Universally Designed

I was just forwarded a link from a friend of mine to the new UDL Editions by CAST website. According to the press release:

Wakefield, MA, April 23, 2008—In partnership with Google, CAST today celebrated World Book Day by introducing two new online literacy tools that provide robust, embedded learning supports for readers at all levels. UDL Editions by CAST are world literature classics presented in a flexible online interface that supports and engages novice and expert readers alike. CAST Strategy Tutor offers adolescent readers customizable mentoring and support as they conduct Internet research and read websites.

In the limited amount of time I had to experiment with the site, I found it very user friendly providing you are familiar with Texthelp’s Read&Write Gold toolbar. You can choose from 7 books and be provided with 3 levels of support on each book depending on student specific needs. These levels are as follows:

1. Maximum Support – “Stop and Think” prompts are multiple choice. Highlighting critical features, models, and hints available. Immediate feedback on responses.
   
2. Moderate Support – “Stop and Think” prompts elicit constructed responses and text revisions to explore author’s craft. Highlighting critical features, models, and hints available. Immediate feedback on text revisions only.
3. Minimal Support – “Stop and Think” prompts offer strategy choice and open responses. Students are guided to highlight and collect key elements in the text, thus actively highilghting critical features for themselves.

Give the site a look when you get a chance. The address is http://udleditions.cast.org. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Anytime you can get organizations like CAST together with companies like Texthelp and Google, you can expect great things to happen.

Most of you probably know what Adobe PDF documents are. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, they’re those aggravating documents you receive from time to time that you can read, but cannot edit. They require you to have special software (Adobe Reader – free and standard on most PCs) to open them. The good thing about these documents are pretty much the same as the bad thing: you cannot edit them. Why is this good? Well, many people, including publishers use a PDF file so that end user (i.e. you) cannot modify the content. Businesses may also use them for policy and procedure manuals, forms, contracts and more. They also come in handy when you want to make sure your document looks the same to everyone. Have you ever opened up a word document that required you to edit parts of it just so you could make sense of it all? If the creator used a PDF document instead, no matter what setting the end user had, the document (including images) would look the same as when it was first created.

The bad part of not being able to edit is also quite obvious. What if there is a mis-spelled word or you don’t like the way something reads. Maybe you just want to bold or highlight certain portions for your records. These simple functions cannot usually be done.

Now however there is a free program that gives you the best of both worlds. PDF-Xchange viewer is just that. It allows you to add your own markup to any pdf document and save it. This includes adding highlights, circles, arrows or even sticky notes. And don’t forget, it’s FREE! There are premium versions that let you do more like create your own pdf documents, but the viewer will serve your basic markup needs. If you need to create a pdf document there are free alternatives to that as well, such as Cute PDF Writer or PDF Creator. These programs allow you to create a pdf document by choosing them as your printer.

One of the more common tech questions I’m asked when it comes to video is how to save YouTube videos onto your computer. There are several resources out there that allow you to do this including extensions for your internet browser, websites, and other applications, but one of my favorites that was recommended by a colleague (simply because it requires no installation and can be used with any computer with internet access) is the website Zamzar.com.

Not only will Zamzar allow you to save YouTube videos to your computer in various formats, but it will also allow you to covert other files like .doc and .pdf files. To use it, simply go to their website (www.zamar.com), upload a file, choose what you would like to convert it to, enter your email address and click convert. When finished you will be emailed a link that will allow you to download your file. If instead you want to save a YouTube video, simply go to www.zamzar.com/url and past the url of the video into the “Add url” box. Click Add url, choose what format you want to covert it to, enter your email address and again, you will be sent a link to download the video in its new format.

The shortcomings of this site is that conversion can take a few minutes and you have to enter your email address instead of being taken directly to the download. However, not having to install any software or have any tech skills whatsoever for it to work is a huge plus for many users.

Looking to save energy while you work? Blackle.com may do just that. It takes the worlds most popular search engine, Google, and gives it a black background that uses less energy to display than bright white or other color alternatives. The paragraph below is directly from their website:

“In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.”

All Blackle asks is that you do your part in saving energy. They recommend you set your homepage to Blackle.com instead of Google (after all, your searches will still retrieve the same results) and add “Blackle.com – Saving energy one search at a time” to your email signature.