Today MatchWare (http://www.matchware.com) announces the release of MindView 4 Mac, a professional mind mapping software ideal for optimizing brainstorming sessions, creating visually driven presentations and displaying project plans in an easy-to-overview timeline. Thomas Henriksen, MatchWare’s Product Manager, explains, "Our user feedback was very clear, Mac customers want a professional mind mapping tool to visually overview ideas and improve communication, collaboration and innovation. MindView 4 Mac provides the professional feature set to drive productivity through seamless integration with Microsoft Office and a cutting-edge presentation mode that ensures brainstorming, organizing and presenting ideas has never been easier." The enhanced Microsoft Office integration and ready-to-use templates enable users to effortlessly export their mind maps as professionally formatted Microsoft® Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. With 7 dynamic viewing options including a timeline, new map styles, and innovative presentation options, MindView 4 Mac continues to take mind mapping to the next level. Additional new features include a new formatting toolbar, the ability to record audio commentary as a sound note and attach the file to a mind map branch, open MindView 4 for PC files and the option to export a mind map as a PDF. MindView 4 Mac’s new presentation mode displays information one branch at a time, enabling users to deliver dynamic, interactive presentations directly from the mind map. Focus mode empowers users to zoom-in on specific areas of the map, allowing participants a clear view of the specific information presented. MindView 4 Mac enables users to customize the placement of branch pictures; further enhancing the capability to provide clear, visual displays to improve the understanding of complex topics. "I have tested MindView 4 Mac on OS X Lion and the new Presentation Mode and Focus Mode are extremely helpful when presenting my mind maps during meetings. I like the fact that the Focus Mode lets me zoom in automatically on branches in a non-linear way so people in the back of the room easily can see and contribute to brainstorming sessions," says Frans Merrild, C.E.O of Tell-It Online. MindView’s unique Timeline view delivers a powerful, visual overview to improve any project planning process and enhance the study of historical and future events. By adding dates or times to the mind map branches, users can simply switch to the Timeline view to instantly display information on a horizontal time axis. MindView 4 dramatically improves the ability of professionals to capture and share information in one click from a mind map to Microsoft Office, a timeline, a PDF document or a HTML website. Mac users now have a professional productivity tool for turning ideas into action plans. MindView 4 Mac is available for purchase at http://www.MatchWare.com and the Mac App Store for the upgrade price of 149 USD or 249 USD for a single user license. For more information about MindView, visit http://www.MatchWare.com or follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Contact us for multi-user and educational discounts. About MindView MatchWare MindView is professional mind mapping software that allows you to optimize brainstorming sessions and present ideas visually. MindView's mind mapping capabilities provide an effective way to organize and develop ideas, outline reports, and streamline decision making. MindView’s visual hierarchy and professionally designed export templates convert your mind map into a polished presentation with the click of a mouse. Brainstorm topics, storyboard presentations and enhance meeting discussions. Attach pictures and videos, take notes or add hyperlinks - everything will be included in your export. About MatchWare Founded in 1992, MatchWare is a leader in intuitive Mind Mapping and multimedia authoring tools for enhancing individuals’ ability to create, visualize, manage and distribute information. The company’s award-winning software packages, MindView, Mediator, and ScreenCorder, offer highly intuitive user interfaces and powerful features at affordable prices. Headquartered in Denmark, MatchWare has subsidiaries in the UK, the USA, Germany, France and Sweden. MatchWare, MindView, MatchWare Mediator, MatchWare ScreenCorder are trademarks or registered trademarks of MatchWare A/S. All other trademarks and registered trademarks used in this document are the property of their respective companies.

Adobe’s series of free eSeminars on Adobe Captivate and eLearning Suite continues into November - this month’s featured sessions focus on publishing and packaging. Please note the next eSeminar, covering the Multi-SCO Packager, is tomorrow, Nov. 10, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern.     Using Multi-SCO Packager to Create a Single Course out of SCOs from Captivate, Flash and Dreamweaver Thursday, Nov. 10 - 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET Join Vish and Dr. Pooja Jaisingh to learn how to combine SWF and PDF from Captivate, Learning interactions SWF from Flash and Course Builder SCOs from Dreamweaver into a single course. You will also learn about using Learning Interactions in Flash and Course Builder in Dreamweaver. Mobile Publishing Options in Adobe Captivate and eLearning Suite Wednesday, Nov. 16 - 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET Join RJ Jacquez, Adobe eLearning Senior Product Evangelist, to learn how Adobe is helping advance Mobile Learning (mLearning) through various technologies, including Flash, HTML5 and native mobile apps.

