CTEP Blog

2006-08-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hello again. It's been a while, but I'm back for another update. This will probably be my last entry before I make my way down to sunny Florida.

I can't believe it's my last week working at CTEP. It seems like only a month or two ago I was moving down here, starting my new job, and learning a new city. It's been a really fun year though, and I've learned a lot, and met a lot of cool people.

I'm just wrapping up work at my site. I'm still helping out with the homework center at Dayton's Bluff library, and helping out with computer questions and training. I've also held a few workshops for library and Metro State staff on assistive technology, which went really well. The first session went well, but only one person showed up. This was probably due to the short notice before that session. I presented the workshop three more times and have a good turnout for all of them. It was quite interesting each time too because people asked different questions each time. I think it went well, and hope everyone learned something new.

I haven't done too much work with the assistive technology workstation here at DB, but I'm working with staff to come up with some recommendations and do some research on assistive tech for the computer. I wish I would have gotten a chance to do more with the computer and get some more outreach going, but hopefully my research and other projects will help in the future. I've learned a lot though from working in the homework center, and helping out with the different classes Riley is doing like the video and photo clubs, as well as our basic computer training. I've learned a lot about digital photo and video, but know I have so much more to learn.

I've also been trying to finish up the toolkit and video project the Accessibility and Usibility committee is doing. We have most everything done now. It's mainly a matter of putting the video into the toolkit, and burning the CD's. That should be done by this week before I leave.

I've also read another book for the CTEP book club. This one was titled To the Left of Inspiration by Katherine Schneider. This was another disability related book I found on the Bookshare website. It's interesting to see many people's takes on the subject, and find out how some of this information can help people. This book described a visual disability from a variety of topics from the author's perspective. It was rather funny at times, and she makes some good points. I liked the section talking about schooling. I do think it's important for people with disabilities to go to public school. Some specialized classes may be necessary, but I think residential schools can sometimes limit the experiences and exposure to regular life. the other sections were good too and rather entertaining. A lot of the suggestions and tips I felt I've heard before though from reading similar books.

Besides work, I've mainly been preparing for my move to florida, which is approaching very soon. I'll probably be leaving in less than a week now. It's been kind of a headache figuring everything out because I'm not moving directly to my new apartment. I'll be living in a condo for a few weeks till an apartment becomes available, which means I can't just have movers pick up all my stuff and deliver it right to my new place. I think we've gotten everything straightened out now. It's just a matter of making the final arrangements and paying for everything. Hopefully that will all be done within the next day or two.

I'll be taking the train to florida which will be pretty cool. I've been on a train twice before for a spring break trip a few years ago. I liked it except for one thing... I can't sleep in those coach seats. If I'm really tired, I can doze off every now and again, but that's about it. I'm sure I'll be dead tired when I finally get to Florida, especially considering it will take 2 full days. I'm excited for the job to start, but I'll be glad when the whole moving process and settling in is done.

Nothing much else has been going on lately either. I'm glad the temperature has finally cooled off recently. We had our end of year CTEP BBQ last Friday, and that was pretty fun. I've actually been to a few BBQ's now over the past few weeks, which is great because I love grilled food. I've also been playing more multiplayer FEAR with a couple friends of mine, and that's been a blast. The great thing is we all now have Skype, a headset, and copy of the game, so we can still play pretty easily when we all live in different places. I love the Internet... Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll head out with a couple CTEPPers to catch a movie.

That's about it for now. Until next time, or a new blog...

2006-07-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hello again. I think this will be a rather quick update. There hasn't been a whole lot of anything new going on. I'm still working at the library, trying to get a few projects completed before I'm done. I did have my first two workshops on assistive technology last Monday and Wednesday. They both went very well, and it sounds like more people will be coming to next week's sessions. I'm still hoping that the library will get the various software before I leave so I can help install it and get it set up for public use.

I'm done with my Masters class though, and that's a good feeling. Yay, no more papers for a while... I'm mainly concentrating on work, and figuring out stuff for moving. I still haven't found an apartment, and I have to figure out how I will get myself and all my stuff there. I do think I might finally have a good lead on an apartment that is in a good area and will actually be open.

I haven't really been doing much of anything new for fun either. Just playing a little more Oblivion and FEAR online when I get the chance.

Hopefully I'll be able to have more good news on the whole moving process. I can't wait till that's all figured out.

2006-07-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hello again. It's been busy as usual this past week. I've been working more with the assistive technology here at the library, and helped a couple of customers learn more about various programs. It's good to see customers from Lexington come over here to still use the technology. I'm glad it's been useful. I also held my first assistive tech training workhsop this morning, and it went really well. We only had one person show up, but she was really interested in the technology and asked a lot of good questions. I'm hoping the lack of people was due to the short notice, and that the next 3 will be more popular. I'm also trying to get more done on the AU toolkit so we can combine the video and toolkit together soon. I've gotten a lot of it done, but there's still a lot of information to add. still, I can start to see the end now.

The great news is I'm finally done with my Masters course. One less thing to worry about... It was an interesting class, and I got to learn more about some other classes in the degree. Some sound quite fun, like the multime and games classes. My only concern with these is if we have to make multimedia. Generally speaking, these authoring programs aren't what I'd call majorly accessible. Still, I'll find a way to make it work.

I'm also still scrambling to figure out my housing situation for Florida. I don't know the area, and what places would be good. the one I was really interested in turned out to maybe not be such a good idea after someone checked it out. I have a couple other prospects in the works, so hopefully one of these works out. I so can't wait till all this moving crap is done. Finding a place, finding movers, packing and unpacking, transferring accounts to new addresses.... Still it will be worth it.

Not much going on for fun either. I'm basically concentrating on work, school, moving, and everything else. Oblivion is still consuming a few hours on the weekend. I just hope it cools off soon because this weekend was aweful, and makes me really wonder about living in Florida sometimes.

2006-07-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm a little late with this week's entry, but a lot has been going on. Work is still going well. I'm really trying to work as much as possible to get my hours in by the time I have to leave for my new job. I've been doing a lot of research projects, as well as helping in the homework center and with computer classes. Hopefully things will pick up more with the actual assistive technology at the library. The last couple weeks have been a little odd because of the holiday in the middle of the week, and stuff like that. I'd really like to have something in place and working for the customers by the time I leave.

As for the new job, I've been looking for apartments, filling out forms, and other misc. moving related things. I still don't know how I'll be getting to Florida, or getting all my stuff down there, which will be interesting because I have a lot of stuff. I'm also looking for apartments because I'm not so sure I'll be taking the apartment recommended to me because the rent is quite a bit higher than I'd like. There are cheaper 1 bedrooms, but they're not currently available. $755 just seems like way too much to spend on rent, but then again, I'm cheap and think my $525 is kind of expensive. Still I like where I'm living now, and if I can find something comperable in Florida, I'll be fine.

I'm also trying to finish my masters class. It's actually the last week next week. Thank God! I like the class, but I have so much going on right now it will be one less thing to worry about. Until then though, I have to lead online forum discussions, and write a paper which I still haven't done any writing on. I've gotten lots of sources and reference materials, so I think I have all the information I need, and then some, but I just have to sit down and write the paper now, and of course source it, goody...

I also have been reading for the CTEP book club again. This time I didn't read about disabilities or assistive technology. Riley recommended a book to me, so I gave it a read this weekend. For this month I read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. this book was a study on how people making minimum wage actualy survive. the author worked in several cities throughout America, doing several different jobs to see how well she could live on what little wages the poor are expected to live on. She held everything from cleaning jobs, to food service, to retail at a Twin Cities Wall-Mart. It was an interesting read. We all know places like this aare out there, but it's always disturbing to read how businesses are more interested in making it look like work is getting done, than actually doing good work, like her cleaning job. The other one that was rather nasty was the food service job where everyone wasn't even using utencils to prepare food, and the place was a dump. It's just one of those things I prefer not to think about when going out to eat...

None of this was really that surprising though because I know people who work these kinds of jobs. This kind of thing just makes me angry. I could go on a long rant here, but I don't want to get political and things like that here. I'll just say it makes me really angry to see these huge corporations' management make billions of dollars while they treat the people who make the business work like crap. I specially feel for the farmers, since pretty much everything goes back to agriculture, whether it be the food we eat, clothes we wear, etc. I grew up on a farm and know the crap small farm owners go through only to see everyone else get the profit because my dad is a farmer. I'll just end it there.

So things are very busy now, and they don't appear to be slowing down at all. I still have a lot of hours to put in for CTEP. I want to get a bit more done on the AU Toolkit and a lot more done at my site. I'm also secretly hoping my proposal for some extra hours I completed for my accessibility project gets accepted because that will really help with my overall hours count I have yet to complete. Only one more week of class, and then I can really concentrate on the move and new job preparation.

Till next time.

2006-06-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm back again. Things have just got a lot more interesting lately.

First, the exciting news is I have been offered that job in Florida I'd applied for a while ago. I just got the call this morning. I'm almost certain I'll be taking the job. The pay isn't bad vs the cost of living, and the job itself will be really fun. I think I described it a little in an earlier entry, but here's a little more info. I'll be working as an assistive technology teacher, doing one-on-one trainings, presentations and workshops, evaluating new technology, and helping in a new computer lab. Sounds good to me... Another cool thing is I should be able to get an apartment right on the bus line, and maybe even within walking distance to work. The city is also excellent for public transportation and for just being visually impaired I guess. It should be an interesting experience. I only wish I knew someone down there.

As for my current job at CTEP, things are also going well. I'ts been a little slower toward the beginning of the week ,but I've been helping out more in the homework center and helping people learn to use the computer. Riley and I did a intro computer class this morning. Sadly not many people showed, but it still went really well. I helped someone create a resume for an interview he had today, and we both helped another guy get an E-mail address and learn more about the Internet.

the interesting part is going to be to see just how many hours I have left to complete my 1700 hours of service, especially since the job starts on the 21st of August, earlier if possible. And I'll need to get down there a few days early to figure out where things are and get the very basics situated. I hope I've caught up the last few weeks on hours because I'd hate to find out that I needed to work 60+ hours a week to finish in time. I really want to finish my projects, and especially get my education reward. That would really really really help out a lot. I could probably have my student loans completely paid off over the next year, year and a half total with this new job. Yeah! Stupid debt...

I'm also busy with my Masters class. I really need to start working on my paper, and finding sources for APA format because I haven't a clue how that stuff works. I can easily write 5 pages worth, but sourcing will be the pain. Hopefully I'll get something accomplished with that this weekend, along with more work on the toolkit.

Last weekend was pretty fun too. Friends from Crookston came down, and we hung out some. We didn't do as much as I thought we would, but it was still fun, and a nice break. Even better, I made it to the Dell store, and even better still, my monitor I wanted went back on sale. So I finally bought it and had it delivered Tuesday. It's sweet... 20.1 inch widescreen ultrasharp with hight, tilt, and other controls. Best of all I can finally use my DVI output on my video card, and wow does FEAR and Oblivion look awesome now. I'm still hooked on Oblivion, but hardly have time to play lately. Hopefully I'll get a little time this weekend after I get some work done. I've also started playing FEAR multiplayer with a friend of mine, and it's been a lot of fun.

That's about all this time. Tons of stuff is going on, and the next couple of months will probably be just chaos, but great. I'm SOOOOO glad I will have a job, not have to not work for a period of time, and I don't have to keep up this crazy job hunt going. Yes!

