Using iPads to Increase Access for Students with Low Vision

This video is posted online with the following chapter markers:
Chapter 1. Introduction - 
Chapter 2. Apps in the Classroom - 
Chapter 3. Note Taking Apps - 
Chapter 4. Interactive Whiteboard - 
Chapter 5. File Sharing - 
Chapter 6. Reading Books - 
Chapter 7. Magnification Apps - 
Chapter 8. Calculator - 
Chapter 9. Helpful Resources - 

Using iPads to Increase Access for Students with Low Vision Transcript

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Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Outreach Programs presents, Using iPads to Increase Access for Students with Low Vision; March 10, 2015. Presented by Sharon Nichols and Chrissy Cowan for the Outreach Programs.

Chapter 1. Introduction

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Kate: And so without further ado, they have a lot to share with you, I'm going to turn the program over to Chrissy and Sharon.
Chrissy: Hi. I'm so glad that you tuned in for this because this is a topic that's really near and dear to my heart.
I've been working with students with low vision for -- for many, many years, 30 plus years and have seen the evolution of a lot of different tools for students, starting with magnifiers and binoculars back in the day.
So I have seen or have watched the iPad come about and I think it's a game changer for individuals with low vision, and I hope today you'll feel comfortable with starting with it.
What makes this presentation I think a little bit different, I've been going to a lot of iPad presentations for the past couple of years at conferences and such and I think I get -- personally get bogged down with presentations that just give you app after app after app and because now there's so many of them and so what I hope that what Sharon and I have done today sort of narrows this down a little bit and approaches it from a little bit different standpoint, which would be to look at the tasks that students with low vision need to do in a classroom setting.
And then approach the apps from that perspective.

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So let's start with what kids need to do to be able to do in classrooms and then what parts of the iPad and what apps and sp -- in particular will help them.
Also we're assuming that you have some knowledge of an iPad.
We're not going to go into the accessibility options.
We do have a slide at the end that shows you where to find those. There's many, many fine things now online and YouTube and walk‑throughs on accessibility option for the iPad.
Which as you probably know it can talk to you, it can read, it can enlarge things, et cetera, when you access those accessibility options. 

Chapter 2. Apps in the Classroom 

Okay. So Let's think about the typical classroom tasks that a student needs to complete visually in a classroom.
And it helps me, just like I structure my functional vision evaluation and distance and near tasks, it helps me to think in terms of access for distance and near.
So for exam -- And I have examples here. This is not an exhaustive list but the distance tasks that I'm thinking of is they need to be able to read an interactive board or Smartboard is one of the models.
They need to read white and chalkboard.
Those are two different kinds of targets.
And they have different lighting characteristics that make them different to read.
They need to read information projected onto a screen.
So for example it the teacher is running a PowerPoint off of her computer and she's running it through an LCD projector, it's going to a screen and screen itself has different lighting qualities that make it easier for some and harder for some, depending on their etiology.
They need to read information posted on the walls -- on the classroom walls. Think of a first grade, second grade, third grade classroom where a lot of learning prompts are put up on the walls like the alphabet, the number line and here are your verbs and, you know, the jobs for the day, a lot of teachers take advantages of their wall space to post information.
And the students sitting at their desks have the opportunity to read that.
They even can use it when they're taking a test.
And then following a lecture or a demonstration sometimes in lecture halls so where the spaces are more than 20 feet.
So those are some classic distance tasks that a student with low vision needs to complete in a classroom. The near tasks are to read teacher generated assignments.
So, those are assignments that the teacher creates on her computer or has in a file somewhere and is handing out.
Worksheets would be something, too, that you would have to write on.
I think they're -- they're very close worksheets can be done by a manufactured, like any kind of program that goes with the social studies book or something like that and they tend to be very busy, visual, lot of information packed on one page.
And so there's really no adjusting that print whereas for a teacher generated assignment, they can maybe double space or they can enlarge the print.
They need to be able to printout and proof their own work.
They need to write essays.
They need to read a computer monitor.
The internet, Word documents, E‑mails, et cetera and they need to be able to take notes.
So again, that's not an exhaustive list but it is a listing of the kinds of tasks a student with low vision needs to do to compete in a regular classroom. 

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Okay, so what are the typical tools a student with low vision uses?
These are tools that I've seen develop over my years of teaching.
The hand‑held and stand magnifiers. Now, hand‑held is something like Sherlock Holmes used. It's where you're holding a magnifier in your hand and you have to hold to focus where a stand magnifier is the classic dome.
You see those with younger children.
And so the approximate cost of a magnifier is anywhere from 25 dollars to 75 dollars.
These are not the electronic magnifiers here.
These -- these are just the hand‑held or stand magnifiers. Then there are telescopes also called monoculars.
And those also are hand‑held or -- they're held in your hand.
So I just took the price of a Walters telescope, the classic one that people get is the 4-X, it's about two inches long and that's 125 dollars. And, then there's video magnifiers. We used to call those C-C-T-Vs. We don't call them that anymore.
And those -- there are two different styles.
One is hand‑held.
I think Ruby is a real popular one that people are buying but that is just a brand.
And that's 650 dollars.
six hundred...and fifty...dollars.
And then there's the desktop video magnifier and that's around 2,000 dollars. They can run up -- between two and three thousand dollars.
So those are the big ones that sit on your desk.
And then there is screen enlargement software, that's going to work on a computer. That's 300 to 500 dollars typically and a popular brand there is Zoom Techs. Then some kids are using their phone.
They are taking pictures of the board and enlarging it on a small screen, a classic cell phone is going to be anywhere from $99 to $600.
Mine just cost a little over $600.
I got a new one.
And you know, now there's a new deal where you can't buy it out right apparently.
And then there's large print books which cost 50‑cents per page if you order those through A-P-H.
And then there's audio.
And so for audio access, most schools have a Learning Ally membership but if you get that as an individual, it is 119 dollars a year. 
So, please, understand that I'm not saying that we need to throw all these devices out.
They all serve their own purpose.
And so what I am going to be advocating and I -- I'm always advocating is that every individual with low vision has to have many, many tools in their tool kit because they're going to be using them for different purposes and I think the well adjusted adult and student knows when they need to shift gears and use a different tool for a different job.

