Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Color Enhancer

Color Enhancer is a Google Extension for people who are partially color-blind.  This tool can help adjust and improve webpage colors.





Color Enhancer is a customizable color filter applied to webpages to improve color perception.  


Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Flubaroo - for teachers, not students

The ability to use Google Forms to create multiple choice assignments or short answer quizzes and tests is a great tool.  You create the assignment and the results come to you in a Google Sheet.  This is a great way to grade and create graphs to compare data.  Imagine if grading this was even faster and easier. 

Flubaroo


Flubaroo can quickly grade and analyze performance on multiple choice questions and fill in assignments automatically!  

Within a minute you'll be able to: 
  • Get scores for each student
  • Identify students in need of extra help. 
  • View the average score and a histogram of scores. 
  • Quickly identify questions which a majority of the students missed. 
  • Share scores with students via email or Google Drive
  • Add optional notes to the class and/or to each student. 
  • Assign your own score to open-ended questions. 
  • Send stickers and badges when you share grades. 

If you are already using Google Forms to create assignments you must get Flubaroo to help with your grading!

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Teaching Children from Poverty and Trauma

A few months ago at one of our district PDs, the Special Education staff got to listen to a presentation on Trauma and how it affects students brains.  It was a very eye-opening presentation.  

This month the NEA Today Magazine cover article is Trauma: The Effect on Children and Learning.  

Now, I don't usually read the NEA Today Magazine and truth be told, I did find the information a bit skewed.  That being said, it was a good article and it gave a good introduction and some insight into a much larger issue.  

At the end of the article there is a link that takes you to a Handbook called: Teaching Children from Poverty and Trauma.  It is a resource of information to help students struggling with Trauma.   

I hope you find this information as helpful and informative as I have.  Please use this as a starting point towards a better understanding of this ever increasing concern within our student population.  

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

ATbar

Color overlays can help students with Dyslexia. Sometimes people with light sensitivity can be helped by switching reading items to 'white on black'. Certain individuals need the font size increased to be able to read. Having an article read out-loud can help some students understand it better. All of these concerns can be addressed with one Google Extension.

ATbar

           

The concept behind ATbar is simple, one toolbar to provide all of the features you would usually achieve through the use of different settings or products.

ATbar is an Accessibility toolbar. It has options available to work within most webpages.  It is a simple tool and is available for most popular browsers. View the available options at https://www.atbar.org/download/.



ATbar offers a large number of Voice options.

 

The color overlay options in ATbar have been proven to be the optimal colors to improve readability for people with Dyslexia.