2006-06-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hello again. this week has been pretty interesting. I've started working at Dayton's bluff Library now full time for CTEP, and things are going pretty well. I've had a couple of meetings with staff on the assistive technology, and I'll be starting to do some presentations to library and university staff soon. A lot of people seem pretty interested in these trainings/presentations, so that's pretty cool. I only wish I could demo Dragon, but we don't have that on the computer yet. I'll probably be demoing much of the technology with my laptop, at least in the beginning.

We're also working on updating the computer with new versions of the software they already have, as well as getting a couple other pieces of assistive tech. I'm really not sure how this is going yet, but hopefully something will happen with it soon. right now, I'm planning the presentations for the staff, which will be a little different since I'll be using my laptop, and some of the technology won't be demoed. People have expressed interest in learning specific things already about different programs, so I'll be able to demonstrate that. I'll also be able to show off Web Adapt, since I can probably put that on this library's computer, since it's through the university, and not the city. There's been some interest in the Bookport too, so I might put that in the demo. I think it's a good idea especially since it's a college setting. It's nice to be able to bring books with you.

A couple of us are also going to a demonstration of the Freedom box at MCIL this afternoon. I'm not sure who will all make it, but it will be interesting. I'm curious to see what other library staff think of the software. I think it might work pretty well in a library or university setting.

I've also been working on my Masters stuff again. I got my presentation done. It probably could be better, but it should work, especially for the time I had. Now I just have to keep up with the online discussions and write my other paper. Writing the paper is fine, but we have to use APA format, which is actually quite annoying. Personally, I hate reading sourced text because all the long sourcing breaks up the information, and it doesn't read well. A bibliography page is fine, but I hate putting stuff right in the text. Plus I know nothing about APA right now, so this will be fun...

I also have my Skype video interview for the Florida job tomorrow, which I'm really excited about. I really have to nail this interview because I really want this job. It sounds like a sweet job, and then I wouldn't have to keep looking. I'm getting sick of job hunting. I just want to work.

Haven't been doing much for fun lately either. I haven't had time. I play a little DS from time to time, and I'm still loving my DS Lite. It's so much better. I also play a little Oblivion off and on, and the game is just getting more amazing and fun. I think it will take me at least a year of off and on playing to finish this one, and I still probably won't see everything. this game's huge!

I'm pretty excited though because friends from Crookston are coming down later today for the weekend, and so we'll have lots of fun. Who knows what we'll do, but it will be a nice break.

Well that's about it again for this week.

2006-06-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm back again for another extra update. I've been doing a little more reading for the CTEP book club, and will talk a bit about the book. This month I've read Adaptive Technology for the Internet: Making electronic Resources Accessible to All by Barbara T. Mates.

The first thing I'll mention is that some of the information in this eddition is rather outdated because the book was published in 2000. I was still interested in reading the book because I thought it might have a good general overview of accessibility and assistive technology.

The book started out talking about public computer and Internet access for people with disabilities. It also addressed some common mis-conceptions people had about the disabled using computers and the Internet. The main one is that people with disabilities mostly don't use technology, and the ones that do are such a small group it doesn't pay to invest in so much technology. This isn't true at all. In fact public technology centers are great places for people to go to use the computer and Internet, especially if they can't afford a computer, let alone all the assistive technology they need to use said computer. It's also important to have resources available for introductory training, or at least enough to get people started. Computers in general and assistive technology can be a bit intimidating for some users, so it's helpeful to have someone available that can help get them started. Having thousands of dollars worth of technology is useless if no one uses or is able to use it.

the book then went on to talk about website accessibility, as well as various types of assistive technology people use. The content was pretty well done, and I liked how the information was divided into each disability type, and then by type of assistive technology, like screen magnifiers and then screen readers.

The only real problem I had with the book is some of the information was pretty outdated. Even for being published in 2000, the book often referred to Windows 95 and technology around that time. Many of the hardware and software mentioned is still available in newer versions. Some of the limitations of the technology are a bit outdated though, like how screen readers aren't able to read tables very well. This has gotten a lot better.

There is still some good information in here for someone new to assistive/adaptive technology though, and some of the accessibility tips and principles still apply. Maybe there's a newer edition of the book by now too.

2006-06-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Well, it's my last week here at Lexington Library. In a couple of weeks, the library will be closing for the move. Starting next week I'll be working at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State to help upgrade their assistive technology, and then do a lot of what I've been doing here, outreach and training. I'll also be helping with other computer trainings and projects over the summer. It should be pretty fun. I got started there yesterday for a quick orientation and planning for my first few days. I then helped out in the homework center. It was their last day of normal hours, so they had a little party. It started out pretty slow, and we didn't know if anyone would come, but it was soon packed. We watched movies, played games, and hung out.

I've also been working on my grad school stuff again. Summer classes have started, so I'm working on the few projects we have to do for the class. I'm almost done with my online presentation. There's just a few more things I'd like to add and put together. Then it's just completing a few discussion questions for the readings which I finally got done last night. So far the class is interesting, and thankfully a lot less work than the previous two. There's still stuff to do, but not an epic project like last semester.

I haven't really had much time for anything fun. I did however trade in my Nintendo DS for the newer DS Lite model that came out last Sunday. It's really nice and I'm glad I did. The screens are so much brighter and clearer. It really is like going from the original GBA to the SP. The buttons are a little better too, although the face buttons seem a little too close together sometimes. The stylist is also much better, bigger and more comfortable. If you don't have a DS yet, go get a DS Lite. They're great! If you do own the original model, it's still worth looking into an upgrade.

After a long break, I've started over and gotten back into Oblivion. This game is just so awesome and deep. You can do whatever you want, play however you want, and create your character so it's completely different each time. I created a new orc character similar to my first one, but I did things a little differently based on how I want to play. So far things are going well. If you have a PC that will run it, this is really the only game you'll need for a long time. I can't recommend it enough.

I'm really looking forward to next weekend. I have a job interview, and then my friends from Crookston will be down here for the weekend. I'm sure we'll head out for a few drinks, maybe play some cards, and who knows what else.

Well, that's about all for this week. I just can't believe how fast the year is going by and that I'm pretty much done working at Lexington already.

2006-06-08T08:39:00.002-07:00

Hello again. I'm back for another weekly update, and wow are things getting crazy, and by crazy I mean insanely busy.

I'm wrapping up my work here at the Lexington Library. It's hard to believe it's well into June already, that I've been working here for over 6 months now, and that the year will be over before I know it. Still, things are going well. There's still some interest in the assistive tech computer. I've been shoing it to other customers as well as other organizations and libraries who are interested in what we have. Next Monday I'll be meeting with a few people from a newly formed MELSA library assistive technology interest group. They are really interested to see what we have, and may try to start something like this in their libraries.

I'm also continuing my prep work for Dayton's Bluff library. I've been contacting other colleges and universities to see what they have for AT and what's been working the best for them. I may also set up an upcoming presentation for the Freedom Box over the next month. I did find out that they do now have a special public account organizations can buy that addresses some of my concerns in our last meeting. Chat and e-mail features are disabled for these accounts, but the users would still have access to all the other links and resources on the network, as well as System Access Functionality.

The AU committee is still working on the video and toolkit projects. Laureee is working more on the video and I'm devoting more time to the toolkit right now. I do wish our committee hadn't lost half its members, but what can you do... I really just need to take a day to work on nothing but the toolkit, and I think we'd be well on our way to getting it done, but I haven't had much time with everything else going on lately. It's wierd because other committees are starting to really wind down, and we're working like mad. Still, I think and hope our final projects will be useful to current and upcoming CTEP members.

I have also just started a summer class for my Masters program this week that goes until the middle of July. I wanted to take the summer off, but the class is only offered during the summer, so I decided it would be a good idea to take it. It's the intro class to the degree, and shouldn't be too bad. It's mainly just a lot of reading, discussion posting, and a couple projects. My first one is due around the 20th. We have to research someone in the Instructional Design field, and do a PowerPoint Presentation with another audio plugin that describes a bit about them, their past and present contributions to the field, and any publications they've written. I chose to be one of the first to get mine done since I thought things would only be crazier later on in the semester. The other project is to do a paper on something in the field, but I'm not sure because I haven't looked at that assignment yet...

Finally I've been doing a lot of job hunting lately, and finding lots of potential jobs. The good news is a couple have called me back. I'm currently in the process of trying to get a job in Florida and California at the moment. The one in Florida sounds really really sweet. Not only is it pretty much what I'm doing here at the library, teaching people computers and assistive technology, but it's in a campus style area with tons of other organizations and resources for the blind and visually impaired right there, including the worlds biggest collection of braille and audio books. I really want this job! I had a phone interview earlier this week, and they just called me again this morning. They would like to do a Internet video interview using Skype. Skype and a headset I have, a webcam I do not... So that's also on my immediate to do list. I need to find a webcam and get it working quick so I can let them know I'm ready to schedule my next interview. Anyone have a webcam I could borrow for a couple days?

The other job is also quite interesting. It's in California and also deals with assistive technology. Basically I'd be helping people who are trying to find jobs, learn technology, and make their job site accessible. I'd perform technology evaluations to see what they'd need and what might work best for them in their situation, do on-site evaluations, and lots of other stuff. I'm also hoping for this one. I had a phone interview for this one on Monday, and they should be getting back to me any time now about a possible second interview.

On top of all that, I managed to catch another virus of some kind this weekend, which is odd because I rarely get sick. It's been really quite annoying actually, and on Tuesday I stayed home because of it. I got some work done, but not as much as I'd have liked. I've pretty much gotten rid of it now, except for the occasional coughing. Now I just have to make up for a few lost hours on Tuesday, but with the amount of stuff I have to do this weekend, that won't be a problem.

That's about all for this week.

Update: Sorry for the duplicate posts. My Internet connection was being extremely slow and seemd to refuse to actual post this entry. Turns out it eventually did, 3 times... It's fixed now though.

2006-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Back again for another week, and it's been a really busy one. This week has been the busiest in a while. I didn't get too much done this weekend. Instead I caught up on some movies and stayed in my nice air conditioned apartment a lot of the time on Saturday and Sunday.

The AU committee is still working on the video and toolkit. We met last Friday to work more on both. We have a few ideas for background music for the video, as well as a possible method for closed captioning it. We're talking about accessibility after all, so we definitely want to make the video itself accessible. I also came up with a rough template for the toolkit. We talked about a couple minor layout changes and ideas, so now it's really just organizing all of our past presentations, blog entries, and resources we've collected over the year and catigorize them. I don't want to do too much with the actual HTML piece until we figure out the actual catigories so I can make the proper navigation links. I'm really hoping to get a lot of this done this weekend.

After the nice, long, 3 day weekend the week got really busy. ON Tuesday I met with a couple library customers. One didn't need to use the assistive technology, but just needed help finding something out on the Internet. The other customer was a regular that is learning to use screen magnification software. Both went really well.

Then Wednesday I met with a new customer who was interested in Magic, to enlarge things on screen so she could surf the Internet, check E-mail, and write in MS Word. This went very well, and she'll be coming in more often to practice using the software, and maybe even learn about a couple of other programs we have available.

I also showed the assistive technology to library staff from 2 other branches who are getting some AT for their branches later this summer. It's really cool to see how use of this equipment is taking off, and even expanding to more library branches.

Finally on Wednesday, I met with a few people at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State Library to start coming up with some ideas for my work there during this summer. It sounds like we'll be updating the software that's already there, and getting some additional software to serve more people. We also talked about ideas for projects for the summer like outreach and training.

One interesting thing that came from this meeting was a possible future job prospect. The idea came up that it would be great to offer some training via a class or independent study where students could actually get credit to learn about the technology. This would be useful to students who are getting a degree related to disability and social services. It also might help people just be more interested in learning about the technology. People often come for mainly night classes and don't want to stay around the university for the rest of the time, so this might be another possibility to get people interested. I then could maybe help with the disability services office too. I'd love to see something happen with this because I really like the college and university setting, and I have lots of experience doing all of this stuff. It would just be cool to say I was a professor, even if it's at an adjunct level.

