Tuesday 21 April 2015

Choose It Maker 3- Make New Activity Guide

On this page, you will find a video in which I demonstrate the menu items that are available when you create a new activity in Choose It Maker 3.

Below the video, you will find a full transcript of the video.




Start of Transcript

Hello and welcome to this video.
In this video I am going to show you how to create a new activity via your Choose It Maker 3 account.
Specifically, I am going to be highlighting the tools and menu options that are available to make these activities.
Just so you know, for this video I am using a laptop running Windows 8.1 and the Google Chrome browser.
So, let's crack on then.
Select make new activity from the middle of the screen at the bottom.
Add a name and a description of activity.
Then choose which folder to place it in or create a new folder for it. Then press OK.
We are now at the stage where we can start to create the activity.
Important! To save time, I think that it is always best to have a rough plan of what the activity looks like by drawing it out on paper first.
Select new page.
This page is much the same as a PowerPoint slide.
Let's take a closer look at all the tools we have.
The first menu is called page layout and it has options to; add box, remove box, duplicate box, box color, box outline, background colour, select all, undo and delete.
The second menu is called Pictures and it has options to; get pictures from the media library, or from the computer, the Internet or webcam. You can also remove the picture, select all, undo and delete.
The next menu is the text menu. On here our options are; add text, remove text, grow text, shrink text, colour, swap, select all, undo, delete.
Our fourth menu is sound prompts. Here our options are; computer, microphone, remove sound, select all, undo and delete.
The edit menu allows us to; flip side, flip up, paint our own picture, select all, undo and delete.
Finish is the final menu item. This menu enables us to; close the page, preview the page, add reward sound, remove reward sound, select all, finished page.
And there you do. That finishes my look at the tools and menu options that are available when you want to create a new activity on Choose It Maker 3. 

End of transcript

Choose it Maker 3- Logging On for the First Time



On this page, you will find a video in which I demonstrate logging onto Choose It Maker 3 for the first time. Below the video, you will find a full transcript of the video.



Start of Video Trabscript

"Hello everyone and welcome to this video.


In this video I want to show you all the features of Choose It Maker 3. I will log on and describe exactly what you get for your money- what it looks like and how it works. 


So lets go. I will put my username and password in and then I am going to launch Choose It Maker 3. 


As you log on, you see all of your folders (which over time will have all your activities in.)


Now you can see that those folders are pretty standard in the way that they look. But by selecting "Manage Folder" these folders can be made to look different and the good thing about security here is that you will be prompted to put your password in again by using different colours or even photos or pictures to make them stand out. And you can of course, re name them.


Let us take a look at a sample activity. Odd One Out.


There is audio with this activity. Looking at the top of the page, it is 8 pages long. It tells us how long we have been playing, what our score is and how to exit it.


It demonstrates how we can combine sounds (voice) with pictures.


When we exit every activity, basic statistics are given about the activity we played.


And from there we can exit the activity, save the statistics of this activity ( which can be printed or emailed) or we can continue playing.


Any activity that you create can be downloaded and used on an iPad or Android Tablet. I will look into how this is done as part of my next video, in which I will be creating an activity in Choose It Maker 3.


The settings menu allows us to set up how we want any activities that we create to be accessed. Access Method allows us to choose between using the mouse, touchscreen or eyegaze to control the activity.


The next option is switch delay. How long do we want the switch held down for.


Rewards allows us to choose between having sounds and animations and for how long.


Colours allows us to change the colours of different items on screen and mouse cursor let's us change the size of the on screen cursor."

End of video transcript.

Thanks for watching and listening. Please let me know your thoughts. 

Monday 20 April 2015

Choose It Maker 3 (A Brief Introduction) Full Transcript


On this page you will find a full transcript of a video that I created about Choose It Maker 3.

You can watch and listen to the video at https://youtu.be/EVb7qmZ5Vi0

A full transcript for this video can be found below.

Start of Transcript

"Hello everyone and welcome to this video. 

In this video I am going to discussing the features and benefits of Inclusive Technology's app, "Choose It Maker 3" which is part of the Help Kidz Learn website.

Choose it Maker 3 is a set of on-line tools that you can use to create personalised learning materials that can downloaded and used on PCs, Macs, iPads and Android Tablets. There is a free app to download on the App Store (for iPads) and Play Store (for Android.)

Subscriptions start at £49 per year for an individual.

As it is based on-line, there is no software to download and so access is almost immediate. 

This means that you can create activities from any PC or Mac as long as it is connected to the Internet. 

The materials that you create can be used with touch screens, eye gaze, switches and the mouse and keyboard.

Photos, symbols, text and sounds can be turned into cause and effect activities, question and answer activities, games, quizzes and lots more! This is software designed for children and adults who learn best when things are personal to themselves. 

And so, as well as adding your own photos and sounds you have access to a library of over 30, 000 symbols.

Each activity that you create will automatically record the learner's progression on the activity and these results can be shared. 

In my next video, I will provide a tour of Choose It Maker 3- what it looks like, how easy it is to use as well as looking at a sample activity.

And in my third video in this sequence, I will demonstrate all the features that can be used to create a new activity"

End of transcript.

Full Transcript to Spreeder Video on YouTube

Please find below a full transcript for a video I have recorded on our YouTube channel.

"Hello, everyone and welcome to this video.

In this video I want to demonstrate Spreeder that is a website and an app for your tablet and phone that allows a user to read text faster.
What do I mean by this? For the majority of time that we sit in front of a screen, we access text in large chunks such as looking at a Word document or reading a webpage.
The premise of Spreeder and websites and apps like it are that it takes the average person far longer to read an article or blog post presented as a whole page of text, rather than the same article  displayed on screen in bite size chunks.
By copying and pasting these articles, documents or blog posts into Spreeder, they are then split up into chunks, which are much smaller sections of text. These chunks are then displayed on screen in turn until the article, document or blog post is finished. 
Enough of the abstract description- let's see this app in action.
What I am doing is copying and pasting the transcript of this video into Spreeder so that you can see it in action. The chunk size in the following demonstration is 1- there will be 1 word on the screen at a time. 
Impressive stuff, huh?
Now, let us customise what you have just seen so that we can see just how flexible this app is. I am going to do this with the same text- the transcription from this video. 
At the bottom of the window is a settings menu and so let's click on it.
There are 7 sorts of customisation that can be made.
1. Chunk Size- How many words do you want to appear on the screen at a time? It can range from 1-10.
2. Words per minute. You can decide how quickly your words appear on the screen.
3. Window Size. This is the size of the "screen" that you words appear on.
4. Font Size. From small to large but it depends on the size of the window that you have selected in the option above!
5. Font Colour. What colour do you want your words to be?
6. Background Colour. What background do you want?
7. Alignment. What position in the window do you want your words to be; left, centred, right?
Also note at the bottom of the screen that there are handy keyboard shortcuts that can be used. 
n- new
p- play/ pause
r- restart
+/- increase/ decrease speed
Right/ Left Arrow
s- settings
So how does this help a person with a visual impairment?
By limiting the amount of text on screen at any one time.
Customising the size of text 
Customising font colour and background.
Using the shortcut keys to move through text at an individual rate"

The video can be watched and listened to at https://youtu.be/8PQ7nKpa2ns.

Thanks for watching.