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So why should you consider putting an I-pad in that tool kit?
So, let's look at the possible functions that an I-pad can fulfill.
It can enlarge a printed image.
You just zoom and -- pinch and zoom is what it's called. You can enlarge print on a website.
You can get to it read to you, spoken text.
You can change contrast and background.
There are some kids that they really don't need enlargement but their contrast is very‑they're very particular about their contrast and they need either very clear contrast or they need white on black or they need color.
And you can monkey with that in different apps and on the I-pad. It is portable.
So think in terms of orientation and mobility, taking it with you, taking it from class to class, it's extremely portable.
If you have it in a good case, OtterBox or something, a really good case, it becomes a lot more durable too.
It can function as a video magnifier.
You can complete and turn in class work and we're going to be talking about that.
You can take and store notes into folders and then you can read books, either visually or auditorally. So those are some possible functions for near.
For distance, the I-pad can sync with an interactive white board.
You can upload a teacher PowerPoint when the teacher is doing a presentation off of a PowerPoint, you can upload that onto your I-pad. You can even watch on your I-pad as the teacher is completing something on her computer.
So you don't even need the look at a screen.
You can photograph things and store and enlarge things on the walls and then you can -- and then on chalk and white board.
So those are the distant kinds of things. And Sharon's going to get into the how you do all of this.
And so what is the cost for this device that is able to do so many things for you?

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The iPad costs about 500 dollars and then the -- that is for -- I looked up the price of the standard size iPad. There's a-- there's a smaller I-pad, a mini iPad, you know, I think before you purchase one, you want to look at what the screen size that would be most appropriate for the student, given their -- their vision. But, you know, I had a most heartbreaking thing happen. We had a student come in for short term programs and she was in about the fourth grade.
Very low vision.
And she was sneaking her phone out to take pictures of things and -- and enlarge them on a -- on a small phone screen. The typical iPhone size screen of the iPhone four.
And she knew that if she took this device out, the phone out in school, it could be confiscated because they weren't supposed to have schools in the school.
And, you know, that just -- there's -- That just broke my heart. There's something really wrong when a student is trying to use -- you know, on the right track but feels like she's breaking some rules to be able to access things. So, I would love to see iPads become routinely used. They're easier to see, and of course they do far more functions than the phone.
So Sharon is going to walk us through those tasks, and many of those tasks that I listed at the beginning and she's going to talk with you about some of the apps. We didn't do a whole lot.
We picked out -- or Sharon picked out the ones she thinks work the best for the -- matching the task to the iPad.

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Chapter 3. Note Taking Apps

Sharon: I'm going to go ahead and hit broadcast and say hi for a minute.
Because, we're getting ready to be at a section where you may or may not be able to see me talking.
So, wanted to say hi and also we all use different apps. We all have questions about apps.
Please do interrupt, ask any questions you want to, or say "hey I've done this with it" and let us know, because it's very important that we share in this field. We're all out there trying to do the best we can.
Kate: Okay, and I'm going to just break in here, Sharon, to say, we're going to go to a share view and you may not be able to see the PowerPoint when we do that.
Sharon: Correct.
Kate: However, all of the information is in your handout.
Sharon: And I'm going to be working straight from that handout, because I realize that we kind of want to stay instead of jumping all over the place.
I'll go in exact order that it is in the handout.
So, as you see on your screen, I have an iPad.
I won't go through how many pages I have on this iPad but for today, we're going to stick with the apps that we've talked about.
These are some of the apps I'm going to be using for the iPad and the first section we're going to talk about is taking notes.
How does the student successfully take notes during the classroom and also at home maybe to finish assignments before they maybe have to get them into a different format and actually make them pretty.
Okay.
The first one we're going to talk about is Nebulous Notes.
Now, Nebulous Notes comes in a paid and a free.
You know, they're always called Nebulous Light.
I've used both and don't have any problem with either.
I do use the full one because it allows more of the sharing with Google Drive, Dropbox and all of those.
Now, with Nebulous Notes, the power is in the settings.
What I wanted to show you was -- right now you can see where I have untitled text.
Now, at the top left hand corner is a folder.
And if I push that, what it's showing you, if you look down at the bottom of that column is the cloud because that's where all of these exist. They're in my folders in my Dropbox actually.
Okay, now the other thing I want to show you is that it's not much different than any other note taker except for you know the notes that are built into Apple, they're accessible but most of the notes applications are not going to let you have the pinch and zoom feature.
And in this one, you have the pinch and zoom and you are able to play with it.
A very big deal for our students.
Chrissy: Wow. 
Sharon: But, most notes do not allow you to do that.
The other thing that this notes let's you do is at the top of the right hand corner there is a little wrench which most of us know in the Apple world stands for settings.
Now in this setting within this note pad you can change the brightness.
And it only works for this note taker.
It'll remain whatever your brightness is when you leave this note taker.
You notice I have quite a few fonts to choose from.
Which of course the students like to go through those pretty much every time.
And I also have default and it tells you as soon as you push one of those, that you can also pinch and zoom and the reason it tells you that is probably a better idea to go ahead and just do the pinch and zoom.
The next feature it has is the text.
I can make the text, let's be obnoxious, and make it lime green.
Then the next one is the background and I can make that black.
If you look all the way over to the right on those colors you see little rainbow squares.
Those let you create your own unique colors. So you can create your color for the text and for the background. I am now going to scroll all the way down and you'll see a button that says more options.
This is really powerful for our kids getting assignments because it has a word count.
If you look down in the middle, it says live stats.
It has a word count, character count and line count.
Now, up at the top it has your line spacing which is pretty much the same that we're used to.
But it also has word wrap cut off and some of those other features.
And if you don't know what that is, I would probably leave it alone.
You can set the margins to whatever you want to.
And you just have a lot of creativity.
You can -- as you see down under security, mine says unlink from Dropbox.
So I am going to push the button at the top left of that menu that says settings.
And then I'm going to go ahead and put it back on the one that's not so obnoxious.
That one's kind of nice.