We're also getting more interest in the assistive tech computer. A few more people are calling and stopping by, and some regulars are coming back again too. I should have a couple appointments next week already.

I also finished my AT basics binder and started showing it to people. It seems to be really well received, and people at every other branch with AT wants a copy. I think it will work very well as an intro piece for the next CTEP member working here. They might not have much, if any, experience with assistive technology, so this should help get them started.

That's about all for this week. I'll hopefully get a bit more done with the toolkit this weekend. And we're having our Corps day at the capital tomorrow, so that should be interesting. I'm just hoping the next couple weeks will be as exciting as this week. I'm also looking forward to starting work at Daytons Bluff in a couple of weeks.

2006-05-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm back for an additional entry this week to talk a little about a book I read this past weekend for the CTEP book club. The book is The Children's Machine, Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer by Seymour Papert. I didn't even realize it until after reading it, but the book was written in 1993. This is interesting because a lot of what he talked about is being used or at least tried in some way today. The book is about how people learn, and how this can change in the age of the computer.

The book was rather interesting because he talked about a variety of situations where computers could change how we learn different thing, and just how people learn differently in general. There were a lot of stories and examples of how computers might help in the classroom.

He also talks about how people learn, and how current standard education might not be the most effective way to teach kids. I can definitely understand this. Sitting in a classroom and listen to someone talk endlessly about something and write things on the board isn't exactly the most interesting way to learn. I always learned the best from hands-on classes, or if the instructor could relate the material to real life, or just make it more interactive and/or fun. Computers and multimedia have really helped classrooms more interesting, but at the same time made students even less interested and willing to sit through a traditional classroom setting.

A couple other ideas I really liked is how he talked about multimedia, virtual reality, and gaming as interactive ways of learning. The virtual reality could be an interesting way to learn about something or somewhere the student might not be able to normally see. Video games are also very interactive, and aren't just a simple kids game. There are lots of complex strategies and techniques students can learn from video games.

One final thing that was interesting and true is how students actually maybe learn more outside of school sometimes. This is also true to a point. People are taught to learn key things like reading, writing, and and other subjects, but students also learn a lot more just by socializing and doing things outside of class.

The book was pretty interesting overall, and maybe a little more so since it was written in 1993. It's interesting to see some of the things he predicted, and think of how they relate to what's actually being used today.

2006-05-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again. Well I'm back for another week, and it's been a busy one.

Before talking about this week, I'll quickly talk about something I forgot to mention last week. Last Wednesday I met with the Media committee to do an interview for the CTEP video. It was actually pretty fun. I talked about the different assistive technology that we have, what I do, and some of the challenges I've faced so far. They then got some footage of me demoing some of the assistive technology like JAWS and Dragon. I can't wait to see the video.

So this week I've been doing a lot of different things. I've been slowing down on the outreach for Lexington Library since we'll be moving soon. We're only open for about another month, and everyone's busy packing. Instead, I've been starting to focus on outreach and planning for my work at Dayton's Bluff Library. I've been making some contacts to various colleges and universities around the area to see what types of assistive technology they commonly offered, and what's worked well for them. I also got some good suggestions for marketing and publicizing the technology.

That isn't to say I've stopped doing stuff for Lexington. I have a couple of people coming in to get a demo of the computer mid next week. I'll also be helping a new customer learn more about JAWS and Kurzweil, and maybe demo some of the other technology too.

Finally I'm working on a sort of quick reference guide/program basics folder for library staff. For each of the different assistive programs, I'm putting together some basic tasks and commands customers almost always want to know when getting started. I've pretty much completed it, and will be showing it to other library staff tomorrow and next week. The nice thing is, pieces of this, or all of it, can be used at Dayton's Bluff too. There are also a couple of sections for basic Windows commands and tips that Riley and I can probably use in our computer trainings this summer. The project started out pretty simple, but kind of turned out to be a kind of quick reference manual for library staff, and will also probably be a really good starting point for the next CTEP member.

I'm also doing more ob searching and applying. I got an e-mail back from one requesting an interview for next Friday, which is a Corps day, so I'm hoping to get it changed because I think the job would be really fun. It's an assistive technology job in California.

I also have to make a decision very quickly about summer grad school. I have to quickly figure out if I can get it paid for, and register if I can because I think the first class is on June 5. In a way, I would rather just have the summer devoted to work, but the class is only offered during the summer, so I should probably find a way to take it. The plus side is, from what my instructor who's also the head of the department told me, the last 2 classes I took were the hardest and took the most effort of all of them. Oh, which reminds me, I got somewhere around a 99% last semester! Woohoo! I rock!

Finally the AU committee is still working on the toolkit and video. We're meeting here at Lexington tomorrow morning to hopefully finalize some more things on the video and toolkit. I really have to get cracking and finish a template tonight to show at the meeting tomorrow. I've started, and know what design I'm going for, but I just have to sit down and finish it.

And with the 3 day weekend, I'll hopefully have some fun. I didn't get to grill out last weekend like I'd hoped, but maybe this weekend. I'll also probably kick back and read some for the CTEP book club just to keep my hours up. Maybe some friends and I will get together to do something outside or play some cards again. And of course there's the DS when it's super hot outside...

I'm also looking for a new LCD monitor for my desktop at home. Right now I have this beastly CRT monitor that puts out tons of heat, and is really dark for some strange reason. I really want to get a Dell 19 or 20 inch widescreen model, so if anyone knows of a good deal, let me know. Anything to lessen the burden of my air conditioner...

That's about all for this week, so have a good long weekend. I'll be back again next week.

2006-05-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Well, this week has been another interesting and busy one. Sadly, no one new has been coming to use the assistive technology. We still do have a couple of regulars that come in at least a couple times a week, which is great. I've really beeing working on outreach again this past week. I've put together a list of organizations that have newsletters that might publish an article on the assistive technology services at the library.

I'm also working on the transition to Dayton's Bluff. I've been contacting various colleges and universities around the area to see what types of assistive technology they offer, what people find most useful, and any suggestions they may have as we're expanding our assistive tech. Since Lexington will be closing in just over a month, I'm starting to think of ways to advertise the services I'll have available at Dayton's Bluff soon. The interesting part is figuring out just what we'll have. I know we have a version of Kurzweil and Dragon there, but I'm not sure if there is any other software that's not installed. I don't want to advertise products or services that aren't there. We're also thinking about adding some additional software to the machine, so a lot of things are up in the air right now.

I'm still working on the various committee projects as well. I've found a few good possibilities for background music for the video. there's one in particular I think might work well, but I also want a variety of music styles to choose from. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to work more on the toolkit layout and some more audio.

I haven't really had much time for anything else this week. I've been trying to catch up and get a little ahead on hours, especially since I was sick for a couple of days last week. It sounds like I may get together with some friends for a couple games of cards and maybe a BBQ if the weather is nice.

Until next time.

2006-05-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

I'm back for another week, and it's been an interesting one. I've actually been fighting some nasty cold/flu thing since Saturday afternoon. It was odd too, because I felt great when I got up that morning, but midway through the day, I just started to feel sick. I was rather out of it for the next few days. Yesterday was the first day I actually started feeling human again.

I've still gotten quite a bit of work done this past week. I'm really working on outreach for the library. I just put together a newsletter article/press release about the assistive tech and training we have at the library. My plan is to get it posted in area and disability related publications, as well as a few websites.

I also attended a presentation on Dragon Naturally Speaking at MCIL (Metro Center for Independant Living) last Thursday. It was actually very interesting, and I learned a lot. I'm still new to using Dragon, so I got some good tips, commands, and suggestions to help make Dragon work better. I also met the tech person at MCIL, and he was very cool. We had a good talk about technology in general, assistive technology, and what we had at the library. When I get my article approved, I will be sending it to MCIL so it can be put on their website. I also did a couple minute presentation to everyone at the demonstration on the different technology and services we had at the library for free. I handed out some business cards and fliers, and people seemed pretty interested. I hope something comes from it.

I've also been working a bit more on the whole future job search thing. I've applied for a couple jobs, and posted my resume on some good job websites. I'm still really thinking about doing another year of AmeriCorps, but I'm looking at other options too.

Between all of this, I've been checking in with a couple of websites on a little event going on down in L.A. this week, that I really wish I were at right now. The Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3 is going on this week. It's basically a huge press event focused on all the newest and coolest tech toys and video games that will be coming out in the next year or so. There's actually a lot of very cool stuff to look forward to. I'm especially excited about Nintendo's new system that will totally change the way people play video games. The DS was a great start, but their new home console is completely different than anything else. I can't wait!

It's rather hard to explain in words. It's something you just have to see. You basically don't have to worry about complicated controllers with lots of buttons. You have two separate pieces to the controller, one which is like a TV remote, and the other has an analog stick. Both of these pieces have motion sensors, so you just do the actions in a game rather than pressing a button. Swing the controller like a baseball bat or golf club. Flick it forward and pull back to fish. Aim a gun in a shooting game by pointing on the screen, or perform actual slash movements to use a sword in-game. The cool thing is, you can do the actual motions, or simply do small gestures with your wrist. I can't wait to see all the new possibilities of this new controller. So what's the system called? It's actually the Wii, pronounced "we." I know, I was rather confused too. I still don't know if I like the name, but everything else looks extremely cool, so I'm getting it anyway.

That's about all for this week. Next week I'll be working more on library outreach, training, the AU committee video project, and who knows what else. I'ts just great to be feeling well again.

2006-05-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made it. Yes, I have completed my training module and finished the semester. We had our last class last night, where everyone talked about their projects, what they did, what went well, what didn't, and what they learned from the whole processes over the last two semesters. It was quite interesting, and everyone seemed to have some of the same problems. I wasn't the only one who planned big last semester. Pretty much everyone had to focus their project scope a bit this semester. Everyone's projects went through some pretty significant changes from their original plans as well. There were some pretty cool projects too. I'm just really happy this project is now done. I've been putting a lot of work into it the past few weeks, and it's cool to see the final product. My end report for the class was a wapping 140 pages, oh yeah...

This week's good for another reason. I'm finally credit card debt free! I've been working like mad the last few months to get rid of this debt, and I've finally succeeded. Yay! Now on to savings and student loans...

Work has been really busy lately too. I've met with a couple customers again, and things are working out well. They're learning a ot, and I'm learning more about teaching, and what I don't know or remember in certain programs. I use Kurzweil myself, but don't regularly use some of the shortcuts and commands people have asked about, so I'm trying to refresh my memory on some of those things.

I'm also working on some training and reference materials for library staff. We decided it would be a good idea to have some basic documentation for staff on how to get people started with each of the programs. I'm making a few documents with some basic instructions and requirements staff should know to get customers started. Most of the programs aren't too bad. It's pretty simple to learn the basics in Magic and Kurzweil. Jaws might be a little more tricky though. It's easily the most complicated program to learn and use, since most people don't use the keyboard.

I'm also still working on outreach. I'm attending a presentation this afternoon at MCIL on some assistive technology, voice recognician software I think. I want to learn more about this topic, and it will be a great way to let peple know what we have, and start networking with MCIL. I'm also working on an article/press release that we can put in various newsletters advertising our assistive technology.

