WATI Materials - FREE!

OK, part of me is happy that we get INCREDIBLE materials for free, but a bigger part of me is very, very sad.

WATI, the Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative, one of the motherships of Assistive Technology, has lost its grant funding. In the interest of brevity and lower blood pressure, I will not opine further...

The only bright shining light about this situation is that all of the amazing, incredible, outstanding, brilliant materials that WATI has put together over the years are now available to you for free. You heard me correctly, FREE!

Yes, "Assessing Students Needs for Assistive Technology" (4th ed.) is there. So is "How Do You Know It, How Can You Show It?" And so much more!!! You can download these materials as PDF documents by clicking here, or visiting the link below.

http://www.wati.org/?pageLoad=content/supports/free/index.php

A big "thank you" to WATI for their many years of serving students and teachers in Wisconsin and around the country. You will be missed :(

Exploratree - Amazing Graphic Organizer

I love my Twitter network. Just love them. What an amazing group of brilliant minds. One of those brilliant minds is @AngelaMaiers.

Angela shares a plethora of wonderful sites (she is an educational consultant, and you can learn more about her services to schools by clicking here)

Anyhoo... One of the websites that Angela shared yesterday just knocked my socks off. If you have students who benefit from organizing their thoughts visually, you'll want to explore Exploratree.org.uk Registration is free and it offers some absolutely beautiful templates, and the ability to create your own graphic organizers.

Check out Exploratree.org.uk

Balabolka - Free Text-to-Speech App

Hold onto your hats for a very exciting find! (hat tip to my friend Leann Todd from Sedgewick County Area Educational Services Interlocal Cooperative in Goddard, KS by way of a presentation at ATIA 2009)

Balabolka, is a freeware text-to-speech application that runs on Windows platforms from 98 - Vista. It uses the voices that you have installed on your computer (including wonderful non-English voices - perfect for use with non-English text from Wikipedia or that you've copied from Google Translate).

There are a host of other features, too. Variable font size, magnifier, pronunciation exception, start, stop, and pause. It will read DOC, RTF, PDF, FB2 and HTML files, and you can alter the font color, background color, and skin of the app.

Now for my favorite features: You can install it as a desktop app or run it off of a portable USB drive. No installation on the host computer is needed! AND, if that weren't enough? It will also convert text into WMA, OGG, MP3, and WAV files.

Am I gushing? I feel like I'm gushing...

There is so much more that this app can do - check it out for yourself!

Click here or the link below to download Balabolka!

http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Math Activities from Interactivate

Need math activities to help you get a jump on things to supplement your curriculum for the year?

Check out Interactivate. It offers students and teachers different interactive tools, activities, and lessons.

Click here or the link above to visit Interactivate.

Hat tip: QIAT listserv

Zoho Writer

For those of you who love all things Web 2.0, check out Zoho Writer. What a cool tool!

Not only is this an incredible online word processor, but also database, presentation application, meeting application, chat app, and much more!

I'm just exploring all this site has to offer - what a great way for kids to collaborate online!