And if I push settings again, then I'm out of that and I'm back in the editor and I'm able to type whatever I want to.
Another thing I want you to notice is we're pretty used to all apps having the page with the arrow, meaning they can share.
This is the other thing I like about in Nebulous Notes, it allows you to share it in E-mail but instead of like the notes, it doesn't just drop it down into the teacher's E‑mail body, it actually gives you some choices.
E‑mail inline means it's just in the teacher's E‑mail.
She can't print it off separately for your document.
You can use it as an attached E‑mail or E‑mail it as a P-D-F.
And, so ‑‑
Kate: Sharon, we have a quick question.
Chrissy: We have a question. Do you have to have consistent internet access? You mentioned saving to the cloud.
Sharon: No, it saves it on the device.
But if you are linked with Dropbox and you are on the internet, it is automatic.
Any changes you make on the document are immediately saved to the Dropbox. Thanks.
Kate: Good question.
Sharon: Yes.
Anybody else out there?
Cause I think I'm going to move on to the next one.
With the Nebulous Notes Light basically what you'd get are the advertisements across the bottom.
And those aren't such a huge deal but for some people they're a little too distracting.
Okay.
Now, if you look at the handouts the next one is Notability. It is probably the one that everybody might've heard of.
And the nice thing about Notability is it let's you type, it let's you write with a stylus, it let's you pull in a P-D-F which is what you see right now and it let's you annotate on that P-D-F, meaning I can put notes into that P-D-F.
I don't have a teacher's worksheet so I can't do that.
But if I choose text at the top and I touch my document, I can make a note.

If I don't -- I never said I was a good typist so we're going to be nice about that.
And I can stretch that note and I can move that note wherever I need to, so right now I am just going to keep it there and as far as annotating, I can take the marker and I can say, "oh, this is very important, this part."
So I'm going to highlight it.
Now, the text part, the strength of that is, if you open a teacher's worksheet that's a P-D-F, you'll be able to fill out that worksheet.
And be able to E‑mail it back to them.
Which as we know is a huge problem.
The other thing I want to point out at the top bar is the fact that it has a microphone there at the right hand middle side and that microphone let's you record what is ever being read to you or spoken to you by the teacher or if you're by yourself you can simply record notes into it.
It's not as powerful as Dragon Dictate in that manner but it is nice to be able to have written notes and recorded notes because if you're a poor typist like me, you might get more from the audio than you do from the written text.
Now, some of the settings basically if you notice, I pushed the little icon up at the top -- top right, the wrench, not many settings there.
And -- But I still at the top left, I have the ability to send it to another destination.
And if you notice this one, this one is pretty powerful.
It's got all of them.

Kate: Okay.
Sharon we've a little lag time and it's not showing on my screen just yet.
Sharon: Oh, sorry.
Once again, it's the icon at the top left.
It's always a square with an arrow and this one says destination. You've got your E‑mail, Dropbox, all of those.
You've also got iTunes which if you think about it is for your audio recordings.
The print works if you have the...the wireless printer that you can connect to.
I've done that. It's awfully fun.
Most of us don't have that in the workplace.
You can share it also with another author, much like you can do a Google doc.
And under E‑mail I'm going to wait for a minute and see if it -- okay. Under E‑mail you can choose the format also.
You can send it as a P-D-F.
You can send it as a plain text document.
And you can send the recording.
And so it's up to you what you choose to send with that.
And once again, I don't want you to forget, I'm not going to sit here and do it because the way my iPad is situated, it would be even worse handwriting than I generally have.
But you can use a stylus with this one much like you can with any of the notes.
So that's one other choice there. Okay.
Chrissy: Before we move on, Sharon, there was a question about Nebulous Notes.
Sharon: Yes?
Chrissy: Can you -- does it work with Google Drive?
Sharon: Yes.
It pretty much works with Evernote.
Let me see if can I go back.
And I know I need to let it refresh.
I'll just get a little further ahead.
Kate: Good.
Sharon: ...You know what? I'm going to step back from that and say that within the menu I see Dropbox and I see Evernote so I am not sure it does it to Google Drive. I would hate to say that and be wrong.
Because I know most of our schools are using Google Drive.
Chrissy: Okay. So it works with Evernote.

