Student Guide Corner

David Pogue at the NY Times created this humorous video showing the wonderful features built into the Flip Ultra Video Recorder. I've written about it here , but if you haven't had the chance to see one for yourself, watch the video. Pogue says it's the Number one selling camcorder on Amazon. Not surprising to me - special educators love it! Learned about this from Sam Sennott at Alltogether.

Much as I try to avoid it, there are times when I'm stuck driving on the highways during morning rush hour, driving to another school in the greater Boston area. I look around and can't help but notice the mini-vans with the "School Bus" signs, with kids being transported from their home towns to out-of-district placements. They deal with the traffic nightmare daily, just to get to school. What impact does this have on kids, this long drive to school? What message are they getting from this daily routine that lengthens their school day? Is this reality maximizing student achievement? Do you notice the kids in the vans? Do you wonder about the impact this has on their lives? Or, do you just look the other way? I can't look the other way. Instead, I have to ask, are we doing all we can to ensure student success in the least restrictive environment? Are we building in the supports that allow students to remain in their home districts? (Do we know what those sup...

Do you ever save an article or other text as a pdf for your students? What do they do if they need to listen to it? One option is to use the built in "Read Out Loud" feature under the "View" toolbar. But that doesn't allow you to highlight every word and you can easily lose your place in your document. Enter Zamzar, free online file conversion. You may have tried it to convert blocked online videos to a format that you can then share in your school. Did you know you can use the same tool to convert pdfs to doc? I tried it with a one page and a two page pdf. Zamzar converted the one page pdf and sent it to my email address in 30 minutes. It took 60 minutes to convert and email the two page pdf. With the free account, you don't have any priority conversion (there are three levels of pricing that provide you with priority conversion). But with enough planning, you should be fine. I have always received conversions within 24 hours. And now you know another way...

There are very few times that I wish that we had HBO. This week is one of the those times. Fortunately, Autism: The Musical is available online and I just finished watching the ninety-three minute long documentary. Inspired by her work with her own autistic son, Elaine Hall decided to create a musical theater program that allows autistic children to express themselves creatively and interact socially. The result was the Miracle Project. Countering the bleak statistics regarding autism (one out of 150 children are diagnosed in the U.S.), the California woman pledged to lead a group of autistic kids in defying expectations by writing, rehearsing and performing their own full-length musical. This film follows five Los Angeles children and their families over the course of six months and observes how this musical production gives these young performers a comfort zone in which they can explore their creative sides. Meet Lexi, Neal, Wyatt, Adam and Henry and learn about autism from their pe...