Off to ISTE 2012 in San Diego

It's hard to believe just how quickly the school year has flown by and I am once again getting ready to travel to the ISTE 2012 Conference in San Diego, CA. This promises to be a great conference with the buzz about mobile learning and the flipped classroom. I for one am looking forward to meeting up with friends and colleagues and sharing ideas about how technology can enhance the lives of the students we work with. Of course there is always the Exhibit Hall which is packed with new and exciting gadgets and gizmo's which is always a blast to go through. I'm sure we will be seeing lots of iPad apps and accessories being hawked in the Exhibitor Hall along with interactive technologies that can help engage the students in our classroom. While I'm at ISTE please follow my blog for my thoughts about the conference and some new an exciting products that will be launched. You can also follow me on Twitter at #assistivetek

If you are attending ISTE 2012 Conference look me up- it would be great to meet and get a chance to talk!

Visit With Me ISTE 2011

It is hard to believe that ISTE 2011 is around the corner! I will be heading out tomorrow to ISTE 2011 for three days of nothing but educational technology. What a joy! ISTE 2011 is one of my favorite educational technology conferences and gives me a chance to spot trends and connect with other educators. I have set up a number of meetings with both educational publishers and hardware developers and hope to get some new information to you via tweets and the blog. If you will be attending ISTE 2011, stop by the Canson PaperShow Booth # 128 and take a test drive of PaperShow for Teachers ($249). Later stop by at the HoverCam Booth #3119 and see first hand why the HoverCam T3 ($219) is taking classrooms by storm for the high quality 3.1 megapixel web document camera. So stop by and say hello-and take a look at these innovative and affordable technologies for the classroom. Hope to see you there! Brian

PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition™ Ideal Tool for Special Education Co-Teaching Classrooms

        CONTACT:
                               
                                Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D.
                                (908) 852-3460
                                brian (@) assistivetek.com
                   
       


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   
                               
PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition™ Ideal Tool for Special Education Co-Teaching Classrooms
 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference
The interactive writing solution is the Key to Effective Learning

PHILADELPHIA–June 26, 2011–AssistiveTek, LLC,  top reseller of PaperShow For Teachers  is excited to showcase the PAPERSHOW  Teacher’s Edition™ , the key to effective learning, for the second time at the 2011 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, June 26-29  in booth 128.

The PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition is the ideal tool for use in special education and inclusion classrooms, helping teachers to create more visually appealing interactive presentations. With PAPERSHOW  Teacher’s Edition™  teachers have access to a range of tools including, including an interactive calculator, magnifying glass, two measurement tools, lined paper for students learning to write and 72 different colors.
An essential tool for both the classroom and virtual teaching, PAPERSHOW consists of three elements: a wireless Bluetooth pen, a USB Key and interactive paper that work together to allow one to create a digital flip chart or annotate a Keynote or PowerPoint Presentation live. After a PAPERSHOW session, one can save it and then immediately print and/or email it to participants.

The PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition, combined with a projector and a computer, gives teachers the ability to transform their lessons and presentations into engaging interactions at a fraction of the cost of interactive whiteboards, as PAPERSHOW for Teachers costs just $249. The PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition starter kit, compatible with both Macs and PCs, includes one 128-page double-wired notebook, 30 sheets of interactive paper, one Bluetooth® digital pen, one 512MB Bluetooth ® USB Key with software embedded, one interactive extra toolbar, a ring binder, pen case and other accessories. 

“The PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition is a great piece of technology. It will help to support co-teaching models in the classroom, when there is a special education and regular education teacher in the same classroom, and allow all students’ needs to be met inside the classroom,” said Diana Scharer, Special Education Teacher, Township of Union, Union, NJ.  “With PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition, the special education teacher can record the notes and graphics and have them available for all students at the end of the period.”

The PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition works with Windows XP, Vista and 7 and the Mac operating systems Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. PAPERSHOW features six different colors, three different brushstrokes, perfect shapes, lines and arrows all of which bring presentations, meetings and classes to life. 
“Being able to export the notes in a PowerPoint and PDF format makes it great for students who need visual supports and accommodations. PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition speaks to the heart of Universal Design for Learning and offers all student s the classroom the benefits of a highly interactive and visual appealing notes,” Scharer continued. “Teachers who are using PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition enjoy the fact that they can move about the classroom and put their ideas up on the board as well as having students record their ideas on the digital notepad from their desks.”

For more information, and ideas on how to use PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition in the classroom, visit, assistivetek.blogspot.com 
###
About AssistiveTek, LLC
Since 2000, AssistiveTek, LLC has been providing products and professional services in the area of educational and assistive technology to educators. AssistiveTek, LLC delivers innovative products that help students to visualize ideas and concepts and helps teachers to integrate these tools in the curriculum. 

AssistiveTek, LLC is one of the leading resellers of PAPERSHOW Teacher’s Edition in the United States and provides support and in-service programs to demonstrate how this innovative technology can be used in the classroom to support all learners.

Reflections on Traveling with the iPad WiFi

I have had my iPad WiFi for about a month now and have enjoyed using the Ipad WiFi for getting my email, surfing the web and of course playing Scrabble. In preparation for attending the ISTE 2010 Conference I decided to see what it would be like to travel with the iPad instead of my netbook which is what I usually do. While the virtual on-screen keyboard is alright for entering web sites and the such, I decided to take my Apple Bluetooth keyboard just in case. For one thing the iPad weighs almost nothing and there is not the need to take a lot of the other accessories that I would normally have taken with me. It is a rather small package and is really great for travel. It is so light you sometime forget that you are actually carrying a computer.

Once I checked into my hotel room in Denver, I quickly fired up the iPad and registered to use the hotel Internet which dare I say was $10 dollars a night for in room use. In any case I was able to quickly get up and running and could easily access my email and check out my favorite websites. While I was traveling I need to access Moodle to enter my students grades and to monitor the discussion board. The Moodle site worked well with the iPad and I was able to do everything I need to do enter my students grades. Since our college uses another web based application to enter the students final grades I needed to log into their system to enter the students final grades. I had bookmarked the secure site prior to my travels and was able to quickly log in and enter all of my students grades without a hitch. My college does use a fair amount of Flash on their website for navigation which makes it a little more of a challenge to use with the iPad.

During my stay I used a number of iPad apps with the Bluetooth keyboard which worked very well. I did some mind mapping using iThoughtsHD which right now is my favorite mind mapping application on the iPad. I suspect that all of the mainstream developers of mind mapping software will shortly have their own mind mapping app running on the iPad. I was able to use Pages to do some word processing and used Skype on the iPad to talk to my friends and family.

On my way home I sat in the Denver Airport and logged into their free WiFi hotspot and checked my mail before taking off. All told, I had a very positive experience using the iPad WiFi during my trip and realize just how powerful the iPad can be as an all around tablet computer. The iPad does make you think a little differently about your workflow and using cloud services like Box.net, Evernote and Dropbox really helps you to maximize the quality of your experience when using the iPad. So just in case you have second thoughts of whether to take your iPad on the road - go ahead and give it a try, you will be glad you did!