Opportunity for schools and Vocational Rehabilitation centers to participate free of charge
Shrewsbury MA -All inPlay has announced the expansion of its Free Educational Pilot Program. The overwhelmingly positive response to All inPlay's initial efforts at the Carroll Center in Massachusetts, Dewitt and Associates in New Jersey, and other locations around the country, has precipitated this expansion. All inPlay offers this free, three-month program to eight additional blindness institutions and vocational rehabilitation centers interested in participating.
What Is The All inPlay Free Educational Pilot Program?
All inPlay's Free Educational Pilot Program lets organizations that teach computer skills to blind and visually impaired students include All inPlay games in addition to their current curriculum. All inPlay believes, and the first trials have shown, that All inPlay's games serve not only to give students additional motivation, but indeed to further their typing, web browsing, and screen-reading skills.
According to Rick Fox, director of sales and marketing for De Witt and Associates, "The All inPlay games are easy to learn, easy to navigate and the chat feature is a great antidote for isolation. Our experience with our students tells us that All inPlay generates a lot of excitement among our students."
Vicky Essner, an itinerant teacher of the blind in Nevada says,"I have found that when I show my students how to play All inPlay games, they are much more motivated to practice using a computer even when I'm not there, and they are finally having fun!"
"Probably the best part about All inPlay'sEducational Pilot Program is that everybody wins," says Jeremie Spitzer, All inPlay's co-founder and president. "All inPlay gains valuable feedback as to the educational value and feasibility of our products, educators are given another tool that motivates their students while enhancing their skills, and of course the students are able to enjoy an online game where they can socialize with blind and sighted players from around the world, while at the same time furthering their education."
To learn how to sign up your organization as one of the eight new Pilot Program Sites, contact Jeremie Spitzer by phone at (413) 585-9691, or by e-mail at 'jspitzer@allinplay.com.
All inPlay is a unique online community where blind and sighted people from around the world gather to play and interact as equals. At the heart of this community are games that provide a fun, friendly setting where people can celebrate old friendships and create new ones from across the globe. Not only are All inPlay's inclusive community and games bringing people together from around the world, but now All inPlay is being incorporated into job training, computer literacy, and youth programs for the blind around the United States.
------------------------ WeAreTeachers and PCI Education Provide Special Education Teachers with Funding, Idea Sharing Through Micro Grant
San Antonio and Austin, TX- WeAreTeachers, the online social and business network that brings together teachers, learners and content in the education industry, announces a new micro grant, "Special Education: Individual Attention, Collective Impact," sponsored by PCI Education, a provider of resources for students with special needs. WeAreTeachers is calling upon special education teachers to submit their best practices for reaching students on an individual level, and will reward the 10 submissions that receive the most online votes with a $200 cash micro grant, and a Flip Video camera to capture implementation of the idea. All of the submissions will be published online, creating a wealth of teacher-generated content for the special education classroom. The micro grant application can be found at www.weareteachers.com from Oct. 12 to Oct. 31. Voting will begin Nov. 3, when the submitted projects will be posted online for public review. The 10 teachers whose projects receive the most votes will be announced Nov. 19. "The idea of putting funding in the hands of innovative special education teachers is thrilling," said Lee Wilson, CEO and President of PCI Education. "PCI Education is happy to sponsor this micro grant, which is clearly aligned with our commitment to supporting teachers in the special education field." "We are so pleased to offer this micro grant to support our special education teachers," said Sandy Fivecoat, CEO and founder of WeAreTeachers. "We recognize that what they are doing with their students on an individual level has far-reaching impact." WeAreTeachers (www.weareteachers.com) is a social and business community for educators, businesses, and education marketers designed to enable community members to share, connect, and collaborate using Web 2.0 tools and services. It is the first community to include The Knowledge Marketplace that gives educators and businesses the ability to share, sell, and receive recommendations on knowledge-based content and products. WeAreTeachers is committed to giving back to the educator community by distributing tangible rewards through educator grants and incentives from transactions and sponsors in The Knowledge Marketplace. PCI Education offers more than 7,500 instructional materials for a wide range of students with special needs, including significant or developmental disabilities such as autism. In addition, the company's products are used in English language learner and adult literacy classes, and to help students performing below grade level. ------------------------------Online Accessible Library Brings ‘Reading for Pleasure’ ALIVE for Students with Learning Disabilities Challenged by the Printed Word Laura Koch, Resource Specialist for Muscatine Community School District, Muscatine, IA teaches 9-12th graders in a resource class setting for students with Individualized Education Plans or IEPs. These students receive special education services and also participate in general education classes with or without the assistance of a team teacher. In 2008, Ms. Koch learned about Bookshare (www.bookshare.org) from the district’s Director of Special Education. This accessible online library received a $32 million dollar award from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), to provide free access for qualified students with print and learning disabilities.Bookshare provides timely access to digital books, textbooks, and teacher recommended reading, as well as offers two downloadable ‘ebook’ text readers at no cost to the school. Ms. Koch shared, “Bookshare has made it easier for my students to have access to digital books for educational reading and reading for pleasure.In the past, we would always scan books for the kids. This task is time consuming.Even more time consuming is editing the scanned books. Bookshare has lessened our scanning and editing time by three-quarters.I think our scanner is even getting a little dusty. Bookshare has helped me provide required books for my students faster than I could imagine.Students get the books they need in 5 minutes compared to one day!” The new Bookshare library has many books that the Muscatine Community School District English classes assign as required reading.To complete the assignments, students download an e-text version of the book so they can listen to it orally and read along simultaneously using text reader software. The two downloadable text readers on the Bookshare website are READ:OutLoud by Don Johnston and Victor Reader Soft by HumanWare. These assistive technology tools are software applications that make it easier for students with print disabilities to read independently. Ms. Koch says, “These tools help a struggling student complete their work in a comparable time with their classmates.” Before Bookshare, students were required to read on their own, but did not understand what they read.They may have needed the Resource teacher to read to them which monopolized the teacher's time, while other students would not get the help.Alternatively, students waited long periods of time for the Resource teacher to scan the book so that they could read or listen on their own.Ms. Koch says, “Bookshare has helped these students become independent readers.Often students with learning challenges cannot read for pleasure at their interest level because books are written at higher lexile reading levels.The text is difficult to comprehend.Now that students are accustomed to Bookshare, they enjoy their reading independence and ask for more books to be downloaded.” “Some struggling readers have never read for pleasure.In fact, most hate to read,” shared Ms. Koch.“Bookshare has created a new interest in reading for them. In my spare time, I would scan books that my students wanted to read, but it was a daunting project.I felt badly that students would have to wait for weeks for books to be scanned and edited. Now, students love that they have a choice of thousands of books (even popular reading) from Bookshare, and can download them in just minutes. Bookshare has made it easier for them to enjoy literature for educational purposes and reading for pleasure.I encourage all reading specialists and educators to sign up their qualified students for Bookshare and watch the reading transformation take place for their students.”
About Bookshare
Bookshare, www.bookshare.org,isthe world’s largest accessible online library for people with print disabilities.Through its technology initiatives and partnerships, Bookshare seeks to raise the floor on accessibility issues so that individuals with print disabilities have the same ease of access to print materials as people without disabilities.In 2007, Bookshare received a $32 million five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), to provide free access for all U.S. students with a qualified print disability.The Bookshare library now has over 50,000 books and serves more than 60,000 members.Bookshare is an initiative of Benetech, www.benetech.org, a Palo Alto, CA-based nonprofit that creates sustainable technology to solve pressing social needs.