The AU committee met on Monday to go over all of our raw video footage and see what we had. For a couple minute video, we have a lot of video footage, a little over an hour. Now it's on to writing a script, and figuring out how to piece everything together, the hard part in my opinion. The video is now being used as an intro piece to our toolkit we're developing. We found out that our proposal for the CTCNet Conference was rejected, so we can slow down a bit and refocus our plans a bit. Our current plan is to finish the video and put together the toolkit. This will keep us plenty busy until the end of the year. I'm glad we can slow down some now.

Our committee roles have changed a bit too. One of our committee members has accepted a new job, so will be leaving next week. We also have a new committee head. For the next couple of months I'll be taking over the role of secretary, and the last couple of months I'll be the new committee head. I'm not too excited about being the leader, but I suppose it's good experience.

Aside from all that, I'm starting the job hunt again. August wil be here very soon, so I should start looking now. I haven't yet decided whether I'll stay in CTEP for another year yet or not. Either way, I've learned and done a lot. This weekend I plan to hopefully just relax a bit and enjoy the nice weather.

2006-05-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm back again. I'm doing an extra blog entry this week to write some thoughts on a book I recently read for the CTEP book club, which I found rather interesting. I'll be back again tomorrow for my regular updates, but for now...

The book I recently Read is titled, High Tech heretic, Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian written by Clifford Stoll. I was looking for a good book to read for the book club, and after seeing this title, I was really curious. It was a quite interesting read, and kind of goes against a lot of what we're trying to do as CTEP members.

The book covered a variety of topics why the author thought computers didn't belong in the classroom. Many of these I agreed with to some extent, or at least understood his point of view. He provided good examples that backed up his thoughts, and many of them made sense. However I think it was a bit to exadurated. By the time you're done reading the book, you get the feeling computers are the worst thing ever, which he says isn't the case. I think it would have been good to include some counterpoints, and explain how technology and computers can help in a classroom, or at least how we can fix these problems he brings up, rather than simply pointing out the negatives.

There's definitely something to be said for limiting the use of computers in the classroom I think. One example he commonly used was math. It's very important to learn the basics of math, like the multiplication tables, and how to do math by hand if the need arises. Yes, you have to still know a little about the right order to perform calculations in a complex math problem when using a calculator, but it's good to know the mechanics of each step. I can identify with this pretty well. Recently I was doing some quick math for something, and I went stupid for a minute. I forgot how to borrow when subtracting. I quickly figured it out again, but I've gotten so used to just using the calculator.

Another big point was how flashy and interactive computer games and programs aren't as good as people say. You don't need to have a computer to play an interactive game. This kind of thing can be done in the classroom with a teacher and classmates just as easily, with no technical problems. This is true. However I like interactive content on the computer myself because I can study better on my own. I don't feel I'm learning much when I'm just reading a list of terms in order and memorizing them all for the test the next day. When I was in college, we had a cool little Flash game that was something like the Millionaire gameshow. This was both fun, and it made studying easier because I was getting the questions in a different order, and I wanted to see how far I could get in the game.

Another point he made was that laptops aren't as portable as we'd like to think. Books shouldn't go away. Yes you can cary a laptop in a backpack, but there's more to worry about. For instance, you don't have to worry about a book's batteries running out, or your book crashing in the middle of reading a chapter. Also, a book doesn't break if left in the cold or dropped from a couple feet. These are all valid points. I love my laptop, but there are sometimes where it's not as convenient as I'd like. I have to boot the thing, which takes a couple of minutes if I want to open a file or take a quick note. PDA's and cell phones are starting to solve this problem, but still, sometimes paper is just quicker and easier.

The one section I really did like though was on presentations, and using programs like PowerPoint. If used correctly, they can add to a presentation. Most of the time however, they're used entirely the wrong way. I know I've sat through my fair share of super boring presentations where the presenter or instructor just reads the PowerPoint show word for word, or has the bulletpoints there, and reads from a book or paper instead. People even do this without technology. I've also been to many presentations where the presenters read word for word from their written speech. Either way, these presentations are very very painful, and no one learns anything.

I do think PowerPoints have their use though. If the main topics are listed, it gives the audiance a good idea what will be discussed. The presenter should still refer to written notes or the PowerPoint as a reference, and actually give the presentation in his/her own words. Use it as a tool, not a crutch.

This brings me to my last point about the book. The one recurring theme I see with technology is computers, the Internet, and technology in general, is that people see the technology as the solution, not a tool They think the newest computer toys will automatically fix their problems or do the work for them. I look at it like the recent video gaming buzz in the news lately, where parents complain about violent video games because the parents are relying on these games to raise their children instead of the parents themselves. That's a whole other topic/rant though.

I use the computer for many, many things every day, from news, shopping, communication, to entertainment. But I still see it as a helpful tool, and know it's not going to solve my problems just because it's cool technology. Some things are just easier, quicker, and more efficient when done in person.

Overall I still thought the book was quite interesting, especially from the CTEP perspective. It's kind of taking the exact opposite view that we're taking on the Internet and technology. I really wonder how other CTEP members would react to this book, and can't help but think it would make an interesting book discussion.

2006-04-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

Only one more week... That's right. By this time next week, I'll have completed my project and my Masters course this semester. I can't wait. It's been a very interesting project, and I've learned a lot. I am glad though that it's finally nearing completion. We have one more live class next Wednesday, and our final project is due that same day. I'm really close to being done. All I really have to do now is fix a few things, and write up a couple more documents, and print everything out. Then it's done. I am quite curious how long the final document will end up being, because we're essentially printing all the design documents for both last and this semester, the instruction, evaluation, and feedbak and final reports. I'm thinking it will be at least 50 pages by the time all is said and done. It will be a great thing to add to my portfolio though.

Work is going well too. I'm still working on the usual stuff like outreach and training, but I'm starting a few new projects too. This past Wednesday I met with a few people at Dayton's Bluff Library to start working on an audio project for the library website. There are some key policies and information that would be helpful to people in audio form. The first part of the project is to figure out what information we want to focus on. Then we'll find people who can help translate these pieces into a few different languages. Finally, we'll be recording audio files of all of these translations for the website. Some library policies are hard to understand for some customers, so including both text and audio descriptions in their native language should really help.

I've also been helping more with the Digital Advisory team at Intermedia Arts. I've been helping come up with ideas and accessibility suggestions for their new website. The team also briefly spoke at an Intermedia Arts board meeting last night. Things are going well, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the website progresses.

I've also been learning about more assistive technology workshops and presentations around St. Paul that I plan on going to. I'm always trying to learn more about what's out there, and especially learn more about other technology that help people with other disabilities. I know AT for visual disabilities pretty well, but still feel I don't know as much as I'd like about other technology. I'm also using these sessions as an outreach and networking time. It's a great way to inform people what services and technology are here for free, at the library. Of course I'm starting to think about life after CTEP, and possible job opportunities in the assistive technology field, and the more connections the better.

I also got to take a quick look at the assistive technology computer at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State library. The computer itself is pretty nice actually. The only thing that's maybe lacking a little is memory. When running all the recent assistive technology it's really useful to have 1 GB RAM, and the good news is RAM's dirt cheap right now. As for assistive technology, they have a couple of programs, but they aren't recent versions. I also learned that JAWS isn't on that machine. We're looking to address to this because otherwise I can't really use that computer. They currently have Kurzweil and Dragon Naturally Speaking. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping to make some connections with other colleges and universities around the area, to see what they offer for assistive technology, what's pretty standard, and what unique things each one might have. This should help presenting our case that there is a need for some additional technology. I'm also going to plug WebAdapt, especially since it's free and all...

So I have plenty to keep me busy at work. I'm really hoping to get more customers coming in because it's really slowed down since it's gotten nice outside. One cool thing I just learned while I was typing this, is a couple other library branches should be getting a similar assistive technology computer. There's a meeting about it in the beginning of May, which I don't know if I'll be helping with yet or not. I hope I can though because I feel it's a very valuable service.

Oh, and we're still working on our video project for our Accessibility and Usability committee. We shot some footage at Lexington on Saturday, and will finish the rest of the footage we need by this weekend. ON Monday, we're going to meet, and go over what we have, and how we want to proceed from there. It might be interesting to see how things work out. One of our committee members is leaving CTEP for a cool new job she just got, so that's really cool.

I haven't had much time for anything really fun or exciting this week. I've been pretty busy. I'm still playing my DS off and on. I really love this little system, and I'm so glad I got it. It's really nice because I'm not tied down to a TV, and it's a great way to kill a couple minutes between other stuff. I've been playing quite a bit of Tetris DS and started Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow. Both are really fun. I'm also looking forward to The New Super Mario Brothers and the updated DS system that I might have to get later in May. The screens are much better and brighter, whichwill really help. Also, I can't remember the exact dates, but the coolest time of the year for gamers is coming up in May. E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is coming up, and I can't wait to see all the awesome stuff that will be coming out over the next year. I'm especially excited to learn more about Nintendo's mysterious Revolution console. I sooo wish I were going this year, but I'll settle for camping out in front of the computer off and on for a couple days to get all the happenings.

Finally, since everyone is posting videos and other interesting projects on their blogs, I'll end my mini-novel with a very very cool link. The people behind this site are part of the demo scene. These demos are like little movies, but are actually generated by code rather than actual video footage. The really interesting thing is, these demos are very small. These guys produce some very amazing stuff that can fit on a floppy. They also have started making an actual simple first person shooter game in under a meg, which you can get from this site. I highly recommend checking this site out, and watching and playing these demos. I recommend watching FR08 The Product and FR035 or something, The Popular Demo. The game is pretty sweet too, especially for how much content is crammed into under 1 MB. Go to http://theproduct.de/index.html to see the demos.

And that'll do it for this week.

2006-04-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Thursday again, so I'm back for another weekly update. Things have been quite busy this week. I've met with a couple of customers here at the library, and over the phone. There really haven't been many people calling, e-mailing, or stopping by the library lately, but I'm still trying to get more people interested in what we have here. I suspect the nice weather has something to do with this, and I can't blame them I guess. Still things are going well. Everyone I have been helping seems to come back and says they learn a lot.

Last Friday the CTEP Accessibility and Usability committee started shooting video footage for our video project. We got some footage from Intermedia Arts that morning, and then PPL in the afternoon. I think it went really well, and we got a lot of good footage. I even got to try shooting a little video, which was cool because I didn't know how well I could see to do so.

This past Wednesday, we also got to go on a tour of the new Rondo Library we'll be moving to this summer. My main first impression was simply how huge the place truely is. It's a lot bigger than Lexington Library. It's probably over twice the size. Everything seems well thought out though. I got to see where the new homework center, and my favorite part, the electronic classroom will be. The rest of the library looked quite nice too. The construction isn't quite done yet, but you really can get to see how things will start to look shortly. I can't wait to see the final product.

Aside from work, I'm still slaving away on my Masters project. I finally have enough people who have completed my module, so I can finish my report that's due on Friday. We have to write a 5 to 10 page paper that basically described how all the testings went, how I did them, and how well everyone did. No actual names will be used though. I have most of the written part done, but since the last couple of people finished last night, I have to still put together lots of tables, charts, and graphs that show a variety of things. This is the pat I'm not lookiing forward to. It's just a lot of data entry, and making tables and charts that look nice. I found out last night that I had completely forgotten how to make a graph in Excel, so I was relearning that again. I just never make graphs because I never have the need, and I can't really read them myself. I now know enough again to finish my report though.

Everything went really well with my evaluations. I got 8 people to go through the training module, and I got really good and different feedback and suggestions from everyone. So thank you everyone who did go through it. It's helping a lot. After I finish this report, it's the final draft of everything. I really have to just compile everything into one long Word file, and fix a few things in the documentation, and I'll be done. I can't wait. It's been a lot of work, but I've learned a lot.