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Sharon: Okay. I'm going to move onto one that's pretty new to me.
It is called SlingNote.
And what SlingNote does is -- it's kind of amazing in one way.
It let's you have a full web browser on the left‑hand side, you'll see that I looked up zoo animals and that I'm under images.
I'm not under web page.
But at the very top you'll see that it's a Google search and that the search box says zoo ani so you can assume it's animals.
Now, there's several different things I can do.
I can hold, click -- not -- touch and hold that U-R-L and I can drag it over -- I guess I need to select it and then drag it over.
And I can paste that within my document.
So if you're doing some research on the web, you can sit there and drag and drop every link that you need to to be able to access and go back to it.
Especially if you're in one of those classrooms where you barely managed to get the U-R-L typed out until the teacher's moving on to the next one.
If you don't want the item within your notepad, you click and hold it down and you have many choices and I'm going to choose cut.
And now I'm back to my pad.

Another thing it does, which is amazing, is if you look right under the U-R-L in the black part where I just selected all of that, there is a couple of buttons. One of them says capture.
You can barely see it. So I'm going to push capture.
And it changed that gray bar a little bit.
And what capture does is it let's me then take something and drag it straight over to my document.
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Kate: Very cool.
Sharon: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it let's you also drag links and things but what I really wanted you to know, and -- you notice the U-R-L bar is not there at the top left anymore cause there's a button that says done. So it's assuming that I want to continue to cut and as soon as I'm through cutting, then I can click done and my U-R-L is back up there.

It let's you annotate.
You can pull documents in and you can E‑mail the documents and you can save it as plain text or P-D-F and you have multiple pages.
Down at the bottom right where you had seen the notes, you can see the page numbers and you can flip to the next one much like you would a white pad.
Chrissy: One thing I like about this, too is everything is right there in front of the student.
So there's no shifting of gaze from something on the desk to writing on something on the desk.
So or from the computer screen down to something that they're writing on.
So it's all right there.
Sharon: SlingNote costs money. There's no way around it. It's pretty new to me. So, I'm going to close that one we run SlingNote.

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So let's move past SlingNote to the next one which is called type on P-D-F.
And it's exactly what it says.
It allows to you type on a P-D-F.
It is free.
They have a paid and a free.
And it will let you -- what you do is any document that is in your E‑mail or in Google Docs or in Dropbox, you know how you click and hold and can send them someplace, well, if you hold with your finger, it'll say open with and one of the choices will be type on P-D-F.
It let's you annotate with the pen like the highlighter in a variety of colors.
It let's you anywhere at the top it will let you insert text wherever you choose to in the document.
So once again, this is one that would allow you to fill out worksheets straight on the iPad and save them as P-D-Fs and get them back to the teacher.
It is not as powerful as Notability.
So I just want you to know this is a fairly easy one. Once you get used to bringing them in through the open with, then it's pretty easy and straightforward to use.
Okay.

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Chrissy: Belinda asks a question.
Sharon: Okay
Chrissy: Okay. 
How about taking a photo of a worksheet then writing on it?
Do they need to convert it to a P-D-F first?
Sharon: Depends what app they open it in.
Typically no.
If you open it in Notability or Nebulous Notes it does not need to be a P-D-F.
It will allow you to write on it and with Notability you will actually be able to click and make text boxes.
And fill it out.
It's nice to see Penultimate is kind of one of my favorites.
Mostly because of the organizational factor.
I think that the reason I chose Nebulous Notes and Notability is the pinch and zoom factor.
I do not believe in Penultimate and the other one I used was Notebooks Plus, which I love, love, love, but it does not allow you to do the pinch and zoom and have the enlargement.
Kate: What about SnapType?
Sharon: SnapType is real popular with nearly any A-T person and with occupational therapist mostly because you can take a photo.
It's a paid app.
I'm not sure how much it costs.
But if you are using it, great.
I don't know what formats it deals with.
I would assume pretty much it can take anything in that you take a picture of and allow you to write on it.
Kate: Erin says she believes there is a free version of SnapType.
Sharon: Of SnapType. 
Kate: I think so.
Sharon: Okay. Excellent.
Chrissy: Somebody is using Jot.
Sharon: Jot is simply where it gives you a sheet of paper and you can write on it.
Is that correct?
It's mostly stylus driven.
It's really nice. Because you can take a picture and use the stylus with it.
It's just -- if we are thinking about low vision students, you guys, I am thinking stylus use is not probably going to be a strength because most of our kids with their handwriting it's a problem and that's just a biased view as far as the kids I've worked with needing probably to have more legible writing and using the keyboard.
Claro P-D-F that's an excellent one too. Excellent.

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Chapter 4. Interactive Whiteboard

Okay. On this one we're going to start talking about interactive white boards of which sometimes we hear them called smart boards but actually Smartboard is a company that makes a specific interactive white board.
I think the reason we use that generically if they were the first one to market.
Okay.
With join.me which is a free app and also a free download on either a Macintosh computer or a Windows computer, you can do screen sharing for free.
Now this works in many different ways.
If the teacher or another student simply wants to start a conversation with you and work together and show you what's on their screen so that you can enlarge it without trying -- without the student trying to put their head in the student's way and see the text then you can use it simply like that.
And the way it works is you open it on your Windows or your Mac computer it opens the screen and it has two buttons. One's join and one's start.
If you press start it gives you a different number every time and all you have to do with that number is open the join.me app on the Ma -- on the iPad and type in that number. It's pretty crazy how well it works and you don't get much of that lag time at all.
The other strength of this is, most interactive white boards, all of them run through a computer and it's either a Mac computer or a Windows computer.
So anything that's showing up on the screen, the student will be able to look at, pinch and zoom, move around the screen, use their iPad pretty much as they would expect to with a picture or with a document.
The reason I really like join.me, A- it's free but most of the other ones are designed to let the iPad user also annotate within the Smartboard.
So if you get something like Splash Top, there is the possibility that the student could accidentally mark on the screen and it marks up on the smart -- on the white board.
So just something to think of.
There's quite a few popular ones.
This was just so simple to use that I highly suggest it and that's basically what it does and it's kind of fun because I'll do it with 

