12. Neurodiversity in Higher Education

This site was set up to support the neurodiverse populations in Higher Education (in the UK) and offers lots of valuable advice for students and staff. The information is good, though parts have not been updated for a while.

BrainHE

11. Creating animation - with Go! Animate

This post is made on the basis of a picture paints a thousand word (though I am not sure what a 25 frames per second movie creates!) Anyway, with many creative dyslexic individuals out there, some may wish to experiment with this innovative animation web site.

Go! Animate

10. Speaking websites and blogs from ReadSpeaker

As software development progresses, so things like voice enabling websites and blogs becomes easier. This one appears to be very simple. Perhaps I should try it, so you can find out for yourself! (Or else tell me your experiences.)

Webreader

09. Storage online for sharing - from Box

File sharing is can be a problem at times. Here is a simple, secure solution.Basically the free part give you a one Gig of storage with the maximum file size of 25Meg. Then you share the contents. There are some quite big companies using it, so it must be reasonably good!

Box

08. Etherpad just got better with the timeline

I have always liked Etherpad as a real time collaborative document website. Now it just got better with the addition of a timeline that allows you to go back to previous versions. This is the way online collaboration should be.

Etherpad Timeline blog

07. New form of stickies - Postica

There are many Post-it notes out there, each with its own pecularities. But this is a little different, and from brief trials, I like it. It is online, within the browser. Of course the catch therefore is you need to be online to read them. For me that would be a problem. But if you were not on a fixed email, this could be very useful.

Postica

06. Where is it all going?

Without want to advertise, I have just finished my book "Dyslexia in the Digital Age" which took a little longer than I anticipated. (But for those who are interested, it should be out in January.) What was most interesting was the way I had to update during the writing process, as the technology matured and changed. So what will happen in the next 12 months, and what will be the implications? Going back over the year, for me the real change is the quantity (and quality) of services that are available online. And with even Microsoft putting significant resources, this has to be the way forward. And the impact?

Consider the way funding for assistive technology currently works for university students and those in employment. Normally there is a lump sum which can be used to pay for products. But how many funding systems are set up so that the beneficiary can pay a monthly subscription for an online service? (The fee paying versions usually have advanced capabilities.) Could this mean that users are lumbered with having to use second rate products that do not take advantage of the latest software advances and trends?

05. Inspirations about mind mapping

There are many occasions when mind maps (or concept maps) are useful. This is an interesting website that I have just found which could inspire. There is plenty more to explore on this site too.

Mind Map Inspirations

04. Screen recording made easy with Screenjelly

This has got to be one of the simplest screen recorders I have seen. No software to install. All you do is click the button and it starts recording. You do not save to your computer, but send a link it to an email address.Sign-up is simple. But you may want to click on the "privacy" button for some recordings. Otherwise they are for the general public.

Screenjelly

03. Sounds easy - online audio sharing with Chirbit

Ever wanted to share your thoughts with others, but confused with "podacsting" sites? Or maybe you did not want to make a podcast, but just wanted to share your thoughts (without having to type everything!). Chirbit is a free online tool for audio sharing which enables users to record, upload, listen to and share sound bites easily. It seems you could even use iPhone Voice Memos to post to chirbit if that is what you want.

For ideas and instructions, see their blog.

Chirbit

02. Create games with Classtools

As the web page says "Classtools.net allows you to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!" Although the examples tend to be at the subject learning level, they could also be adapted for phonics based activities if required.

Classtools

01. Review of reviews of August

With 366 entries on this blog, it has been interesting to reflect back during this past month on a year of software and hardware reviews in this blog that could assist the dyslexic (and non-dyslexic) individual. It has been informative, and a good way to keep up to date with what is happening. It has also helped ensure my book "Dyslexia in the Digital Age" (commissioned by Continuum Books, scheduled for publication in January 2010) is as comprehensive as it can be.

Click on these links below to see what has been reviewed. Note this is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but is entirely made up from the reviews of the past year.

02. Translation Services
03. Password protection
04. Reminders systems with email and sms
05. Post its and Stickies
06. Plagiarism
07. Text to speech
08. Document sharing
09. Shared desktops
10. Optical Character Recognition
11. Sound recording
12. Onscreen magnifiers
13. Speech to text
14. Screen grabbers
15. Time management
16. Keyboard Skills
17. Automated functions and short-cuts
18. Drawing and picture editing
19. Backing up
20. Location finding
21. Preferences - colours, fonts etc
22. Search functions
23. Event tracking
24. Summarize and synopsis
25. Browsers start page
26. Browsers
27. Undeleting files
28. File conversion
29. Office suites
30. Concept mapping on mobile phones
31. Concept mapping software

31. Concept mapping software

There are lots of new forms of concept maps, particularly online. Of these, my favourite must be the last, iKon Maps, since I had a hand in its development. It is simple, clean, and multilingual.