I really haven't had any time to do anything much else than work and homework this past week, and I forsee the same for the next week or two. That's ok though because I'm getting a lot done.

Until next week...

2006-04-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

I'm back again. This week has been quite busy actually. The main focus this week has been my project for my Masters course. I have everything online now, and ready to go. I've been getting people to test it, and write any thoughts, comments, and problems they have with the module. So far three people have tried it out, and it's gone well. I've got some good feedback already, and I should have plenty more by next week. Then it's pretty much just writing about how things went, and organizing everything for the final day of class. Considering where I was just a month ago, it's come a long way and actually looking pretty good.

Work has been going pretty well too. I've been helping out a few customers over the phone with some of the technology they have at home. It sounds like a couple of them may come to the library to see what technology we have as well, so I hope they do stop in soon. I've also been doing more work with Intermedia Arts this past week. This Tuesday, we had our second Digital Advisory committee meeting, which was pretty interesting. A lot of interesting ideas came from it, so I'm interested to see what happens over the next few months. We also had some good food.

I also did a presentation to the Intermedia Arts staff this Wednesday on assistive technology and website accessibility. I only had about 20 minutes, so I didn't get to show off that much cool stuff, but it was still a lot of fun, and people seemed to really get into it. I actually really enjoy doing this kind of thing too, so I guess that's something to sconsider when looking for my next job. I would almost make a good salesmen that goes to trade shows and stuff to show the technology and talk about how cool it is.

Late last week I also started working with a new portable book reader called the Book Port. It's about the size of a calculator, and will read a variety of different types of electronic books. It reads text, Word documents, HTML pages, and also supports Audible books, Daisy books, and regular MP3 files. The speech synthesizer it uses isn't near as good as Jaws, but I'm starting to get used to it more now. Maybe in a future hardware update, they'll support more synthesizers? The nice thing is that it uses standard compact flash cards for storage. It came with a 256 MB version, but I've already almost filled that up. I may have to look into a couple bigger cards for all the books and media I have. It's still nice though because the bus rides aren't near as boring, and I can just tune out the annoying people.

I haven't done too much for fun the last few days. It's been so nice out, but I've been so busy I haven't gotten to take much advantage of it. There will be a CTEP party this weekend that should be fun to go to though. And tomorrow the AU committee is starting its first video shoot, so that should also be interesting.

That's about all for this week.

2006-04-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday again, so I'm back for another update. A lot has actually been going on this past week, work, school, and otherwise.

Work has been quite busy but fun this past week. Last week was very slow, and I only met with one or two customers. This week though, I've met with three or four. I'm still helping one customer learn Dragon, and it's going quite well actually. It's much easier now that I can use and experiment with the software itself. There are still some things to figure out, but it's going well.

Another customer is interested in getting the word out there to senior groups and other organizations he works with about the assistive technology. He also mentioned some class that is taught every so often at SSB on how to teach people computers, kind of how to be a teacher, and how to explain the basics of computers and assistive technology. This sounds interesting because while I am doing pretty well, I could always use more pointers. I'm not certified to be a teacher, I'm just winging it and building on past experience for the most part.

I also attended another training at SSB on Wednesday. This time it was on a couple of electronic Braille devices. It was actually pretty cool, and I could see the use of a small Braille display and Braille keyboard combo. However I just have a hard time still justifying the price for these things. I know I've talked about this probably several times before, but price is just insane. Braille displays are probably some of the most expensive pieces of assistive technology for the Blind. A 40 character display can be over $6000.00 Just thinking about that much for 40 letters, wow.... The small one they shoed off was a 12 character display with a Braille keyboard. This wasn't too bad comparatively speaking. It was just under $2000.00 Still, if I was an engineer, I think my first project would be to come up with a different way of making these devices much cheaper, but still work well.

On another technology note, I just got my new BookPort yesterday. This is a little device that can read many types of electronic books like Daisy, txt, Word documents, Audible books, and MP3 files. It also has a voice recorder for quick notes and a Braille keyboard mode for typing notes. I don't know how to do much with it, but know enough to read and listen to tunes on the way to and from work. Yay! Bus rides aren't boring now, and I can block out all the crazies. I'm going to have to look into a bigger Compact Flash card, like 2 or 4 gigs. The 256 MB one it came with will be filled shortly. So any dirt cheap Internet deals are welcome. It has to be a type 1 card though.

My friends from Crookston came down this week, and so we had some fun this week. We played some cards on Tuesday night, and I'm sad to say I rarely got a good hand all night. We played Smear, and me and my partnor won one game, but lost the other two pretty badly. It was still fun though.

Finally my masters course is progressing a bit further. I really need to finish polishing up the material, and getting everything working in HTML EZ by Monday, so I can start my one to one and small group testings of the module. Most of the content is done though, but I still have to think of a couple of questions for a couple end of unit quizzes. The aim is to have 5 questions for each unit, but I'm a little short on a couple of units. Then it's just adding users and getting a few technical things taken care of. So things are still moving ahead, and I just might be seeing the end of the tunnel in the distance. This project has been very interesting, but I'll be really relieved and glad when May 3rd is here.

That's about all this week. Thankfully the snow's gone, and it's been quite nice lately too. So until next time.

2006-03-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

Hello. I'm back for another week. This week has been very hectic in some ways, and very slow in others.

Work has been going pretty well. Sadly there weren't many customers coming into the library this week, ok, there was one. However it still went quite well. She was another new computer user, and was learning Jaws. We went over some of the basics, and I explained some of the technical concepts. It was a pretty fun training session.

Otherwise I've been doing a lot of outreach work this week, e-mailing and calling some places that might be interested in our services. I've also been trying to keep an eye open for any cool bits of info from last week's CSUN conference. Next week should pick up more though because I have a few appointments already, and a good idea of a few projects I want to work on.

The hectic part of the week is from my school course. It's still progressing pretty well. I have all the instruction done in draft form, so now it's mainly to tweek it and make it sound better. My current project is to reword the objectives for everything, and then come up with evaluation questions for each unit. These will be a few thought questions throughout each unit, and actual quiz style questions at the end of each one. Still a lot of work to do there, so I'll be very busy with that today and tomorrow. From there, it's just updating and uploading everything into HTML EZ, so next month I can get a few people to test the module.

I haven't had too much time for much else this week. I did have a couple of interesting bus rides yesterday evening and this morning. Both times, people started fighting on the bus, and yesterday the cops actually came by. I think the driver reported the people this morning too. Seems like when the weather gets nicer, the crazies come out.

So there's nothing too interesting to talk about this week, but next week should be a lot more eventful. Until then.

2006-03-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

I'm back again for another week. This week hasn't been too eventful at work, but there are still a few things to talk about.

This week has also been rather slow for customers, but I've gotten other work done instead, which is good. On Monday a new customer came in to learn about Kurzweil, and really liked the software. I think he'll be coming in fairly often to scan and read books and other printed materials.

On Tuesday I showed another staff member some of the technology we had on the computer, and we had an interesting discussion on some of the issues with assistive technology, like how inaccessible it can be due to pricing. I think I've touched on this in other entries, but this is my biggest annoyance right now. Immediately when I think of assistive technology, especially computer based, and maybe rather high tech stuff, I immediately think cool and very expensive. So then I think there's little to no chance I'll be able to ever use the technology unless I win the lottery, get lucky enough to get help paying for it, or pay on a loan for the next 15+ years.

This has been an issue forever, but it's really starting to be talked about more lately. Instead of propritary note takers, people can now buy software that runs on off-the-shelf PDA's and phones. I also have to say I really like what Serotek is doing with the Freedom Box. Not only does it offer different functionality for beginner computer users through the Freedom Box Network, it also has a pretty impressive screen reader component via the System Access program. I just found out too that it even includes remote computing at no extra charge, which I have to try out. And it's significantly less expensive than many other AT products out there now.

Anyway, on Wednesday I finally got Dragon trained to start recognizing my voice. One of the regular library customers I've helped in the past came in to help me as a volunteerer. He basically read me the paragraphs of text, and repeated whatever it got stuck on. The process was actually pretty painless, but still a little strange. Surpringly enough though, it picked up on how I spoke pretty well. This morning I did some more training on my own. I created a Word document, edited text, did some formatting, and navigated around Windows a bit. I was impressed at how well the program did. However what I need to still do more research on is using it with the Internet. speaking web addresses and navigating links seems rather clunky and inefficient now, but I'll definitely work more on that next week. I'm just happy I can start using the program now, and better help and teach others to use it.

As for other stuff going on, there's a really cool new computer/PDA device from GW Micro now that runs Windows XP and WindowEyes. It's basically a laptop in the skin of a PDA. It's got a 1 Ghz processor, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB hard drive, and can run Windows XP Home or Pro. It was just announced at CSUN this week. CSUN is an anual assistive technology conference in California, which I really wish I could have attended this year. You can find more info and cool pics of the device at www.gwmicro.com . I can't remember the name right now, but it's something Ultra. I'll defintely be keeping my eyes open for more info on this thing.

Things are finally starting to progress with my grad school project too. I've got a long way to go, but got a good start on my instruction. Hopefully I'll have the basics of most, if not all, of the instruction done by this weekend. It's a lot of work though, and I really have to respect instructors who put the time and effort into a great course. It's just as much work prepping everything for the class as it is doing the homework, sometimes more so.

Finally I'll hpoefully do a little gaming this weekend. I got my couple games I'd been waiting for for a long time. Tetris DS and The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion came yesterday. I quick tried each last night, and I love both. Tetris DS has several cool modes in addition to the standard Tetris everyone's probably played by now. I also like the cool retro Nintendo vibe they put into the game. The different game modes have cool remixes of classic Nintendo music from games like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and Zelda. It also lets 4 people play online at a time, and up to 10 people locally with one cart. I Must find a way to try 10 players. That sounds like pure chaos and a lot of fun. There are a couple things I don't like though. Like how you can rotate pieces quickly so they don't fall, and how you can see 6 of the next pieces in line. Come on, I want at least the option for the classic 1 piece view. It takes a lot of the fun out of the game if you see so far ahead. I find myself not even looking over there most of the time. Still the games a blast.

Oblivion is quite great too. I could write an entire entry on this game because there's so much to talk about, and I might if people want to hear more. Basically it's an action RPG with this huge world to explore. Every character is voiced, and has their on lives in the world. The AI seems pretty cool, and the characters can do a lot of surprising things. I only got through the initial training dungeon and explored a little of the countryside, but wow! This game is beautiful, and best of all the load times are very quick to non-existant when walking around the world. My character is a huge Orc that's great with swords and axes. I only wish I'd put more into lockpicking. That will soon change though.

Until next time.

2006-03-16T06:44:00.000-08:00

I'm back for another week. I guess the first thing to talk about is the weather. We got a lot of snow starting on Sunday night. I keep telling people how amused I am that we've gotten more snow now in the past couple days than we've had all winter. You know it's bad when a lot of the city busses get stuck during the day. I even heard on the news one night that there was a traffic jam that was about 30 miles long around the boarder.

As for work this week, things are still going pretty good. I got my quarterly report done for now, so that's out of the way. I am still getting a lot of interest in the assistive technology computer too. I had a lot of people scheduled to come in this week, but sadly because of the weather, most canceled. Still I met with a newer customer again this week, and things are going really well. She has a computer at home and a screen magnification program similar to Magic. It's actually the main competitor, ZoomText, which I also have on my personal laptop. She's learning to use the computer, keyboard, and how to type stuff up in Microsoft Word. It's going really well so far.

