Accessibility Tools Archives

I first “met” Luis Perez while watching him on a Google Hangout session. He was sharing information about the iPad’s accessibility and switch features. I was in awwww….I was inspired…I wanted to know and learn more. I started by learning more about him. I quickly learned that not only was he an accessibility guru, he was an incredible advocate for universal design and accessibility, a presenter, a professor and he is also visually impaired. I began to follow him on Twitter. I wanted to learn from his philosophy, his ideas and the information he shared. I started following him on Instagram and discovered he was also an amazing photographer….yes, photographer! And I could not wait to see him speak when I heard he was presenting at ICE13 where his presentation did not disappoint. His session was full of tips, information and knowledge about Apples accessibility and switch technology. It was during this session that Luis introduced all of us to an incredible young man from Australia named Christopher Hills. Christopher is an Apple Certified Pro Final Cut Pro X, a Level One and an Accessibility Ambassador and he also has cerebral palsy. To say the least these are two people who truly inspire me, challenge my thinking and make think differently.

I knew instantly when I read about and watched Luis’s More Powerful video and then saw Chris’s i Am More Powerful Than You Think video…

… that I was going to take Luis’s #iAmMorePowerfulThanYouThink challenge!

Everyday I am lucky enough to have access to accessible technology in my classroom. This technology is the same technology my students use. It is the very technology that I teach with, use to model tools and strategies for my students with and teach them how to use. It is because of this technology that everyday I am able show my students and that they are learning that they are more powerful than you think! Here is my #iAmMorePowerfulThanYouThink video.

Do you know of someone or are someone who has a “More Powerful” with technology moment? Share it online and then use the hashtag Christopher created #iAmMorePowerfulThanYouThink .

Months ago my students and I threw away our paper calendars, stopped I stopped printing agendas and students tossed their more assignment notebooks. I had found a new way to organize my self, my students and my classroom. It was, to say the least, a new found ~~love,~~ ~~an infatuation~~…a full on love affair with google calendar + google drive. There was one problem with this perfect duo (I know! Say it ain’t so)…you couldn’t upload PDF materials and type or write on them. It wasn’t a deal breaker for this love affair but it certainly left me in search of a way for worksheets and PDF documents to be editable in Google Drive. Once one of my students was completely converted to google drive, using only her google calendar as the this students assignment notebook and linking all documents for those assignments directly to her google calendar it quickly became apparent for her that I needed to find this solution for this student. Having assignments in google drive and also having papers was just becoming too much for this student to manage. It had to be all google calendar + google drive or come up with a new system. Did I say I mention I was just a smidge in love with the google calendar+google drive duo…

“What’s this Mrs. B,” my student asked in a begging to try it please kind of way with an added giggle of untypical teenage egerness and curiosity.

googledrawing

“I don’t know? Click on it,” I smiled encouraging her curiosity. “Lets try it!” I smiled, wondering what it was and what it could do.

It was math class.

For the last two years we had struggled to find away for a student with severe dysgraphia to do math. There’s a lot of writing in math yo!

The student clicked on the red icon and began using it to draw numbers and write problems on it. The student was surprisingly able to write better on the mouse pad of an air mac then with a pencil. The student experimented with adding shapes, then text. Google drawing became a permanent tool in every Math class.

Months later… Continue reading “MAKING WORKSHEETS AND PDFs TYPEABLE USING GOOGLE DRIVE”