I am happy to announce the release of my latest reference guide:  IPad™: Enhancing Learning & Communication for Students with Special Needs The reference guide is 6 pages - three hole punched and laminated and is a great resource if you are just getting started or thinking about using the iPad in your classroom. Both authors are special educators as well as assistive technology specialist who designed the card for ease of use. The laminated reference guide is chock full of ideas and tips and tricks on how to best use the iPad in the classroom with recommendations for some of the leading apps for students with special needs. The iPad™ is a revolutionary technology for use in our 21st century classrooms. It is profoundly changing both the manner in which teachers present instructional content, as well as the way students process and learn new information. The multi-sensory design of the iPad™ makes it an ideal tool for teaching students with special needs. This laminated reference guide provides valuable information on the use of the iPad™ in classroom settings to reach students with diverse learning styles and who have limited functional communication abilities. Proloquo2Go, iCommunicate and other types of applications (Apps) to enhance language development are presented in an easy-to-understand format. An ideal resource for teachers, speech therapists and other educators who work with students who have Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), learning disabilities or other language-related challenges. If you are interested in purchasing this laminated reference guide please email me for a quote. Volume pricing is available and school purchase orders are accepted. To purchase:   

I ended the weekend at a soiree that my daughter was singing at which was a fund raiser for a local New York City Ballet Company and as luck would have it there was a Silent Auction included in the night's activities. As I scoped out the items, my eyes caught a shiny box with a Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker that I had read about in the tech blogs. The Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker have a retail value of $199 dollars and when the auction opened it started at $125 dollars which was a steal at that price. While I paid a little more for the Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speakers when the auction closed- they are well worth it when I'm listening to my music from my iPohne 4S. The Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker includes some really interesting speech technology which lets you know when the speaker is in pairing mode. Pairing the Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker with my iPhone was a cinch and the sound is really awesome. The speaker is extremely loud but the driving bass really sounds great listening to the Allman Brothers. The Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker comes with everything you need to use the system including a power adapter to charge the lithium battery, USB charging cable, mini- RCA jack and a carrying case. You can use the Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker with any device that has Bluetooth or if you want you can use it as an external speaker with the included RCA jack by plugging it into any audio output. As I sit here writing this blog I'm relishing in the sound of my iPhone and the Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speakers.

When Amazon announced the Kindle Fire in September, I quickly pre-ordered the device knowing that it would be a big seller. If all goes well I should have the Kindle Fire in had some time tomorrow so that I can share that experience with you. I have been using a Kindle for some time now and really enjoy reading on the device and look forward to experiencing reading on the Kindle Fire. Amazon relying on their Cloud Services has made it really easy to access my ebooks from the many devices that I use. As a company Amazon gets high grades from me for customer support and when my Kindle Reader arrives it will be registered and ready to use with my account. Amazon has done a marvelous job with the integration of their Whispernet network and I cam looking forward to a seamless experience with my Kindle Fire out of the box. More details in the coming days!