06-Aug-08 Concept mapping blog - Mindmappingblog
11-Aug-08 Online Concept mapping (free) - Wisemapping
06-Sep-08 Sharing concept maps - Bubbl.us
12-Dec-08 Concept mapping with speech-to-text - MindManager 8
20-Jan-09 Templates for mapping ideas - Exploratree
30-Jan-09 Visual Mind 11 Beta
14-Feb-09 Mapping it out - Xmaps
27-Apr-09 Concept mapping on and offline
06-May-09 Mindmeister - Updated
11-May-09 Concept mapping for projects - ConceptDraw
05-Jun-09 Concept mapping shared - with webspiration
16-Jun-09 Buzan mind maps update - iMindMap
10-Jul-09 Timeline and Gantt charts - Timeglider
13-Jul-09 Concept maps - with Wonder Wheel in Google
29-Jul-09 Concept mapping made simple with iKon maps

30. Concept mapping on mobile phones

Concept mapping is being more widely used. Now you can do it on the move with your mobile phone.

13-Nov-08 Concept mapping on an iPhone - Mindmaker
11-Jan-09 Concept mapping made simple - on the iPhone
09-Apr-09 Mindmapping on the Blackberry - Mindberry

29. Office suites

There are many offline and online Office systems now available. Here is a collection of free systems, two of which are my own wider collections (BATS and PATS).

07-Aug-08 World on a USB
12-Aug-08 Online office "systems" - Zoho
01-Sep-08 BATS - Basic Assistive Technology Suite
12-Oct-08 Finance and free software (OpenOffice)
26-Oct-08 Portable Assistive Technology Suite (PATS)

28. File conversion

There are many reasons why you may want to convert a file from one format to another. Here are four online systems that could help.

25-Nov-08 Converting PDFs
23-Jan-09 Conversions - in Zamzar
14-Mar-09 Conversion - pdf to word
22-May-09 PDF to Excel - pdftoexcelonline

27. Undeleting files

This is only one entry, but it can be a life saver if you happen to have deleted a file accidentally. It also goes onto a USB memory stick making it portable.

04-Sep-08 Recovery of deleted files - Undelete Plus

26. Browsers

While yesterday was about the starting page for the browsers, this is a collection of browsers, updates and ways to handle browsing.

06-Oct-08 SearchMe - The Visual Browser
05-Nov-08 Visual browser - Middlespot
05-Feb-09 More searching in pictures - Cuil
02-Mar-09 Another browser - Safari
23-Mar-09 Browser Previews - from CoolPreview
04-Apr-09 The missing link - Foxtab
26-May-09 Giving more viewing space - Tiny Menu
30-May-09 Google Chrome update
04-Jun-09 Highlighting webpage -Wizlite
27-Jun-09 Picture browsing - Cooliris updated
12-Jul-09 Browser update - Firefox 3.5

25. Browsers start page

These are three entries that are good home pages you can construct based on the pages you use most. Of course you can do this in iGoogle. But these three present visual forms.

22-Jan-09 Visual links - Homepage Startup
17-Mar-09 Quick web view - Sthrt
17-Jun-09 Quick links for web pages - Transferr

24. Summarize and synopsis

After a full year, I have only now realised that there has been only one summarizer entry. I shall try harder next year as I know there are a number out there worth considering. Basically, while everybody talks about text-to-speech to access large bodies of text, you still need to hold the content in memory. Why not instead try to reduce the memory load by reducing the total amount of text using software that creates summaries of that text? As Web 3.0 begins to develop, this is one for the future.

27-Aug-08 Cutting down reading - Subject Search Summarizer 4.01

23. Event tracking

These two are useful little tools that provide a means to track dates. Simple but effective.

29-Jun-09 How many days since?- Days since iGoogle gadget
17-Jul-09 Birthday reminder with iGoogle

22. Search functions

This year we have seen WolframAlpha and Bing come online. But probably more exciting from a dyslexia perspective are sites such as SearchMe (6 October 2008) which make the presentation of the information much easier to handle.

14-Aug-08 Research online - Zotero
06-Oct-08 SearchMe - The Visual Browser
17-Oct-08 Advanced search strategies
03-Dec-08 Advance search from Google - or not!
23-Dec-08 Search engine meets concept maps
24-May-09 Wolfram Alpha on test
08-Jun-09 New search - from Bing

21. Preferences - colours, fonts etc

It never ceases to amaze me that everybody talks about preferences, yet never tell you how to determine them. So I made a website to help (31 December 2008). It does concern me how few people know how to change colours.

