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=**Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education Division of Education Welcome to Assistive Technology for Educating Individuals with Low-Incidence Disabilities Course 892.560 (Section 61) Summer 2009 **=

Syllabus




 * __Workshop One June 2 to June 8, 2009__**

6/2 f2f 6/4 OL

Topics: Low Incidence Populations IDEA 2004 + NCLB Definitions, Terminology, Learner Characteristics

Personal Wiki Pages

Workshop Two June 9 to June 15, 2009

6/9 and 6/11 OL

Topics: Curriculum Access for Students with Low Incidence Disabilities, The Promise of UDL, WHat is UDL?, Boundless Learning and the Class Profile Matrix, Moving Forward with Technology

Workshop Three June 16 to June 29, 2009

6/16 OL 6/18 f2f 6/23 OL 6/25 OL

Topics: Augmentative Communication and Visual Supports, Social Stories, Visual Schedules, Adapted Books

Free Picture Communication Symbols
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ADDITIONAL HELP FOR TALKING POWERPOINTS
Here's a great tutorial to suplement the information shared at the 6/16 f2f session.

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This site also includes information on PowerTalk. To download PowerTalk go to []

To use PowerTalk follow these directions:

= Using PowerTalk. =

Opening Presentations.
There are a number of ways to get PowerTalk to narrate a PowerPoint Presentation (.ppt file) or Slide Show (.pps file): //Note: ppt and pps files are identical except for the ppt/pps part of the filename, the difference being what happens when they are opened. A .ppt file may be be saved in PowerPoint as a .pps file or else a .ppt file can be simply renamed as a .pps.// By default PowerTalk will narrate Slide Shows when they are opened outside of PowerPoint (e.g. by double-clicking in Windows Explorer). Slide Show files may still be shown without narration by opening within PowerPoint or right-clicking on them and selecting 'show'. During installation there is an option to disable this feature and another option to enable it for Presentations. This behaviour may be changed at a later time by using the PowerTalk settings option in the startmenu (or as follows: open Windows Explorer (Windows key + E), select 'Tools' -> 'Folder Options' -> 'File Types', type 'PPS', select 'Advanced', select 'show' from the list (or 'open' for .ppt files) and then select 'Set Default').
 * 1) Open a Slide Show. See below for details.
 * 2) Right click on a Presentation or Slide Show and select 'Narrate with PowerTalk'.
 * 3) Drag a Slide Show file onto a PowerPoint program shortcut.
 * 4) Browse to a Presentation or Slide Show using the dialog that appears when launching PowerTalk from the Start menu. The initial folder used may be specified using the shortcut 'Start in' property or adding the folder name as a parameter.
 * 5) Create a specific shortcut. Specify PowerTalk.exe as the target and the presentation file as a parameter(e.g. "C:\Program Files\PowerTalk\PowerTalk.exe" "MyShow.ppt").

Controlling Speech.
Text can be entered on a slide in either a single text box or split into multiple boxes and these are handled slighty differently. The text in any single box is spoken continuously from top to bottom. Individual boxs are spoken in the order they are //added to the slide//. There appears to be no way to alter this and the way to force a different order is to create a new slide and copy the text boxes (hint click on the box border and copy). Animated text is spoken in the order that the animations play, waiting for each to complete before speaking the next. However if a number of animations are used within a single text box, PowerTalk waits for the first animation only and then speaks all the remaining text. You may want to break the text into separate boxes and animate each. It is possible to specify the text spoken for images (and indeed any object including text) by entering Alternative Web text for the image. This is done as follows: right click on the image, select 'format object' ('size and shape' in Office 2007), select the Web tab and enter the alternative text to be spoken (there may already be some alt text when images are cut and paste from web pages). If you enter a space then nothing is spoken at all.

Speech Options.
The voice used and the speed of narration can be changed with the settings in the 'Speech Settings' section of Control Panel (on the 'Text To Speech' tab). There is a PowerTalk startmenu item that opens these settings. Windows XP comes with as single voice 'Sam'. The 'SAPI TTS components' download available in the Downloads section will add 'Mike' and 'Mary'. A range of additional SAPI 5.1 voices are available and examples include [|AT&T Natural Voices], [|Nuance RealSpeak], [|Neospeech] and IBM ViaVoice

Workshop Four June 30 to July 6, 2009

6/30 f2f 7/2 OL

Topics: Seating and Positioning

Workshop Five July 7 to July 9, 2009

7/7 OL 7/9 f2f

Topics: Development of Final Project with Lesson Plan