1. Educational and Assistive Technologies
1.2
Experts in
Educational and Assistive Technologies

2. About Us Experts in Educational and Assistive Technology
Professional team with extensive experience in the fields of Education, AAC and Technology
Quality products
Professional development founded on best practices
Service in both English and French
Dedicated to the principles of UDL and DI

3. Vision
To provide a wide offering of solutions to individuals with special
To promote awareness of assistive technology
To promote successful implementation of assistive technology

4. Professional Development
Conferences
Workshops
Bridges Learning Series
Individual or Small Group Training
Coaching
Implementation

5. Halton District School Board Assistive Technology Overview
Schedule for this afternoon …
1.Brief description of the technology
2. Demonstration of the specific tools we are using today; Kurzwei 3000l, Dragon Naturally Speaking and Smart Ideas
3.Questions and comments
3. websites and support to share

6. Kurzweil 3000 version 11 Kurzweil is a text to speech program
It has OCR capability and therefore Reads multiple formats of text; pdf, text files such as Word, websites
Reads material scanned into Kurzweil
Study skills features built in to support students researching, studying for tests, summarizing information
Let’s take a look….

7. Alex uses Kurzweil 3000 to read
and Bookshare.wmv

8. Support for Kurzweil 3000 version 11
Kurzweil is available in all Halton Schools and is often found in the resource room.
SIt has also been recommended to many struggling students on their SEA claims
Kurzweil has been successfully used by many students on their EQAO tests
Helpful websites:

9. Kurzweil 3000 Website

10. First Click on the Learning Centre
Next click on the first letter of the software K for Kurzweil

11. Pages and Files will take you
To tutorials and examples
Here you will find websites and this ppt

12. Smart Ideas Concept Mapping
Smart Ideas is a graphic organizer that allows you to quickly brainstorm your ideas
Templates can also be used to organize writing for specific tasks such as an essay
Your ideas can then be transferred into a word processor where you can complete your final edits
Let’s take a look …

13. Support for Smart Ideas
Smart Ideas is Ministry Licensed software and therefore is available to all Ontario Schools a
teachers have take home priveledges. .

14. Ontario Software Acquisition Advisory Committee
Curriculum Resources

15. Dragon Naturally Speaking 10
Dragon Naturally Speaking allows speech recognition- from voice to text
Requires some training of a voice file to be most effective
Can be difficult to use in a classroom setting, requires a quiet area for dictation
Provides students with an alternate method of writing that can be transformational
A quick Demonstration…

16. Support for Dragon Naturally Speaking
Dragon Naturally Speaking is Ministry Licensed and therefore is available to all Ontario Schools
Dragon has been used successfully for EQAO testing
Teachers can use Dragon to dictate their work also
Helpful websites:

17. The Ross MacDonald Library
Other Resources …
The Ross MacDonald Library
Textbooks, novels have been scanned in and are available to the teachers and students electronically
Each school Resource teacher has access code and can download books or have a novel scanned

18. Questions, suggestions?
Halton Board Resources?
Other sites you have found helpful

19. Please contact me with any questions!
Contact Information
Janet Ragan B.A.Sc., B.Ed
Bridges Canada
Please contact me with any questions!
Or Comments!