AssistiveTek Launches iPad Summer Institute

One Day iPad Summer Institute

Held in the Warren Middle School

Two (1 Day) Sessions of the Summer Institute will be offered on

  Dates: July 12 or July 13th

Presenters

Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D. & Christine Besko-Maughan, M.S., ATP

Using the iPad to Enhance Learning & Facilitate Communication for Students with Special Needs

The iPad is a revolutionary technology that is changing the way educators present information in the 21^st century classroom.  The multi-sensory design of the iPad appeals to all learning styles and is an ideal tool for students with special needs.  In this workshop, educators will learn about a variety of applications (apps) that address academic skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, and science.  Communication apps designed for individuals with limited functional communication abilities will also be explored.  The presenters will highlight Proloquo2Go and iCommunicate, as well as other apps designed to enhance language development.  Strategies for implementation and best practices will be discussed.  Attendees are encouraged to bring an iPad for a hands-on learning experience that will transform their teaching strategies.

Seating is limited so register early!                                                    Registration Fee: $99

For more information email: brian@assistivetek.com or call 908-852-3460

School Purchase Orders are Accepted made payable to AssistiveTek, LLC,
174 Stephensburg Road, Port Murray, NJ 07865

Conference Location: Warren Middle School, 100 Old Stirling Road, Warren, NJ 07059




Online Registration  Form

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Posted in: Apple iPad,brian friedlander,brian s. friedlander,christine besko maughan,iPad,workshop

Wireless Printing Takes to New Heights with the HP Photosmart D110

Today I went out to Staples during their Presidents' Sale and purchased a HP PhotoSmart D110 printer for $59.98- not bad considering that when I went to buy replacement ink cartridges for a much older HP PhotoSmart printer that I had, the new printer cost less! In any case, I decided to buy the new HP printer to  accomplish a couple of goals; one to be able to print from my laptop wirelessly, two, be able to print from my iPad, and three to be able to print from the web. When I purchased the HP PhotoSmart D110 printer, I accomplished all of my goals in one fell swoop. Not bad for a rather inexpensive printer! Within minutes I had configured the printer to find my router and I was up and running on my laptop computer. I then took out my iPad and opened Pages and printed out my first document which looked great from my new printer.

The last piece of the puzzle was printing from the web. I went up to the HP web site to register my printer and approved a list of users with their emails who can print to my printer.  You see each HP ePrinter has a unique email address that you are given, which lets you print to, over the web. You can print just about any type of document by sending it to your unique email address which kicks in the process. There is even a web site where you can monitor your printer and assign new users who can print to your printer. Having the new HP PhotoSmart D110 printer is liberating knowing that I can print from just about anywhere. If  you are in the market for a new printer I would certainly recommend the new line of HP printers that support ePrinting. With ePrinting you can use your Mac, PC, iPad and print over the web from any device-now that's a printing solution!

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Posted in: Apple iPad,eprinting,hp,HP Photosmart D110,iPad,staples

Context Summarizer on the iPad

I have been working with Context Discovery's web based summarization tool (Summarizer) for the past couple of months and today I had a chance to test it out on my iPad. Context Discovery has transformed their summarization tool and now it works in the cloud summarizing websites by simply entering in a URL. Once the URL is processed- Summarizer will go out to the website and identify the most important key words and pull out the most important content that is ready for you to view. On the left you can get a glimpse of what it looks like on the iPad. I was very excited to see that Context Summarizer worked flawlessly on the iPad and processed the request very quickly. Once the contents was processed I proceeded to click on the MindManger Export and within seconds iThoughtsHD, my resident mind mapping application on my iPad opened the contents and displayed the mind map. It is nice to know that I can now use Context Summarizer and iThoughtsHD on my iPad to summarize the contents of web sites.

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Posted in: Apple iPad,context discovery,context summarizer,iPad,iThoughtsHD

iThoughtsHD- Mind Mapping for the iPad

Two weeks ago I went out and purchased an Apple iPad to see what all the excitement was about. I have to say it is a very seductive device and one that is hard to put down. I am enamored by its potential as a tool for some of the students that I work with who have writing, reading and organizational difficulties. The iPad is very fast at doing almost anything you want it to do (except play Flash media) and the battery life is really incredible.

Over the last couple of weeks I have investigated and bought many productivity apps to get an idea of how the iPad could be used as complimentary device to all of the other computers in my household. As someone who loves to mind map I quickly came across iThoughtsHD which I had heard so much about. iThoughtsHD is a full featured mind mapping application that runs on the iPad. It did take me a little getting used to the fact that I didn't have a mouse and had to touch the screen to create new nodes but once I got the hang of it-it was easy to use. I quickly created my first mind map in iThoughtsHD and was able to move my ideas around the map and relink them. Adding icons and formatting the nodes was quite intuitive and fast. There are some nice features to allow you to align your ideas to keep the formatting looking clean and your nodes equidistant. I have also used iThoughtsHD with my Bluetooth keyboard which made it even faster for me to create a mind map. While the interface is rather spartan there is a lot of functionality under the hood and you will find getting around iThoughtsHD to be quick and efficient. Within your mind map you can easily attach links as well as insert task completion icons to keep track of tasks as they are completed.

One of my favorite features is being able to send my iThoughtsHD mind maps to the cloud or transfer them to my computer using the WiFi Transfer option. Using the Box.net service it is rather straight forward to save your mind maps to the cloud that you can then access from any computer connected to the internet. iThoughtsHD supports a wide range of exporting features which makes it ideal if you intend to open your mind map with another mind mapping desktop application. iThoughtsHD supports exporting to : MindManager, MindView, NovaMind, iMindmap, xMind, and Freemind. iThoughtsHD also supports the use Task Completion icon and Start and Due dates for tasks on your mind map.

All in all, iThoughtsHD is a formidable mind mapping application for the iPad and works well with your desktop mind mapping applications. If you purchased an iPad and are looking for a top of the line mind mapping app look no further and download iThoughtsHD.

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Posted in: Apple,Apple iPad,Freemind,iPad,iThoughts,iThoughtsHD,Matchware,mind mapping,MindManager,MindView 3,XMIND