I have been using eReaders for some time now and really enjoy the convenience and ease of use of these dedicated devices. In my travels to schools, I am beginning to see more and more schools pilot eReaders in the classroom, especially for students who struggle or who are unmotivated to read. Teachers see the value of students being able to change the size of the font and easy access to the dictionary feature. For many students who struggle in reading many are now more motivated to read on an eReader device as compared to a traditional book. Students can also peruse the Electronic Bookstore and of course with teacher permission download sample chapters from books to see if it will pique their curiosity to engage them in the reading process. But before you go out and purchase an eReader here are some questions you should think about: 1) Do I have access to WiFi in my school or building? Many of the eReader's support WiFi as well as 3G which will enable you to download books directly to the device without the need to use a computer. If your school has a good WiFi infrastructure then you can save a considerable amount of money by buying the WiFi model of the eReader. For example the  Amazon Kindle Touch with WiFi is $99 dollars compared to the Amazon Touch WiFi/3G model which is $149  dollars. If your schools doesn't support WiFi then you should consider the Kindle Touch WiFi/3G model which would allow you to download books over the air using the 3G network. There is no extra data costs associated with using the Kindle Touch WiFi/3G model for downloading books to the devices. 2) How long can  I expect my dedicated eReader to stay charged? Many of the dedicated eReaders that utilize E Ink technology can stay charged for long periods of time under normal use. The E Ink technology mirrors that of a traditional page and uses minimal battery life to render the black text on a white background. eReaders like the Kindle Touch and Nook that utilize E Ink technology can stay charged for up to 2 months- which is really incredible if you will be using in a school setting. eReaders that utilize E Ink technology assume that you will be reading the book with a lot of ambient light available. 3) Where can I purchase my books? All of the major re-sellers of eReaders like Amazon, Bares & Noble, & Kobo provide the user with one stop shopping in their online book store. The online bookstore can be accessed from the devices and books can be quickly downloaded to the devices over WiFi or the 3G network. If you are purchasing books for a school you should investigate getting a corporate or school account with the companies so that you can purchase books with a school Purchase Order 4) Can I read other materials beside books on the dedicated eReader? In addition to books many of the eReaders also support reading magazines, newspapers, blogs as well as your own personal documents in various formats ie. PDF & Word. When you purchase an Amazon Kindle you are provided with unique email address that you can send Word or PDF documents to, which can be delivered to your Kindle over the WiFi network. This feature is handy for students who want to read their documents on their eReaders 5) How important is having audio and Text to Speech capabilities on my eReader? While eReaders are great for reading books some eReaders like the Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch also support playing audio books from Audible.com as well as reading text on the screen if the Text to Speech capabilities have been enabled by the book publisher. For students with reading disabilities or for those who struggle to read having the text to speech capabilities is a great feature.Likewise, being able to listen to a professionally narrated book from Audible can be very motivating for students who need to reengage with text. I hope these questions and answers have provided you with some food for thought when you are planning to purchase eReaders. If you have any questions about eReaders, please feel free to email me. If you are interested I am available to run workshops on using eReaders in the classroom.

Now that the holidays are behind me it is time to share some new ideas and tips and tricks. I have been doing a lot more reading on my Kindle's then ever before and when I came across the Send to Kindle Chrome Extension that would enable me to send web pages to my Kindle I was really excited to test it out. So for those of you who prefer to read web content on your Kindle this could be the perfect solution. I installed the Send to Kindle Extension to my Chrome browser which was very quick. Once installed, I set the Options in the Send to Kindle Extension to send the web page to my Kindle Keyboard. Each Kindle that you own has a unique Kindle email address that you can manage from the Amazon Kindle Web page. For example a typical Kindle email address for a device might look like johnsmith@kindle.com or johnsmith@free.kindle.com. It is important to direct the web pages correctly to Send to Kindle so that you don't get charged for electronic delivery- this is more so for those of you that have a 3G Kindle. It is important to remember that there are no associated fees for delivery of electronic documents over WiFi, however there are charges over 3G. So for those of you who have a Kindle with 3G make sure you send it to a Kindle email address with a free.kindle.com account. The last step in the process is to go to your Manage your  Kindle page on the Web and enter kindle@klip.me to give  the service permission to originate electronic documents from the web to your Kindle. Now when you are browsing the web and want to collect a number of article to read on your Kindle you simply click on the Send to Kindle Extension button in the Toolbar and the next time you are reading your Kindle and are in a WiFi area all of the articles you clipped will show up ready to read. So if you are like me and like to collect some reading material for the evening to read on your Kindle then this is the extension for you. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

The Amazon Kindle Fire was released on Nov. 15, and shocked consumers with its $199 price tag. It seems like most of the rhetoric around the device has been its price, and while that certainly is a huge part of its success, it also has some pretty spiffy features. I have a Fire and I've compared it to a friend's Barnes and Noble Nook and in just about every unscientific test, the Fire came out ahead. First of all, it feels great in the hand. It's a solid device that doesn't feel like you will break it in half if it gets roughed up a bit. The sleek edges feel like they could be an Apple product but they won't cost you an arm and a leg like some of that company's products. The Fire also has a great app store. The Amazon App Store has thousands of apps with tons being added daily. The Free App of the Day feature is a really great benefit as well. I recently downloaded the My First Puzzles app after it came on the App of the Day and my little nephew has probably been using the device as much as I have lately. The free app offerings are a great touch. In addition to apps, Amazon's Prime service is great for streaming movies, TV shows and borrowing books for free. The $79 subscription fee is a little steep but when you consider that there are more than 10,000 movie and television titles to be screened, the price seems almost insignificant. The device is not without its drawbacks. There are the obvious points where it doesn't stack up to the iPad, like the lack of a camera or microphone but the Nook also bests the Fire in a few places. In a recent study by DisplayMate, the Fire was found to be twice as reflective as the Nook. The white balance also leaned a little to the yellow side. I have noticed that the Fire's display doesn't seem quite as crisp as my friend's Nook, but as long as I am able to see the screen clearly, which I certainly can — probably better than on my laptop — I'm a happy camper. The Fire is a great device if you can get over the relatively poor display and at $199, it won't burn up your savings. Margot is a technology writer and self-professed expert on how to get a deal using a Dell coupon. 

