what I would use them for..” Now connection hits me, “Oh these would might be handy for people who are teaching languages! We have some pre-service teachers doing that!” (Duh!)

So I will point them out here so I won’t forget them — and for others who make connections faster then me:

italki.com is features include (in their own words):

• “Helping students find native speakers to practice speaking a foreign language
• Giving language learners the ability to communicate online in text, voice, and even video
• Using social solutions to solve problems, such as harnessing the community to answer language questions
• Providing a platform for sharing free open-source language learning materials (download and upload)
• Recommending other resources on the web
• Providing a space for people from around the world to experience and learn about other cultures”

The second is the Mnemosyne Project. It is open source software that “resembles a traditional flash-card program but with an important twist: it uses a sophisticated algorithm to schedule the best time for a card to come up for review.” Apparently, this is based on the work Piotr Wozniak who worked out the “ideal moment” to practice what you have learned. If any of this is interesting you might check out Piotr Wozniak’s own company and web site Super Memory.

As I mentioned, this is outside my own disciplinary boundaries. So if you actually use any of these please leave a comment so I have some idea how well they work. Thanks!

Here is something to put in your calendar for next Fall:

“Meaningful Play 2008 is an interdisciplinary academic conference that explores the potential of games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways. The conference includes thought-provoking keynotes from leaders in academia and industry, peer-reviewed paper presentations, panel sessions (including academic and industry discussions), innovative workshops, roundtable discussions, and exhibitions of games.”

The “Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies” has complied a list of 100 tools that learning professionals use for their “own personal learning/productivity and/or for creating learning for others.” One hundred and fifty-five professionals shared their top ten tools from which this list is compiled. Many of them are tools you may use every day like Firefox or Google. Some may be new to you and worth checking out. Many are free!

Clicking on the application name in the list will open a handy little page that lists comments from the people who selected the tool and may give you ideas about how you might use them. The “Analysis” page makes an interesting comparison between the tools used for workplace learning and those used for formal education and reaches the conclusion that “formal, traditional (Learning 1.0) approaches (i.e. content-based courses, tutorials, etc) are still dominant in the workplace, whilst educators are embracing a much wider range of Web 2.0 tools to create more social, collaborative and informal approaches to learning.“

Maybe for once the schools are ahead of Industry?

I was talking with a group of parents of children with learning differences the other night… you can learn some good stuff when you stop being the “expert” and listen!

People were sharing some of the things they had found that helped their dyslexic and asperger children be successful in school. One is bookshare.org a service that “provides print disabled people in the United States with legal access to over 37,550 books and 150 periodicals that are converted to Braille, large print or digital formats for text to speech audio.” And it is FREE to U.S. schools and qualifying U.S. students of all ages including K-12, post-secondary and adult education. It is another option in addition to the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.

Another service they are using is Spoken Text which takes PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, ,RSS news feeds, emails and web pages, and converts them to speech automatically. This is being used to convert course notes and other classroom materials into speech.