I'm also determined to get this Dragon thing working for me yet. I was talking with my supervisor, and we came up with a great idea. One of the regular customers who often comes in to use the computer and Magic is also looking for volunteer opportunities, so we set one up. So next week, he's going to work with me and see if we can't get Dragon trained for my voice. As it is now, it's hard to do this just using Jaws. You have to read several blocks of text, and if a word is highlighted, you have to repeat that word until it recognizes it and then move on. As I think I've mentioned before, there's a program that helps with these problems, but it's spendy. So we're going to just try training it another way. I'll post how that goes next week.

That's really about all there is to mention about work, other than I'm still working on some tech proposals for the library, and will be trying out the new version of Freedom Box soon. The more I read and hear, the more I actually like about the program. I listened to an audio demo yesterday, and I really like how it handles web pages. It can some how tell what the main part of the page is, and just start reading from there automatically, which is very nice. I have a feeling it just looks for the first heading or paragraph tag and starts reading from there. So when I get my trial going at work, I'll test it with some really strange and complicated page layouts to see just how well it works.

Things are finally starting to get done in my masters class too, which is good because the semester is flying by. It took me a while, but the first step was really to narrow the scope of what I'll be developing this semester by a lot. I really have a feeling that what I planned out last semester was the layout for a whole semester's course. I guess that's one of my strengths/weaknesses. When I plan, I plan big... The project for the semester now looks like it will focus on accessibility for the visually impaired, with some background on vision impairment itself, assistive technology used, and then some information on common barriers and a couple sections for basic page elements. Even just focusing on vision impairment, I'm not covering everhting I could for this semester. The hardest part for me I think will be making the transition between sections because of how the course was originally designed. With so much lacking information on other topics, I'll have to be sure everything fits together well. So there's a lot of work to be done still, but at least I'm making progress.

Another interesting thing that happened this week was a phone call yesterday. A company had my resume for a while, and some jobs are becoming available. The great thing is, the company is focused on assistive technology and accessibility. All of their positions relate in some way to this issue. The job they told me about was for a web consultant to help make sure websites for a company were accessible and followed the guidelines of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. They're also looking for people all the time, so I'm definitely going to keep them in mind for when I'm done with CTEP. Apparently they do work in all kinds of areas including E-learning and Instructional Design, so yay, maybe my masters program will give me an edge there some time too.

So that's what's going on this week.

2006-03-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

Hello again. Well things have been busy as ever this past week. Work is going well. Over the past week, I've had 3 new people call or stop by. I've met with one of them today, and I'll be meeting the other two early next week. So I think we're up to around 12 to 13 people now.

Magic really seems to be the popular program. Often people just need some form of magnification so they don't have to struggle to read small print on the monitor. The people interested in Jaws have been using the program some already, but just want to learn more. A couple people are interested in Kurzweil as well. So all the technology is getting some use.

I'm still working out how to actually train Dragon for myself. In order to start dictating to the program, you have to go through some initial training. This basically consists of reading through a few paragraphs of text clearly until the computer understands every word. As a Jaws user, it's rather interesting, and by interesting I mean difficult. There is a pretty cool program called JSay that will greatly help bridge the gap between Jaws and Dragon, but like most assistive technology, it's a few hundred dollars. I think I'm going to just set up a time with a library staff member and see if they can help me read the screen, and see if we can get through it. I really need to get better at Dragon, because it's rather hard to help people right now when I'm not able to use it myself. So that's one of my immediate goals for the next week or so.

I'm also working on getting a couple other technologies available to the library. I'm going to put together a proposal for WebAdapt and The Freedom Box. I really don't see any reason WebAdapt can't be put on a machine, because it's small, and totally free. I'm also going to be doing some evaluating of the Freedom Box software, and putting together a proposal why I think this would greatly help library customers. I see it very useful to new computer users who just want to be able to do a select few things, and not really become very technical. A lot of people simply want to be able to communicate with family via E-mail, and look things up on the Internet.

I also had my first quarterly review with my site supervisor and CTEP supervisor. It went pretty well. Things are going smoothly, but we came up with a few things to try and work on for projects and just improving what I'm already doing.

I also had my first conference with my grad school instructor for my course project. Things are actually going fairly well, even though I'm probably still a little behind. I learned some basics about putting my instruction into HTML EZ, and just some tips for the instruction itself. I will also be figuring out how to trim down what part of the instruction I'll actually develop for this semester. My training module is so huge, and has so much content, that there's no way I'd get it all developed, implamented, tested, and evaluated before mid May. I now have a few ideas how to make this thing more manageable. Now I just have to sit down and work on it more...

Finally, nothing too exciting or fun has happened lately. I'll hopefully get together with a few friends in the next couple weeks. Oh, and I did get to visit the science museum last week with the rest of CTEP, and that was really cool. I love the omnitheater. And yay! There's finally a release date for a game I've been looking forward to for the past year or so, 2 actually. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion and Tetris DS both come out on the 20th, and I can't wait for either. Tetris will be great because I love Tetris, and there are lots of new modes that we can all play with only one copy of the game. That's definitely one of the coolest features of the Nintendo DS. And Oblivion, if it has everything it is supposed to, will probably be one of the coolest games ever, and thankfully my PC is powerful enough to run it now. And anyone who likes action games should definitely get F.E.A.R. and play online. I've been quite addicted to that for the past few months. Hopefully I'll be able to find more fun events and places to go in the near future too.

Anyway, that's all for now.

2006-03-02T12:11:00.000-08:00

I'm back, and do I have a lot to talk about today.... I'm not sure where to begin, so here we go.

Work is going well. I've had a couple of new customers, and some returning ones as well. It also sounds like some more people will be stopping in or making appointments soon. A lot of people are really interested in Magic, the screen magnification program. I'm also still hoping to get WebAdapt installed on the machine some time some how. I think it would be very helpful. The program is free to anyone to use, and it would help the majority of people I've worked with because a lot of what they want to do is use the Internet and e-mail. All I would have to do is make a quick getting started sheet and make a user account for them. They could then download the program at home, or I could even burn some more CD's to give them.

I attended another training at SSB this past Monday, and it was quite interesting. The presenters showed off a few pieces of technology like the Braille Note, Trekker, and a couple others. The Braille Note is a little PDA style device that comes in either a Braille or QWERTY keyboard style. It has an electronic Braille display and speech output. The device supports programs like Pocket Word, e-mail, Internet Explorer, etc. It's also got a couple of pretty cool exclusive features.

My favorite has to be the database feature. It's got a built-in database program that's so easy to use, I demand a Windows version. I don't understand why using and creating databases can't be this simple. The unit comes with some pre-built ones like for phone numbers and addresses, media collections, etc., but it's just as easy to make your own. There's even advanced features to make certain default values for fields, and how it reports info back to you. This would be sweet for a person doing anything via phone where they had to get someone's information and input more information in other fields. I love that software and wish it was on other platforms.

It also had a couple other cool things like some accessible games, an FM tunor, support for both Compact Flash and SD cards, and a couple more I can't remember. The only thing I didn't really like about it was the cost, and some of the hardware. Like it had a built-in modem, but no form of network card. It had a PC/MCIA slot, but no wireless. I think it would be much better to have an ethernet/modem combo card, and wireless card. Their reasoning was they didn't know what to support, A, B, or G. My thought is, they have cards that have all 3 wireless types supported. My laptop has one such card. Just put one of them in there and you're covered. Finally the cost was pretty insane, like over $2000.

The other main demo they had was a GpS for the Braille Note. This is a program that allows GPS functionality with a little hardware GPS add-on. This would be very nice at times. Using maps, you can figure out where you are, plan and follow routs, and find points of interest on the way. So I could plan my trip to work, and as I'm traveling, it would tell me where to go, and I could request certain points of interest along the way. Say I wanted to know about all the electronics stores along the way to work, because I'm a geek like that... I could easily set this up. There are some other cool features to it too, but I won't go into them here because I don't know enough about them to properly explain them. The device should be accurate within about 10 feet, so good mobility skills are still very important, but it would really help find new locations.

The Trekker was also there, but not demonstrated. This is another similar device to the GPS and Braille Note combo, only the PDA part isn't propriatary hardware. There's software you can install on a supported off-the-shelf PDA, which many are supported. It's also a bit nicer for the GPS part because it's smaller and easier to use because of its size. The Braille Note is quite big compared to it, and could cause more problems when walking. The Trekker can fit in a pocket, and has a case protecting it more from the elements, which is important when walking around here. The Braille Note has a case too, but has to be open to use the device in GPS mode.

OK, enough on that day... I also had a very cool presentation this morning at the library. Someone from Freedom of Speech came in to demonstrate a product called The Freedom Box. I had heard of it before today, but didn't know much about it, and what i knew turned out to be not quite so accurate. This thing is pretty cool, and has a lot of interesting features.

The program comes in a variety of types. You can get it on a Flash drive, mini-CD, or on a piece of hardware. You can also get it with a little keyboard or without, but more on that later. The sweet thing is, no software has to be installed. It all runs from the CD or flash drive.

The software allows a blind or low vision user to easily surf the internet, check and send e-mail, get news and entertainment, play games, listen to books or descriptive movies or TV shows, and more. The service kind of works like a cross between something like AOL but better, and regular computer use. There's the cost of the initial purchase, and then a monthly subscription of about $19. The initial purchase isn't that bad though in AT terms, it's around $250 to $550 depending on what type you order.

The main draw for this package is its ease of use. Rather than having to know a lot of computer and Windows concepts, keyboard navigation commands, etc, they make it very easy to use. Once the program starts, the user is presented with a menu of what to do: E-mail, games, news, etc. Once they choose an option by arrowing to it or pressing the number of the choice, they are presented with another menu of choices. They can compose e-mail in this way for instance, until they get to the actual To: field and such. But even then, they only have to type that information if they so choose. They can record a voice e-mail as an option and it will send an MP3 attachment to the message the other person can listen to. So there is minimal typing required, and navigating the rest of the system really only requires the arrow, tab, enter, and 1 or 2 other keys. There are lots more shortcut keys for advanced users if they want it, but they're not necessary.

Take this one step further by getting the PS2 or USB Keypad. This has the basic keys people would need to perform most of the functions without a standard keyboard. The very basic keys are the biggest, and slightly more advanced keys are smaller. Both ways work very well.

We tried a variety of things with it today, both with the keyboard and external keypad. We checked websites, e-mail, looked for movies, and more. It was all very easy. It provided speech output and large print, both of which can be customized at any time. Keep in mind all of this is running with nothing being installed to the computer. This would be excellent for beginning computer users or senior citizens who may have trouble learning or be intimidated by the computer's complexity. But it also has some useful features even advanced users would like.

Oh, one of the coolest things I forgot to mention.... When browsing the Internet, if I came across a site that had something I could fix like a button with no alt tag, I could custom label it. Jaws and most other screen readers can do this too, but that's not the cool part. The cool thing is, after a page is fixed up right, since a lot of the service is server based, you could press a keystroke to upload these fixes to their centralized server, and anyone who browses this page in the future would benifit from your fixes instantly. This was very awesome, and I'd love to see Jaws implament something like this, rather than having to find and copy settings files to a particular user. This is a quick and easy way to benifit everyone.

There's probably more I could say about all of this stuff, but i'll leave it at that for now. I will say though, that you can download a 30 day demo of Freedom Box from http://www.freedombox.info Interestingly enough, the company making this product is from here in the Twin Cities too.

Other than that, nothing too exciting has happened. A couple of friends were staying in St. Paul this week for job stuff, and a couple of the tech demos I went to, so that was cool. I'm starting to get something done with my masters project, but I really really really need to do a lot more, which is one of my plans for this weekend. I'm also looking forward to tomorrow because CTEP is going to the Science Museum, and that should be fun. And hopefully no one will be sick this time, and we can do some serious Mario Kart battling. So I'm keeping plenty busy, and having a little fun too.

