The Family Center on Technology and Disability
Assistive Technology Works
National Center on Universal Design for Learning
The website for the National Center on Universal Design for Learning offers users thousands of resources relating to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), including: basic information about UDL and the UDL checkpoints; resources to help schools implement Universal Design for Learning; research articles about the UDL framework; and tools to help teachers create UDL curriculum for their classroom. Most of the resources on the site are free and users have ...
Published: 2010 by CAST , Reviewed: 6 days ago
ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink is a collaboration between the International Reading Association (IRA), National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and Verizon Foundation's Thinkfinity educational resources program. ReadWriteThink is designed to offer teachers free classroom resources for grades K-12 and free professional development resources. The ReadWriteThink website includes a professional library, online professional development courses and seminars, lesson plans, classroom activities, online interactive tools for students and after school resources for parents.
Published: 2010 by IRA/NCTE , Reviewed: 6 days ago
Shiny Learning
Shiny Learning is a vendor in the United Kingdom who specializes in educational software with an emphasis on design for children with special needs. All of their software can be accessed using a variety of different input devices as well as conventional keyboard and mouse. Skill areas covered include visual-perception, literacy, math, and other early learning skills. The games are fun, visually appealing and target appropriate goals. There are some ...
Published: 2010 by Helen Melhuish , Reviewed: 6 days ago
WatchKnow
WatchKnow is a non-profit community started by Dr. Larry Sanger, co-creator of Wikipedia. It is a collection of more than 18,000 videos and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. They are rated and sorted into a giant directory, making them simple to find. Virtually every school subject can be reinforced with videos from this site. WatchKnow is founded on the belief that if you watch something, you ...
Published: 2010 by WatchKnow , Reviewed: August 11, 2010
One More Story
One More Story is an online library of children's books - classics and contemporary - that can be viewed, listened to or read by users with internet access. There will be a total of 108 books offered on the site in one of two modes: In "Hear and See a Book" mode, words are highlighted as the stories are read to the child. In the "I Can Read It" mode, ...
Published: 2010 by One More Story , Reviewed: 4 days ago
Into the Book
Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. It focuses on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing (draw pictures to go with the story), Inferring, Summarizing (Main Idea), Evaluating and Synthesizing through activities in the Student Section. The activities are fun, although they take a while to load. Teachers should try the activities in order to make connections and be able ...
Published: 2010 by Into the Book , Reviewed: 5 days ago
Webspiration
MyWebspiration.com is a visual learning and collaboration service that helps users create, develop, organize, edit, and review their written projects online with a graphic organizer and outlining tools combined with automatic document backup. The service works with other popular collaboration features in Microsoft Word and Google Docs, and the Inspiration 9 visual learning software. Individual Webspiration accounts are free. Webspiration Classroom Service offers subscription access to Webspiration and additional account ...
Published: 2010 by Inspiration Software , Reviewed: August 11, 2010
Mighty Book
Mighty Book offers families and teachers a subscription service to access e-books and reading resources. The site includes games, hundreds of Flash-animated e-books, and dozens of stories, songs and activities for kids ages 2-10. New items are available every month. The "Parent & Teacher" section of the site offers lesson plans, activities, and stories written by kids. Subscriptions vary from $24.95/year for a household to $999.95/year for a large school ...
Published: 2010 by Mighty Book , Reviewed: 4 days ago
Kindergarten.com
Kindergarten.com is a website designed to support children with developmental disorders that affect language and socialization, children who are frequently non-verbal. Using psychological research, this site works to build motivation to make the connection between the value of a word and the word itself. The tools are designed to be used with the iPhone or iTouch and apps that are purchased and downloaded from iTunes. They are organized by category: ...
Published: 2010 by Kindergarten.com , Reviewed: 6 days ago
Visual Dictionary Online
Launched in 2007, The Visual Dictionary Online is a free, indexed, audio-enhanced, topic-correlated extension of the hugely successful Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary. Fifteen themes help narrow general searches, and the index search offers precise results among the reported thousands of English language definitions and related images. The “Blog This” feature lets non-profit groups or individuals post images and terms from the Visual Dictionary Online for non-commercial use, provided images and terms ...