Pat Van Geem in the office and he'll connect to my computer with his iPad and we'll do some sharing work without getting up and moving to a separate room.
I guess that's pretty lazy but it's still kind of fun.
And I believe after, that we have another poll because there are quite a few ways to interact with an interactive white board.

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So if you have some, let me know.
And if you want the complete directions for how to do this with the white board, if you go to pathstoliteracy.org I did a blog post and it has pictures and it has directions on exactly how to do this one.
So if you go to pathstoliteracy.org and I believe it's in your resources handouts, and you look up join.me, you will get to the article I wrote and it's really simple.
I tried to make it step by step.
And if you haven't ever used it, you can use it and practice on it before you even introduce it to the student.
Does that help with the need more info for this one?
Kate: You know, if you can share documents back and forth that might be fun to try with a team member 
Sharon: She said yes.
Kate: about a student just to get your own skills up and also maybe communicate a little bit about, you know, what you are doing with that student as well.
Sharon: Right.
Chrissy: Do you have to be in the same room?
Sharon: No.
Chrissy: No.
Sharon: But you have to be on the same internet connection.
Chrissy: Oh. Okay.
Sharon: That's real what it's doing is going through the school's WiFi and if you live in a school district, some of them are out there, I've seen them, that are so strict with the sharing over the internet then you're probably going to get blocked.
Kate: And somebody mentioned just that very issue and says -- said they use Bridgit to cross firewalls.
Sharon: Exactly, and Bridgit is a little bit expensive but a really, really nice product.
And document cameras projected onto a white board, typically document cameras are still coming from the computer so there is a possibility, but there's all these problems with might work, might not work.
I mean, our reflector worked for a little while and now you can't see any of these applications, these apps, so trial and error.
Kate: And I think a lot of the issues for us in here is that we have very weak WiFi signals in this room so we drop off the network very easily.
Sharon: I think so.
Kate: I think it has --has something to do with it.
Sharon: Yeah, cause when we're out in the larger room where you can actually see the WiFi box, we don't have those problems.
Kate: Yeah.
Sharon: Any other questions or suggestions?
If you don't know what Bridgit is, write that word down and google it Bridgit for interactive white boards and I also know that some people are using Apple T-Vs with interactive white boards and then you're just looking it up on the WiFi like a printer. Okay.

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Okay. This one is where you record and edit the audio.
This is a fairly new one to us. Chrissy and I found it the other day.
If you've ever used those pens that do the recording and you have the specialized paper that then you can touch the paper and it takes you right back to that recording, that's what this is.
With SoundNote you basically have a tablet and a microphone.
You push that microphone you start writing and so if the students do not -- or typing and if the students aren't able to keep up with the typing, they can just do short little phrases and then when they're through with that note, I'm not sure how this works but they can go back to whichever phrase they want, touch the screen on their iPad and it reads that portion of the recording to them.
Kate: Very cool.
Sharon: So I don't know about you, but I kind of like this one personally for thinking about when you are working with another team member and you're trying to remember what you were discussing.
Chrissy: Exactly.
Sharon: So it let's you write or type on it.
It records it and then whatever phrase or sentence or page that you were on, if you flip back to that on your iPad, and you touch the phrase or sentence, it joins the recording right where it was.
Kate: That's very cool.
Sharon: Fairly amazing.
Kate: I'm going to jump in here.
We have a question or -- from Twinkle. She says "Do you have any suggestions for changing the background off of the white board?"
Sharon: Yeah.
I tell you and this will work for some kids and people and it won't work for all.
There's an app called dimmer, d-i-m-m-e-r, it's free and it has one purpose.
And that is to dim and brighten the screen.
Instead of having to go into settings, you just put dimmer down on the [ Laughter ] bottom, the bar, and you push it and then you have control over the brightness of your screen so that might work for some students to cut down the glare of that white screen.
Because I totally agree and understand.
And if you have the dimmer app down on the bar, and you are not having to leave the app and go to settings and play with what lightness or brightness you want.
Just keep it down there and when you open it, basically it has a light switch with the -- you pull it down or pull it up.
That's all the app is.
That's probably -- you know, and then in some of the accessibility settings but I haven't noticed too many people, I do know some that will do the inverted colors or will do some of the gray and that might be a choice that they could use.
The problem with that is it does change the color of whatever the teacher might be using for a graph or for, you know, it's going to make a cheetah not look so yellow and black.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Unlike the SoundNote, Notability is just a really, really powerful word processor that let's you annotate, P-D-Fs, write texts, save M-P-3 recordings and save it as P-D-F and text and send it as an E‑mail attachment but it does not have that ability when you record audio and take notes to tie that with the audio recording.
You're -- you're just listening to the full M-P-3 which some kids are really good at.
I mean, these are things that you have to simply try with your student and I hope that you are able to get a little bit of a discounted app price with the Apple Volume Purchasing Program, V-P-P that works through schools and if you don't know about that, ask your app administrators.
It's the Apple V-P-P, Volume Purchase Program.
We use it here in outreach.
Because these get expensive.
Kate: Okay.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Chapter 5. File Sharing