Till the next novel...

2006-02-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

I'm back yet again, and have a few interesting things to talk about this time. First work... Things are going well. This past week hasn't been quite so busy, which is kind of nice. I helped out a few customers and learned a little more on some training tools for Jaws.

The cool part of the week though was the training day on Friday. The Accessibility and Usability Committee did a presentation in the afternoon on some of the assistive technology at the library we have at the library and that I use every day. We started out the presentation with an activity. This was to get people more interested in the topic and show them a completely different way of using a computer. The activity was to perform 5 simple tasks people often do in Windows, but with a catch. They couldn't use the mouse. Everything had to be done with only the keyboard. I then asked them to imagine doing this but without being able to actually see the screen.

The activity went really well, and everyone eventually got all the tasks done. It was interesting to see what kinds of things people had trouble with.

After that, I gave a demonstration of some of the assistive technology I use every day, and that I'm now helping others learn at the library. I demoed Jaws, Magic, and Kurzweil. Everyone seemed quite interested and asked some good questions. I ended this presentation by showing how Jaws could speak things in different languages, particularely Brittish English. Everyone really got a kick out of that, and I have to admit hearing Jaws speak in Brittish English still amuses me to this day.

Finally we handed out some useful Windows tips and tricks, as well as a list of some useful keyboard commands and shortcuts anyone in Windows can use. Overall the afternoon went really well, and I had a lot of fun. I'm definitely keeping everything on hand so I can do another presentation like this if I get the chance. All of the hand-outs and other materials can be downloaded from the AU Committee's section of the CTEP message boards at www.messages.technologypower.org. Also visit the AU Committee blog at http://au/committee.blogspot.com for more information and links.

I also went to a job fair in Minneapolis this weekend with a few friends of mine also looking for work. It was OK, but there's one thing that really is bugging me about all these job fairs. I've been to many of them over the past few years, and am seeing a lot of the same things. Often when I visit a company's booth and ask what types of positions they have open or that I'm looking for something in I.T., they hand me a booklet with information and tell me to go to their website and check their current job postings section. This is cool, but couldn't I just do that on my own anyway? I wish you could get a little more info, or even get an interview more often at these things. It's nice to learn about companies you've never heard of, and learn more about ones you have, but still...

Aside from that, nothing too exciting has happened. I'm still trying to work more on my training module and other stuff for my grad school course. And I may have an opportunity to do a little more website work for my landlord. So I'm keeping plenty busy. I'm still playing some DS and other video games when I find time too. Next month is going to be great because a couple great games will be coming out that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Everyone must get Tetris DS next month. It's going to be sweet! I also have very high hopes for The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion. I could go on and on why this game is going to be so awesome, but I won't, now anyway. From what I can tell though, it will be one of the coolest adventure/RPG's ever. I also hope to get together with a few friends over the next couple weeks, so that should be fun too.

So until next time...

2006-02-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

I'm back yet again, and I actually found time this week to update. The past 2 weeks have been very busy, but I like it. It's definitely better than being bored. My work at the library is going quite well. We're getting regular customers coming in to use the computer, and a few more are probably going to stop by soon. It's really cool knowing that you started with 0 customers, and now the technology is getting used on a regular basis.

I also attended a few other interesting things over the past week. I attended anoter presentation at SSB on JAWS for Windows this time. It was a pretty informative presentation. The presenter went over some of the cool new features of Jaws that people might not know about or generally use. He also talked a bit about the next couple updates for Jaws, and some good things are coming. Finally, we'll be able to update the software right from within the program itself like many other programs do. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time because it gets kind of annoying having to go to the website and download the whole installer again.
It should also work better for tracking the screen. Now when a Blind user surfs the Internet, a sighted person watching can't tell what the heck's going on. Jaws uses a virtual cursor that makes it easier for Blind users to navigate complex programs and websites, but doesn't make much sense to anyone else. I also hear Forms mode will be fixed so when you run across a form element, Jaws will turn forms mode on automatically, and off again when you navigate away from a form element. Yay! Forms mode always bugged me in its current state, so maybe I'll use this feature more now.

There will be a free 7.1 update within 6 or 8 weeks or so, and version 8 will be out around September, assuming it doesn't get delayed. The other interesting thing was I knew the presenter a little. I previously interviewed at Freedom Scientific a couple of times over the past few years, and I actually interviewed with him once or twice. It's good though that now I'm starting to make some connections in the industry, because it's more who you know now days.

Yesterday I also attended a volunteer fair and helped represent the library at St. Paul College. It went pretty well. There were quite a few people interested in the services, and a couple more people might even be interested in the assistive technology. There were also a lot of regular library customers there.

Finally I also started the Digital Advisory Committee at Intermedia Arts, a site where another CTEP worker is working. They're trying to get a informative and unique web presence, and want to be as inclusive to a wide audiance as possible. A couple focuses are people from other countries and cultures, and people with disabilities. I'll be helping out with that on a sort of consultant level, and doing other projects as they come up. We're also encouraged to come up with our own ideas. One cool thing I didn't even know about it until after I said I'd join is we actually get $500 over the course of a year for participation. I wasn't expecting this at all, but hey, sounds great to me.

I have lots of other stuff going on too. I'm currently trying to work on our Accessibility and Usability committee presentation, which is going well. I'm working on a fact/resource sheet as well, which I'm really just getting rolling on. Our committee is also meeting here at the library tomorrow too so everyone can see the technology we have.

I also should be working on my training module for my masters class, but that's not going too well at all. I've been super busy at work, and haven't gotten around to it much, ok, really at all yet. I also have to do some online discussion questions, which are interesting, but just haven't gotten that far yet. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend...

So yeah, there's plenty to do. I am having a little fun though. Four people, and maybe more soon, have a Nintendo DS and Mario Kart, and we play during breaks and lunch on training days. It's a lot of fun, and it seems to be spreading. More people seem interested, so that's cool, and to think I started all this madness. Yeah! A few of us might be writing an article about the DS and our gaming sessions in our next newsletter too, so that will be fun. I've written gaming articles, reviews, and such for a few gaming websites in the past, so this will be fun.

A friend of mine is also interested in a couple upcoming CTEP positions starting soon, so I hope he gets one. He's been looking for a job for quite a while now too, and it would just be cool if he lived down here too.

Yet another long entry, but they are getting rather fun to write, so I hope they are interesting to read. Until next time...

2006-02-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

I'm back for another update. Well it's been very busy the last week or so, which is good. I've had a couple new customers come to learn and use the computer. One customer even comes in almost every day to use the computer and Magic on his own which is great. That's what we're trying to do, is to get people in and independantly using the tools available.

Last week I attended a presentation at State Services for the Blind on some of Freedom Scientific's products. A rep from Freedom Scientific was there to give demos and answer questions on MAGic, Open Book, and their new stand alone scanning product. All were pretty interesting, and I learned some new things. I was especially interested in the MAGic part of the presentation because I was helping people use it at work. I haven't used that software for a while either, so it was good to get some info on some new features.

Open Book is pretty similar to Kurzweil 1000 in that it reads scanned print materials. I also learned that it now has a feature that scans other files similar to the virtual printer in Kurzweil. It had some interesting functions for the low vision user too, but I think I still prefer Kurzweil slightly for now.

The next week or so will also be very busy, but more on that next time. How about that, a shorter entry this time...

2006-01-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

I'm back again. The first thing you'll notice is I changed my blog a little. I really didn't like my last template, but just now got around to changing it some. There are still some changes I'd like to make, but I'll get there eventually.

Anyway, things have been pretty busy lately. I have lots going on at work now. I'm actually starting to get some customers interested in our equipment coming in. I think we have around 5 customers now, and more should be coming soon which is great. When we started, there weren't any at all. Some are interested in learning Dragon, but most are interested in the Blind and low vision stuff, which is cool because I know the most about that...

On MLK day the Accessibility and Usability committee teamed up with the Programming Committee and presented a workshop to other Americorps members. The programming committee showed some pretty cool resources and technology for training people to use computers, and where to get other assistance. Our part of the presentation covered some useful tips for effective presentations and training. I was really impressed how it turned out. We didn't get many people to come, which was kind of unfortunate, but the people who were there really seemed to get into it and ask a lot of questions. We even had someone tell us later that we were the best one there.

I have also started my spring semester in my masters degree program. Last semester we created a layout for a training module, so this semester we have to actually create the instruction. What I'm realizing every time I look at the course is how much work there really is to do. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this one. In the end, the training will be how to create a basic accessible web page with Dreamweaver. But it's amazing how much you actually have to cover before you can even teach people that. I have gotten a lot of interest from a few of the people at work and in the CTEP program, so I may suggest this as another project I can work on for work, because this will be useful for pretty much any organization, business, or individual creating websites. Maybe it can even be included in our CD toolkit.

All that stuff is keeping me really busy. I'm pretty much working on something all the time. It is cool though because we're slowly getting a group of gamers together in the CTEP program. We play a little Nintendo DS on training days, and will probably get together more in the future.

I also wanted to continue what I was talking about last entry. There are many cool programs and events for people with disabilities, and I've been fortunate enough to participate in some. The first one I want to talk about is the DO-IT Program at the University of Washington. DO-IT stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology. It's a program for high school and college students with disabilities who are interested in a career in science, math, or technology. The program has gone though a few changes since its first year in 1993. Originally it was only open to Washington residence, but but then included Origon, Montanna, and North Dakota, which was when I started. I was accepted in 1995.

Basically how the program works is, for the first 2 years, you are considered a DO-IT scholar. For two weeks in the summer, you get to go to the University of Washington. Here you meet everyone, learn about cool new technology, get college and job raining, and do all kinds of fun stuff. We went to the science museum and really secret virtual reality lab. Both were very very cool. After the first two years, you become a DO-IT Ambassitor or Mentor. I actually attended the summer session for a third year to help out with everything.

The summer sessions are just the basics of the program. During the rest of the year, you keep in contact with everyone in the program online. One of the coolest things about the program is, if you didn't have a computer, or a decent one to get on the Internet, you got one through the program, including the assistive technology you needed to use the computer. I had a computer, but it was super old, nowhere near what I needed. Although I made old technology do things it was never meant to, which is another entry... I got a new computer, Jaws, Zoomtext, and scanner with scanning software. We also got an E-mail account for the program. All this was available to us as long as we were active in the program.

I really enjoyed going through the program, meeting all kind of interesting people, learning about all kinds of disabilities, etc. I still keep in contact with some of the people today, although I haven't been very involved lately. I hope to get back into the program again as a mentor and meet all the new scholars.

The other event I'll talk about before signing off again is Ski for Light. This is a yearly event in South Dakota. It's actually probably coming up here at the end of January. This program is for people with all kinds of disabilities who want to try skiing and other fun snow activities. I have only gone once, back in 2003, but it was a lot of fun. It's a week long event. Everyone stays at a hotel during the week, and goes to the mountain every day to ski. There was downhill and cross country skiing, snowshoeing, tubing down the mountain, and an interesting form of sledding. I did some cross country skiing, but no downhill. I figured I had a hard enough time staying up on fairly level ground. I'd kill myself trying to downhill ski. The sledding was fun though. They were basically some cool sleds that looked like snowmobiles called Sharks. They had a 1 and 2 person model. You would be pulled up the mountain with a snowmobile, and then fly down on your own. It was really cool. There was a little joystick thingy to turn, and you could go alone or with a friend. Those were the most fun during the week. On Friday we had little competitions for skiing, and I actually won the cross country one. We basically had to write down a time for the circuit, and then try and finish as close to that as possible. I was only 17 seconds off. Woohoo!