10-Aug-08 TOCA - Try other colours again
04-Nov-08 Background colour - Acrobat Reader
18-Nov-08 Dyslexia-friendly designing - Create with Context report
31-Dec-08 Choosing colours, typefaces and font preferences
20-Feb-09 Your own fonts - YourFonts
23-May-09 Tidy website reading - TidyRead
26-Jul-09 The colour of money - from Google

20. Location finding

There are an increasing number of mash-ups that combine different components such as GPS with Google maps, to help find where you want to go, where you are, and where the taxi can find you. These are spreading rapidly and will be widely used in the next year, no doubt.

23-Aug-08 Location hardware - Loc8tor
03-Jan-09 A taste of things to come – with extra Zhiing
09-Feb-09 Where am I? - Google Latitude
08-Mar-09 Giving some Latitude to Google
28-May-09 Location, location - with Zhiing

19. Backing up

I have to be honest here - I started to use Dropbox and then stopped. Not because I did not like it or it was not effective. It looks very good. It was just that, well, I could not find the three minutes need to set it up.

22-Aug-08 Mobile Office backup
29-Aug-08 Online backup - Carbonite
15-Sep-08 Store, Sync and Share files - with Dropbox
16-Dec-08 Back-ups
04-Feb-09 Backing up syncplicity
26-Apr-09 Email and backing up

18. Drawing and picture editing

In the beginning there was GIMP, the free version of Photoshop. But now there are many, many different ones, each with its own capability. I tend to use PicPick and RIOT, though Pixlr offers many language options, and Aviary appears to be amazing, if you have a good enough internet connection speed.

07-Oct-08 GIMP - The free equivalent of Photoshop
20-Nov-08 3D drawing with Google SketchUp
02-Feb-09 Picture editing online - with Pixlr
16-Mar-09 Draw online anytime - Draw Anytime
28-Mar-09 Image resizing - it's a RIOT
23-Apr-09 Image software - Paint
26-Jun-09 Managing pictures with Microsoft Office Picture Manager
08-Jul-09 Picture editing program with screen grab - with PicPick
21-Jul-09 Picture editing program (better than GIMP?) - Aviary
22-Jul-09 Business drawing program - SmartDraw
30-Jul-09 Statistics in pictures - with Cyberwit

17. Automated functions and short-cuts

I use AutoHotKeys all the time for making short-cuts. It requires a little programming skills, but it is worth it. It means I can do so much automatically from opening software to putting repetitive messages into an email.

09-Aug-08 Automated functions - Auto Hot Keys
19-Jun-09 Event management - with Marxio Timer
20-Jul-09 Desktop shortcuts and automate tasks - from Winautomation
23-Jul-09 Shut down your computer remotely

16. Keyboard Skills

I always consider myself as being fortunate for having been forced to learn to type when I was younger. I see so many people struggling with keyboard skills, and fail to understand why nobody puts them in front of a simple program to improve those skills. Computers are so universal it is difficult to imagine somebody not benefiting from the development of such skills.

16-Aug-08 Keyboard skills - Qwerty Warriors
18-Sep-08 Did you know - Maltron Keyboards
09-Oct-08 Typing tutor - Nessie Fingers
24-Apr-09 Typing tutor - From Pete
13-Jun-09 Learning to type well - Goodtyping

15. Time management

There are many types of time management software to contemplate, from ones that keep you out, to ones that track your activities, as well as things that do a certain function at a set time. Marxio Timer is a favourite of mine.

30-Aug-08 Time management - Time Sprite
06-Dec-08 Time (mis) management - AppActivity 2.0
25-Feb-09 Keep Out - Keepmeout
27-Feb-09 Time management - Manictime
19-Jun-09 Event management - with Marxio Timer
15-Jul-09 Scheduling meetings - with Doodle

14. Screen grabbers

There are many different screengrab programmes, for video and for stills. My favourite (again) is PicPick for stills. To date, I have had little use for video. But I would probably start with CamStudio. There is also the YouTube download type (see 28 Nov 2008).

20-Sep-08 Capturing screen data - MW Snap
04-Oct-08 Screen Capture for Firefox
13-Oct-08 Screen Capture - CamStudio
26-Nov-08 Screen capture and drawing - Skitch
28-Nov-08 Saving from YouTube
24-Dec-08 Screen and video capture made easy - Jing
29-Mar-09 Screen grabbing - Screentoaster updated
08-Apr-09 Screen recording - GoView
21-May-09 Screen recording - BB Flashback Express
08-Jul-09 Picture editing program with screen grab - with PicPick