Sharon: Okay.
Now, we are going to talk about our favorite things for sharing documents other than e‑mail.
Because a lot of people are getting away from using E‑mail so much and they're using Google Drive or Dropbox.
As far as Dropbox, I think of it as a box, an actual box that you put documents into or you put videos, short short videos, or you put M-P-3s.
And then you can take those out on any computer or device that you have access to.
Google Drive, on the other hand, does the same thing. You can use it just to drop documents and videos and pictures and M-P-3s, however, you can also within Google Drive use a Google Doc, use a Google Sheets which is like Excel.
And those are the only two I have used.
But a lot of schools are using the Google Drive to sync up with a specific folder and the kids are doing homework together and Google Docs have the ability the leave comments and most of teachers I've talked to are requiring students to leave comments then they are able to work on the document together.
Also another thing on the Google Drive, you can use it with screen readers and with enlarging the screen.
You also have something on the bar up at the top called add-ons. Add-ons are really rich.
One of the menu choices is also translate.
Now obviously we don't want our kids to be doing their Spanish homework and then translating it.
Chrissy: Oh, what a good idea.
Sharon: I know. [ Laughter ] 
Well, and it used to be a bad idea because it was such a bad translation.
But now somehow Google has wa -- worked in phrasing and idioms and it's much better.
I tried one out with a staff member who's Spanish speaking and they were quite surprised as was Pat Van Geem with the Dutch translation.
So, the other thing that Google Docs has is a menu choice of reference and reference let's you open a box to the right and you can do a web search and have it right there on the right‑hand side of your screen and be able to then copy that into the Google Doc.
I know we don't have much notes on that but I am getting ready to post an article on past literacy about this and so if I remember, I will post to it our blog website too.
Kate: That would be great, Sharon [ Laughter ] 
And also, I just want to mention, you know, they also translate again for the teacher, communicating with a Spanish speaking parent if you're not a Spanish speaker, it might help you to do...
Saron: Oh, it does.
Kate: ...to beef up your ability to communicate with your -- your families.
Sharon: I hadn't even thought about that but yes, that's extremely important.
And it does multiple, multiple languages.
So for some of you in the Houston area where you have that international setting, you should look at the different settings that it allows translation into.
Okay.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Chapter 7. Reading Books

Read books both visual and audible.
There is another one that should be at the bottom of this which is called Bard. b-a-r-d.
Not sure what it stands for.
But it's the one that works with National Library Service.
And it has braille books and audio books.
And with the braille books, you can use a braille display to read them with your iPad.
I forgot to put that one on there.
So that is Bard.
And then at the top of this one, it says Read2Go and that is the one that is from Book Share.
And Book Share has -- Typically you have a school license. I highly recommend that as your kids become seniors in high school, you get the families to get them an individual membership, because it will have -- The same way we are getting our textbooks from there, it will also have post secondary textbooks.
It isn't just -- it's one of few that isn't just K through 12.
It's through adult and it's textbooks and some text materials.
Now, with Read2Go and with Learning Ally, and with BARD, if you're listening to a DAISY book, you can control the background, the font, the font size, the font color, the highlight color as it reads, the speed of the reading, you typically have two voice choices, which usually are Heather and Ryan.
And it's -- it's nice that when you're using read to go and you play with all those colors and you mess it up, like me, and you can't find how to read the text, at the very bottom of that menu is a button that says reset to default.
Because trust me, you can mess it up.
Learning Ally is tied to Learning Ally.
Used to be recording for the blind and dyslexic.
They have two types of audio books.
Book Share is all digitized speech.
So it's kind of robot speech.
Which is pretty much what Learning Ally is doing.
They used to have more volunteers and do more of the human speech which sighted teachers and a lot of parents thought "Oh, that's great" and the kids would be going,"Yeah that's great until you have this wonderful guy reading and then the next chapter is grandma and you barely understand what she is saying."
So trust me, you get used to listening to things even if they're not exactly like you would want them to sound.
The other thing about digitized speech is the students can speed up the rate and that is very important for you as a teacher to be working with them on.
Our students should be working on improving their auditory reading rate because it will save them a lot of time and be able to read the same amount of materials.
Because it's harder to listen and take notes.
I think all of us would agree.

DAISY books.
For those of you who don't know what a DAISY book is, imagine a C-D‑ROM with a book on it and the C-D‑ROM with the music has different music tracks, well, a DAISY book has chapters.
It has -- well, sometimes it has units if it's a textbook.
Then it has chapters.
Then it has para -- pages and then it has paragraphs then it has phrases. And typically having a DAISY book allows you to search that way.
And also be able to control. The teacher says "okay, open to page 75," the student be -- should be able to choose a menu choice that says go to page and open it up on page 75.
You can also set multiple book marks within it.
Now, these are specialized through -- are specialized companies. However, iBooks has a lot of those same features.
It doesn't read automatically without voice over unless you know how to do the speak screen under accessibility.
Doesn't do any of the highlighting but it does let you have book marks as does the Kindle book reader and both of those are accessible with large print.
Any of the accessibility features. So for low vision or blind.
Kate: We've got a comment from Diane she says "My favorite read book app for students with C-V-I phase three is voice stream."
She says "it has text size lines, visible scrolling and highlighting in yellow and individual words, it's all adjustable."
Sharon: Diane, I whole heartedly agree with you and not just for that population. 
It is the reader that I choose personally for audio books. 
The reason is those of you who might want to check in to Voice Dream is that you can pull in your Book Share and your Learning Ally and some of those books right straight into Voice Dream and to tell you the truth, most of the adults I know who are blind are using that as their preferred audio book reader.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

