Spanish Voki

Spanish Voki

Assistive Technology Success Stories

1. Taba is an intelligent third grader who would love to be able to write. However, his learning disability prevents him from doing so. He often became frusterated in school because he couldn't write down his thoughts like all of the other kids. Finally, his school purchased a speech-to-text software program that allowed Taba to talk into the computer. The words came up onto the screen and he learned to format, edit, and save them. Taba loved writing and was happy he could be like the other kids.
2. Sarah is a teenager with Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva which turns her muscle into bone. This limits her mobility, but because of assistive technology, does not limit her education. She took a lot of online classes for highschool, and college. Some assistive technology she used was wooden dowels to type, a mini trackball mouse, a mini keyboard, and word prediction software. When all these are set up, she is independent on the computer and can do whatever she likes.
3. Jack is a twelve year old with dyslexia. In other words, he struggles a lot with reading and writing. However, after being inroduced to audio books, reading became much easier. While he reads, the words are also played into his ears. Now, Jack enjoys reading as much as any kid would.

Evaluating Websites

1. I found that the first website entitled "Google Gulp" was not a reliable site. It shows no way to contact the creater. Also, when I clicked on the links at the page,it said that the page was not found. There is no clear author either. The second site, "Aluminum Foil Deflecter Beanie",has a clear author and all of the links take you to where they say they'll take you. Plus, it's easy with relevant information.
3. The best website to use to research about Mankato, Minnesota would be the second site. There is relevant information and a clear author. Plus, the site has been updated recently. The first site was totally off. There was a picture of a beach in Minnesota so I knew that site wasn't reliable. The Third site was Wikipedia. Anyone can post on wikipedia so I knew that one was unreliable too. Therefore, number two was the best choice.
Our discussion the past two days has taught me some new things as well as review some things I already know. I knew how to search things using Boolean Operators. However, I didn't know how to tell if a site was reliable or not. The past two days have been helpful.

Critique on Citation Machines

My favorite citation machine to use is EasyBib. It's very easy to figure out how to work things. I also like how you can look up certain books and websites and it finds information for your citation. Citation Machine and SourceAid were not as easy to use. The process got a little confusing at times because there was no place to "search" for books and websites. Overall, I think that Citation Machines are very useful and we are lucky to be able to use them today in the modern world.

Timeline