Azu Ike

It has certainly been an exciting year in technology and I'm confident that 2013 will be an even more exciting year for us. Have a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! Sincerely, Brian

It is really exciting to see the innovation that is happening in the iPad space especially in the area of math, which has taken a back seat to apps in the areas of reading and writing. I came across the MyScript Calculator the other day and have been playing around with it on my iPad. MyScript Calculator is free and can be downloaded from the App Stor e. It is really phenomenal-simply open the app and write your mathematical expression with your finger or stylus and it automatically solves it for you. Even with my handwriting I was able to write the square root sign and the number 81 and within seconds it returned the value 9. The handwriting recognition is really fantastic and MyScript should be congratulated for their handwriting recognition engine which has become a standard in the industry. MyScript Calculator can be used to setup very sophisticated computations which would be ideal of high school students. Check it out and you will see that you will be able to put away your stan...

I know I may be a little late to the party- but in any case, I do want to share with you an awesome reading app, Voice Dream Reader for the iPad and iPhone which has a number of unique features which makes it a real stand out. I also want to thank Winston Chen the developer for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to review Voice Dream Reader. I had a great conversation with Winston the other day and we had a chance to talk about Voice Dream  Reader and where he saw it going. Voice Dream Reader has been very well received in the assistive technology arena and offers users a number of wonderful features at a very low dollar entry point.   Voice Dream Reader can be purchased in the app store for $9.99 First and foremost, Voice Dream Reader is an excellent app for reading a whole host of different formatted files which include: PDF, ePub, Text, Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, RTF, and HTML. Voice Dream Reader comes standard with the Acapella Speech Engine ins...

Just today Crick Softwar e released two new apps for the iPad, Clicker Sentences and Clicker Docs. Both apps are are great for supporting writing on the iPad and each one offers a unique set of features to support students in the writing process. Lets start with Clicker Docs, an easy to use writing program for students that need a variety of supports and scaffolding. When you first open up Clicker Doc s you will immediately get a sense that Crick Software spent a great deal of time thinking through  the user interface and the user experience. Clicker Docs is very inviting and aesthetically pleasing to the eye and adds some real innovation in terms of the supports it includes. Clicker Docs adds text to speech as well as word prediction which are just two of the supports which many students with learning disabilities can benefit from. Clicker Docs lets the user adjust the number of words to load into the word prediction tool. Starting out with a base of...

If you are a Livescribe SKY WiFi Smartpen user you will be happy to learn that Livescribe pushed out a firmware update that adds the Sound Stickers app to the mix. So now if you have some Sound Stickers around give it a try and you will see how wonderfully they work. Sound Stickers are a great tool for the classroom and now its even simpler to use. Updating your Livescribe SKY WiFi is extremely simple-you can go to the Inside Cover of your Starter Notebook and tap your pen on the Software Update icon. You will also find that your black ink looks smoother and bolder when it is viewed in the Livescribe Player. Similarly, the audio that is depicted by green ink looks bolder and seems to render much more smoothly. So if you have a chance update your  Livescribe SKY WiFi pen and begin to experience the difference!

All of us are living in a time when technology is moving at a lightning speed, at times far out stripping our capacity to see how we can harness the power of the tools that are set before us. I have been working in the field of special education and assistive technology  for the better part of thirty years and have always felt that technology would be the one factor that would alter the way we instruct and the way we would reach students with special learning needs. To this day, I continue to educate and teach and believe more than ever that assistive technology tied with the right strategies can help students learn and help teachers differentiate their instruction. In many ways, the tools of the trade have gotten more robust, more plentiful and more multi-dimensional which causes us to have to reflect on how they can be best used. It wasn't that long ago that when we bought an application or piece of hardware it did one thing and did it well. You see many of the devices that ...

If you follow my blog then you know that just how important using mind mapping and graphic organizers is to me. I can remember seeing a demo of Inspiration 2.0 for the first time at an educational technology conference some time ago, and when I watched the view change from graphic organizer to outline view with a click of the mouse if was a real epiphany. From time on I was a changed man, and have been using Inspiration ever since, in the work that I do with students with learning disabilities. It is always really exciting for me to work with teachers and watch them as I demonstrate how to use Inspiration in the classroom. As soon as I teach them the basics you could see the lights go on as they are thinking of all the ways they could use it in the classroom. As schools begin to transition to a "post PC" world it was great that late last spring that Inspiration announced the release of  Inspiration Maps for the iPad. Inspiration Maps brings the best of wha...