And Pages, basically it's just a full word processor, unlike a note taking, it let's you do the footnotes, endnotes, styles, underline, bold, change text color, all your different types of fonts and the strength of it is that you cannot only save it as a pages document but you can E‑mail it as a Word document.
Now, I want to give a very big warning here.
I do not believe it's 100 percent successful with that.
You can bring a Microsoft Word document into pages but you're probably going to lose most if not all of the formatting that is on the document.
Likewise, it's quite possible that when you set up all this beautiful documentation and the teacher opens it in Microsoft Word you quite possibly will lose all the formatting you did.
You will not lose the footnotes and endnotes. It's just the styles and -- but it typically holds on to the bold and underline.
The other thing it let's do you is save it as an E-Pub file, and E-mail it as an E-Pub file. And if you're low vision, there's lots of E-Pub file readers out there, my favorite, mostly because I deal in the world of low vision and speech output, is screen readers is adobe digital editions.
And it's free.
And I know sometimes we have the old habit of thinking adobe is not accessible.
But it's extremely accessible and it is free.
And it creates a library and you can go to that library and change font sizes and many things in it, successful to any screen readers and text, pinch and zoom, all of that.
Adobe digital editions.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

So a poll for you and then we will go through the next couple.

Kate: Okay.
And our poll is, what is your favorite app that enables your student to watch as a teacher presents from a computer?
Sharon: That's pretty much what the other one was.
Doceri.
That's a nice program.
But once again, sometimes that one's really created so the teacher can walk around the room and annotate and write things.
I haven't used it very much because it's expensive and I don't have a classroom so I haven't used it.
Only read about it.
Kate: Getting any others?

Chapter 8. Magnification Apps

Sharon: I tell you what, guys, we probably ought to go on and talk about a couple of magnification ones. And the fun thing about magnification apps is it's the wild, wild west out there.
There are thousands of them.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

And so what we're going to do now is just talk about a few of them and I am hoping Chrissy chimes in because I think you've used some of these more than I have.
All of them do basically the same thing. They let you have magnification.
They let you have a light if you want to increase the contrast.
They let you take a picture so that it's frozen.
And probably the SuperVision plus Magnifier is the one I use because it seems to be the clearest for me. I can read those medicine labels that are a mystery to me otherwise. And VisionAssist.
I got all of these for free. They may have a paid copy, but everyone that I've used: VisionAssist, the BigMagnify and Supervision plus Magnifier were free.
Chrissy: And they're -- they're all variations on a theme but they typically work the same way.
So if you're thinking about -- what I think is funny about them is -- is they do basically what a ruby does. [ Laughter ] 
So but -- but maybe on a little -- little bit larger screen, if you've got a larger -- well, on a little larger screen.
But they also are going to work with your iPhone.
So I like them because you can take -- you can take a freeze of what you're looking at and pull it closer to your face.
The little app itself is going to allow you to adjust size. 
Sharon: Now, I do have to give a caveat here as the A-T person.
They're useful and they're useful for very quick things. Most of hand‑held video magnifiers you find now like the ruby from Freedom Scientific and the Candy from Hims company are now HD quality.
And they cannot be beat but I see very few students carrying those around because they just have their iPad right there, their iPhone.
So I just wanted to be clear that these are great.
They give you that quick ability but it is never going to give you the clarity of a true video magnifier.
So, but it's a lot cheaper.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

CH0:56:40 Chapter 9. Calculator

I don't know if any of you have used the talking calculator.
The one that's up on the screen is the generic talking calculator that costs 2.99 or three dollars as you know.
And what I like about it is that the colors of the operations are green.
The numbers are blue.
And then the equals is orange.
And the clear and back space are red.
Now, here's the reason I really like this it -- it does talk.
It has an Ozzy voice. But it does pair up with a braille display and you can enter Nemeth and it also has the ability, you to -- you remember the old calculators with the tapes that came out, it can do that to where it keeps a tape of all the students calculations and then you can send those and print those.
Chrissy: Wow!
Kate: That's cool.
Sharon: Now, having said that, they also have a talking scientific calculator and it's the same thing.
All of the operations are in green.
Your functions and all of that that I don't understand, sine and cosine, and your numbers are still blue and your -- the colors correspond to this one.
So if they start out with this one and use it until they get to the scientific calculator, it's going to be very familiar to them.
And if you don't want the beautiful colors, you can use it in a high contrast mode which turns the buttons yellow and the text black.
But once again, it's pretty impressive because these do work with Nemeth input and they do have a tape type ticker that holds onto them.
If you're wanting to look at that and you buy the app, you go into the help and the help has -- it goes to the website with videos showing you how to use those features.
Really like these calculators.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Chapter 10. Helpful Resources