Published: 2010 by Merriam-Webster , Reviewed: May 21, 2010
Research Project Calculator
From INFOhio, the Research Project Calculator is a free online tool that helps users plan, develop, and finalize written and multimedia projects. Users are not required to enter an email, name, or other information to generate a project time line, something which likely increases the appeal of this calculator as a planning tool. Users choose a type of project from three options (essay or research paper, slide presentation, or video), ...
Published: 2010 by INFOhio , Reviewed: 6 days ago
Abledbody.com
Abledbody.com offers news and information focused on assistive technologies and advocacy for people with disabilities. Edited by Susan Robitaille, an advocate and journalist, the site includes disability-related news (politics, business, culture, etc.) and pinpoints information and resources that encompass Ablebody's platform to help people with disabilities "become more abled in the workplace and lifespace." Abledbody.com also includes guest columns by disability advocates, AT technology news, a blog, and newsletters.
Published: 2010 by Susan Robitaille , Reviewed: March 10, 2010
Professor Garfield Reading Ring
The Professor Garfield Reading Ring is a free online game that encourages reading comprehension using Garfield comic strip characters. The game asks players to put comic strip panels in the correct order, then answer three questions about the comic strip (questions do not always relate to the current panels in the strip). When a player wins a round they can print out a championship buckle.
Published: 2009 by professorgarfield.org , Reviewed: February 24, 2010
Special Ed Justice
Jennifer Laviano writes a monthly newsletter on her blog site. Users can subscribe to the newsletter or go online to read her blogs. She writes about a variety of legal issues related to people with disabilities, especially children and adolescents. Topics have included legal aspects of IEP delivery, Assistive Technology, and Special Education law. There is a list of all categories included, plus links to related topics and a Twitter ...
Published: 2009 by Jennifer Laviano, Attorney at Law , Reviewed: February 24, 2010
Tutpup
Visitors to this Web site can play a variety of educational games. Individuals can sign up, or a teacher can sign up a class and allow students access to games that are chosen for particular skill development. Once signed on, users can play against other online players or against the computer. Players can see how their scores compare to others. This could be very motivating for some students.
Published: 2009 by Mind Candy , Reviewed: March 04, 2010
Learning with Computers
This blog is a community effort by the Learning with Computers Yahoo! Group and focuses on ways to develop English and communication through the use of mainstream computer-based tools. Many of the activities and suggestions listed are so simple and so motivating that viewers will be inspired to use them almost immediately. For example, children may be motivated to produce clear speech if they narrate videos using VoiceThread, or teachers ...
Published: 2009 by Maria Claudia Bellusci , Reviewed: March 04, 2010
SmartyGames
This is a group of games, updated monthly, for early elementary aged children. If a child can move an onscreen pointer by mouse, joystick, touch window, trackball, voice or head pointer, he or she can play these simple games such as dot-to-dots, puzzles, telling time, coloring pictures, and more. Games are in English. The site is free.
Published: 2009 by smartygames.com , Reviewed: March 04, 2010
Alpha-bot
This is an internet based spelling game from Merriam-Webster. Users are given an audio cue by a cute robot, and must spell out the word on the screen, which rewards correct spelling with an audio/visual fireworks display. This is for middle elementary to high school spellers-typical words at the beginner level were ‘airplane’ and ‘elephant’, while at the difficult level, words such as ‘trichinosis’ and ‘silhouette’ were common.
Published: 2009 by Merriam-Webster , Reviewed: March 05, 2010
Clifford Interactive Storybooks
What child could resist Clifford, the Big Red Dog? This site offers several e-books in English and Spanish that children can hear as they click through the sentences. They are able to complete the last sentence on every page from a choice of three words, each of which is accepted and which generates a matching picture and spoken sentence. Instant success! Children will also find three different phonic games to ...
Published: 2009 by Scholastic , Reviewed: March 04, 2010
Lisa's Lingo
This is a blog written by a teacher with a concentration on technology tools, UDL and hands-on learning in her classroom. There are many insights and concrete ideas posted here and both parents and teachers will be refreshed and inspired by the thoughts and applications of ideas they find. Also included on one of the sidebars are links to other blogs with similar focus on technology and education.
Published: 2009 by Lisa Parisi , Reviewed: March 04, 2010