With information coming at us at a frantic pace it is no wonder that we can quickly become overwhelmed. This is especially true for students who have a need to curate their notes and sources when writing research articles. Life was a lot easier for me when I was in school, there were simply books and journals, that I used to cite my works. Today students are faced with the myriad of Internet sources, books, journals, podcasts, and multimedia to keep account of when doing research. In this light, Matchware, recently released a new product NoteControl aimed at students to help them collect, collate, and sort notes when doing a written research paper. The coup de grace is the ability of NoteControl to output a perfectly formatted bibliography in many accepted and recognized formats (ie APA, MLA, Harvard to name a few.). The premise of the program is quite simple-you create a notebook and then use the space to capture all of your notes which can include: Text, Picture, Sound, and Web notes. NoteControl allows the user to create a Folder structure to organize your notes and it is easy to move Notes that you capture from one folder to the next. For example, if you want to create a citation for text from a web site, you can simply go to the web site and highlight the text you want to use and then Click on the Text Note icon. This will bring up a note card with the text automatically included- you can change the name of the note card and once you click the Accept button your noted will be stored along with the source.You can use the same technique to capture graphics from websites or store needed  files (Word, PDF's) for your research project. If your computer has a microphone it is easy to store audio notes in your notebooks from within NoteControl. Matchware has teamed up with WorldCat to enable users of NoteControl to access their large database of resources and collections from libraries around the world. Students are able within NoteControl to search the WorldCat database and have the citation automatically filled out with all of the necessary information for a properly formatted entry. If you have all of the information for a citation you can also manually add a citation to your research Notebook. Students will find the WorldCat tool a very handy tool to use for doing research and will find it even easier when it is time to generate the bibliography. After you have collected your notes and resources NoteControl really shines when it is time to export all of your notes and create your bibliography. With one click of the mouse NoteControl lets you export your source listing, notes and bibliography directly to Word. NoteControl will export your notes and bibliography to any one of several formats including APA, Chicago, and MLA styles. The bibliography is perfectly formatted saving you the time an effort to manually recreate it once your paper is completed. You will find NoteControl an easy to use tool that is ideal for high school and college students who are writing research papers. As students begin to utilize more and more Internet resources they will find NoteControl and ideal tool to take charge and organize their resources for use in their papers. For those students who have access to MindView 4 and want to see their notes and resources in a mind map you can export them directly from NoteControl. Overall, NoteControl is an easy to use program that delivers on its promise to provide students a way to organize, sort and curate notes for research papers and projects. A one year subscription to NoteControl is prices at $49 dollars and at this time is only available for computers running Windows OS. There is a trial version of NoteControl available for student to try out which I would highly suggest. At $49 dollars for a year, NoteControl is good value and another tool that you should have your students take a look at to help tame the paper tiger when it comes time to write that research paper. It would be great if Matchware could add Text to Speech (TTS) supports within NoteControl for students that benefit from this type of support. NoteControl also allows students to work on collaborative projects across the web which adds value to this fine product. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

If you have ever played around with Wordle then you know just how much fun it is to see the keywords from a website jump out at you- visually showing you the topics that have been covered. I was very glad to receive an email from Henry Lewkowicz from Context Discovery that a Keyword Cloud feature has been added to Wikisummarizer. I gave it a try and searched on the term "Assistive Technology" to see how the Keyword Cloud feature would work. Wikisummarizer generated the Keyword Cloud very quickly and when I was done I copied the embed code that was supplied and pasted it into my blog for all of you to see. Works like a charm as you can see- so go give it a try and let me know what you think! braille Assistive technology disabilities speech design rehabilitation umbrella term keyboard universal design alternative communication