Okay. Apple Vis is a website run by users who are visually impaired and they have app reviews.
They have blogs.
They have podcasts.
They have apps of the year and it's really nice. They have a breakdown of educational apps, business apps, navigation apps, game apps, and really, really like that.
Next website which has way too long a name for me to read.
I think we might be interested in showing you that website.
There are lots of resources we gave you on -- as far as websites.
We would really appreciate, you know, any feedback as to your favorite websites that you go to for iPad informaition because there's some really good trainers out there that do some good work with it.
And have very creative ways of using it, so it's very fun to look at the internet and see what people do.
I am a huge fan of YouTube.
And the reason I like YouTube is that every company has a channel and some teachers of the visually impaired have their own channel and you can go to that and you don't have to subscribe.
You can just do a search for it, but if you wanted to look at the zoom app that the peop -- the makers of zoom techs make you could go to their YouTube channel.
A-I squared, as in the word squared, and look at, you know, reviews and how tos and they'll walk you straight through it.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Chrissy: Whenever you're going to be doing an iPad or using an iPad with a student, you're -- you're going to want to of course try it. We've been talking about these apps. Try it.
And then check with the -- both the student and the Gen Ed teachers or teacher to see if it's working and then adjust it as needed.
And so the cycle of assessment you're just not going to put an iPad into a classroom and hope for the best. You have to consistently monitor because as Sharon has been talking about these, there's tweaks and there's functions of these different apps that can make it discouraging if you don't figure out what's working or what's not working.
So that's going to be the kind of monitoring that you're going to need to do.
Probably the classroom teacher is going to figure out what's going on and be able to adjust.
Sharon: The other thing I highly recommend is a bluetooth keyboard.
It's amazing.
I don't think many of us adults use the on screen keyboards but once again that should be something that's assessed because some students are good with it.
And some students need the keyboard.
Kate: Oh, I've got some questions. Okay. Do you use keyboarding apps?
Sharon: Keyboarding apps for the iPad?
Typically no.
Because keyboarding skill is generally taught on a real keyboard.
Especially if you have a beginner, it's nice to have that spacing between the letters because if you are on a flat keyboard, like a lot of laptops, it is hard to determine even the enter or the shift key.
So the bluetooth keyboards I use ZAGG Folio.
Which is expensive. I think it's just over a hundred dollars.
The reason I use it is I'm using an iPad air which is just a little smaller.
It fits really nicely and it has equal size shift keys.
That's the thing I look for in cases.
I don't know that I think one case is better than another case but you have got to be careful with the keyboard as to whether it has a full shift key on the left and on the right.
Kate: Can you spell the name of the keyboard that you use.
Sharon: I use two keyboards. I have a case that allows me to carry the Apple bluetooth keyboard, the wireless one. Which is 69 dollars.
It's the silver one with white keys. I also have the case which is a ZAGG z-a-g-g Folio.
And it's -- it's not cheap.
But it works quite well for me.
And it maintains the bluetooth connection.
Don't buy the different colors of ZAGG Folios.
I will tell you that the colors peel off the canvas so unfortunately you probably want the black one. [ Laughter ] 
Kate: Put your own stickers on it later. [ Laughter ] 
Sharon: Exactly.
Chrissy: So -- so what I'm showing here is that website that is in the PowerPoint.
The C-C-I-U 24 vision. So the title of this is iPad accessibility with low vision students and then it's got, just -- it's pages and pages of information so iPad acc -- accessibility, reasons students like the iPad, blah, blah, blah, accessibility features.
So that's probably, you know, what we were looking at when we looked at this.
Ways to get documents into the iPad.
And then it's got some links.
It walks you through with some steps.
Just lots.
Getting things out of the iPad to E-mail to teachers.
So what I like about this particular site is that whole workflow is reflected on here.
And that's why we added it here.
Sharon: As far as accessibility features, please do have a look at them because they have new ones.
You don't have to use voice over to read an entire page of text.
They have different speak capabilities and for those of you who are working with students that are either impulsive or just accidentally push buttons, you really want to checkout guided access because it can stop that home button from working and lock it into the app and you can also draw little shapes across -- say you have a free app, you draw a little shape across that and it locks them out of that.
So guided access is really powerful.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start video: ]

Chrissy: Can I ask you a question?
Sharon: Yeah.
Chrissy: What would be the youngest student that you would -- for workflow, that you would put on an iPad?
Sharon: As far as actually workflow and being able...
Chrissy: Yeah. Not just playing games and stuff like that.
Sharon: You know, I don't know the answer to that would be what I would say, I think it has everything to do because every student's different.
Some students are extremely motivated by an iPad and they are very good at using a stylus even before they learn to use a keyboard.
Chrissy: What would y'all say?
Sharon: Yeah, what would you say? Because I don't know.
But as you're maybe putting your thoughts together, and we're...
Kate: Grade two and three generally.
Sharon: Grade two and three. Okay. And people always ask, is it a replacement for a laptop?
At this point, I would say no.
But I can't say for a fifth grader that down the road, it isn't going to be all tablets.
I am just saying for schools and workplace and college right now, you probably still need a laptop.
Kate: Well, and I think the other thing is, too, everything is changing so quickly and kids are getting into these devices so much earlier.
Sharon: Yeah.
Chrissy: I get -- There was some article in the paper...or on C-E-C that kindergarten is the new second grade.
[ Laughter ] 
Kate: Yeah.
And I'm going to think that, you know, day care is the new second grade because, you know, these young, really young kids, it's amazing how adept a lot of them are already with a wide range of devices, even kids with visual impairments, you know.
They're -- It's pretty amazing.

[ End slide: ]

[ Start slide: ]

Chrissy: Thank all of you for joining and for your ideas and for participating.
It's just really inspiring to see that y'all are using these things.
Again, I think they're great, great tools for students with low vision and thank you, Sharon.

[ End slide: ]

Sharon: Yeah, thank you.

[Silence]