At nights we'd have some activities or we could just wander around town doing whatever. One thing I noticed is everyone loved to drink. People often hung out around the casinos, and they even had a tent at the foot of the mountain with some drinks during the day. It was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go again some day when I have time.

Both of these were great experiences. I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun. But that's enough for this entry.

2006-01-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back for another entry, and I have a lot to talk about this time, so here we go. First of all, I now have my new laptop. I picked it up last week, and love it. I'ts a Dell Inspiron 9300, and it has all kinds of great stuff like a DVD burner, very nice widescreen display, and plenty of RAM and processing power. I also got upgrades and a couple pieces of assistive technology software. I got an upgrade for Jaws that will let me finally try Terminal Services/remote access, MAGic, Zoomtext, and Kurzweil. This is great because I have uses for all of them, and a lot of it's on the library computer, so I can demo software anywhere now.

Then the next day, the outreach department got their laptop, with Jaws installed, so now I have Internet access at my desk. Woohoo! This will help a lot. I just found it funny that I get 2 new computers to play with in one week.

And as I said last entry, I've been doing some reading for the CTEP book club. First, what I read last time. The first book was Career Perspectives, Interviews With Blind and Visually Impaired Professionals, by Marie Attmore. I saw this book, and thought it might give some good tips and ideas for Blind and low vision people working or looking for work. It was mildly interesting, but the title was kind of deceptive. There weren't really any interviews in this book. Instead, there were short descriptions of a person, and what they did followed by an interesting quote or thought on a topic. Some of these were interesting, but far from the interviews I was expecting. The book is short, so it might be a good book to quick check out from the library, but the next books I'd recommend reading instead.

The next book was What color is the Sun by Kenneth Jernigan. This was another pretty short book. It mainly told some stories from different Blind people and shared some thoughts on different topics. This one was a bit more interesting to read.

The most recent book I read was called What Blind People Wish Sighted People Knew About Blindness by Harry Martin. This book was a bit longer and rather interesting. It covers a variety of topics that might help sighted people understand Blindness and what to do when they encounter a Blind person. I like this book because it explains things in plain language instead of a lot of medical mumbo-jumbo. The book covers things like transportation, daily living, guide dogs, and even being a spouce of a Blind person. Some of the things I agreed with, while others I didn't so much. It was an interesting read though, and this would be the first book I'd recommend reading out of all of these.

One common theme all of these books touched on, which I totally agree with is how Blind people are just that, Blind, and nothing else. Sure there are some things we can't do like drive, fly a plane, etc, but most everything else is fair game, even many things people think we can't do. People often seem to feel cautious around Blind people, and don't talk to them like they would anyone else. Here's my thoughts on the subject.

First, I think Blind people should live a normal life like anyone else. Specialized training is very important like mobility, daily living, and technology training, but overall, I believe going to a public school is also important. Blind children shouldn't be sheltered and waited on all the time. There are definitely times where they will need help. I know when to ask for help when I can't do something, and have no problems asking for assistance. However, I grew up with a family that really pushed independence and self-reliance. If I needed something done my parents thought I could do or learn, they definitely wouldn't be doing it for me. "You want it, figure it out." is what they'd say. Of course they'd help if I had questions, but I learned a lot on my own as well, and I'm glad I did.

I also attended public school most of the time. In 7th grade I went to the ND School for the Blind for a year to learn Braille and some technology, but otherwise I went to school with everyone else in my class. This is very important because Blind people should also learn how to socialize with everyone else besides family and other Blind people. This might seem like common sense, but I've seen a lot of Blind people who really don't have good social skills simply because they never got the opportunity.

Finally, I'll briefly talk about some of the things I've done, that many people might not think Blind people would be able to do. I guess I should mention, and probably should have earlier, that I'm low vision, and not completely Blind. I have enough vision to get around pretty well by sight, watch TV and play video games, etc. I grew up on a farm, and often helped with a lot of the farm work like dealing with chickens, sheep, and cows. I didn't like it, but I did it anyway. I also biked a lot. I'd often bike to the nearest town about 3 miles away a couple times a week, and sometimes another town about 11 miles away. I also drove the ATV all the time for both work and fun. I did all kinds of crazy, probably stupid stuff, all farm kids do. I've also done some cool things I'll post about in the next post like attend the 2003 Ski For Light week in SD and the DO-IT Program at the University of Washington. These were excellent activities, and I'd recommend people looking into them for themselves or someone they know with a disability. But I'll talk more about that stuff next time. This entry is long enough already.

Well that about does it this time. If you actually made it through this entry, congratulations. Sorry it was so long this time. I'll try and keep them a bit shorter in the future. Any feedback or thoughts you might have, feel free to post them in the comments section. Till next time...

2005-12-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

I'm back, probably for the last time this year. Anyway, things are going pretty well. I found out yesterday I should have my new laptop next Tuesday, and I can't wait. Work is also going well. I'm working on outreach possibilities for the assistive technology workstation, training customers on some of the technology, and learning some new technology of my own.

One of my recent projects is to start learning the Pac Mate, which is kind of a cross between a laptop and PDA. It comes with either a standard keyboard or Braille keyboard format, and provides speech and optional Braille output. A customer of the library is interested in learning more of what the device can do, and how to interface it with a computer, so I'm starting to look into some of that. It's an interesting machine, but I still prefer a laptop, and a PDA for my portable computing needs.

Before Christmas break, I also attended a presentation on some screen reading software that can be installed onto off-the-shelf PDA's, and can work with many standard programs. I was actually quite impressed with the technology, and may look into getting it some time within the next couple of years. It's still rather early on in development, but it's already very powerful and works well. I'm waiting until the software is able to support all functions like PDA functionality, cell phone, and GPS. Then I'm really going to look into getting one of these setups. I really think this is the way to go in the future too. Right now there are many propriatary devices like the Pac Mate that do a lot of this functionality, but they're still limited in what they can do. I like the approach of a screen reader that can be installed on standard handheld devices. For one, it's a lot cheaper. These portable devices developed specifically for the Blind are generally over $2000 and that's being generous. A really good PDA, the software, and a Blue Tooth keyboard might run just over $1000.

Secondly, it's nicer to be able to buy or upgrade the PDA when a new model comes out and just install the screen reader software on the new device. It's also probably cheaper to pay for an upgrade to software than an entire hardware device.

Finally, the ability to use standard, off-the-shelf software is a huge plus. If this trend takes off, which I think it will, we could see a type of standard for accessibility on portable devices similar to Microsoft's Active Accessibility components for PC's, and that would be great. With a traditional note taker device, there's only so much software that's supported by the hardware.

Finally I have been doing a little reading for the Book Club. I have finished reading Bowling Alone, which is about how over the last couple of decades, people don't tend to socialize as much in group activities, like group get togethers, going bowling, etc. One possibility, which I tend to agree with, is work and socializing are really becoming integrated. We talk at work, work related events, etc. The book was rather interesting, but a bit repetitive. It covered many different topics, but generally restated the same trends for many of them. I think the book could have been shorter, and summarized in paragraphs rather than chapters some of the material.

I have also read a couple interesting books on Blindness. One was on Blind and low vision professionals in the work place, and the other was about general life experiences. I don't remember the titles of the books right now, and since this post is getting rather long, that will be next update. I'll probably give more background on my experiences and thoughts concerning the whole Blindness topic too, so check back soon.

2005-12-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'm back for another update. A lot has been happening over the past couple of weeks, which is partly why I haven't gotten around to posting here much lately.

Work at the library is going quite well. I have a couple of people interested in the technology, and I have started some training. I have started training a user on Dragon Naturally Speaking. This is another piece of software on the AT Computer. This allows a user to speak to their computer to type text or issue keyboard or mouse commands. I haven't actually used it much yet either, so I'm learning right along with her. I've wanted to try it in the past, but there's a little hurtle I haven't figured out how to effectively jump yet. Before really using Dragon, you have to train it to recognize your voice and how you talk. You do this by reading a few paragraphs of text. The problem is, it's rather interesting to try and hear some text from Jaws reading it to you, memorizing it quick, and trying to clearly speak it back to Dragon. I haven't found the best way to do this yet. There are some programs that help with this, but they're quite expensive.

I also attended the Digital Junction conference that covered various Digital Divide issues. It was rather interesting, and some of the topics were pretty cool. I was hoping there would have been a little more focus on addressing problems instead of just saying they exist. I don't know really if there is a right or wrong answer to solve some of these problems, but it's still good to get some ideas instead of just acknowledging they exist.

I also found out my new laptop has been ordered, along with some assistive software. I should be receiving it some time in January. I was secretly hoping I'd have it to play with over the Christmas break, but I'm still very excited about it. It will be something cool to look forward to next month. I also just picked up a USB 2.0 Thumb Drive, which is really coming in handy already. Thank God, no more using floppies...

Oh, and the accessibility presentation last Corps day went really well. The Pacer Center was very nice. The only bad thing is, since its main focus is accessibility, it's unfortunate it's not public transportation accessible. The day went well though, and our presentation did too. I think having our session interactive really helped because it was later in the afternoon, and it's hard to stay focused on a Friday afternoon. We had another meeting after the presentation, and the good news is we definitely won't run out of things to cover on future presentations. We have all sorts of ideas, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the final resource CD's at the end of the year.

Finally I've been working on outreach for the library. We have a flier we're giving out now, and I've started working on a more formal letter to start contacts. I'm also getting a lot of good ideas from library staff, my SSB counselor, and friends. After the first of the year, when things get back to normal, I'll be able to get a lot more going. Still things are going pretty well.

2005-11-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

I'm back, and here's a quick update on what's been going on. In addition to my work at the library, I'm working on a presentation with the Accessibility and Usability Committee, which we will be presenting this Friday. I'll be posting more information on that soon.

Things are going pretty well at work. I’m starting to really get into things now. I started doing some basic demos for library staff on the assistive technology computer. I explained the different technologies available, and gave quick demos. Here’s a quick rundown on some of the software I have been and will be using.

Jaws for Windows
http://www.freedomscientific.com
I have been using this software for a long time on my own. Actually I’ve been using it since Jaws for DOS. It’s come a long way since then. This software is known as a screen reader, and it basically does just that. Using the computers sound card, the computer will speak what’s on the screen. The user uses the keyboard to both control the mouse, and tell Jaws what to speak. Jaws works with most Windows programs, like office software, web browsers, and pretty much anything else.

On the website listed above, anyone can download a demo of the software to see what it’s like. It’s actually the full program, but it runs in a 40 minute demo mode. Once 40 minutes are up, the system has to be rebooted to run Jaws longer.

Magic
http://www.freedomscientific.com
This is another program made by the same company. This software can magnify the screen for users with low vision. That’s the basics of what the program does. It has a lot more functionality though, like high contrast backgrounds, mouse and cursor enhancements, some speech output like Jaws, and a variety of ways to view the screen. Portions of the screen, or the whole thing can be magnified.

Again, there’s a demo for this software that works just like the Jaws one. It’s enough to get a good idea of what the programs do. The only down side is they are pretty spendy, so it’s not something just anyone would buy. Although I have had a lot of people who’ve played with my copy of Jaws tell me they really want it for reading stuff on the computer.

Kurzweil 1000
Kurzweiledu.com
This is another cool program. I used to use Kurzweil a long time ago, but until recently, haven’t used it at all. I’m glad I’ve started again though. It can do a lot of cool things. It’s primary function is scanning print materials. Using a flatbed scanner, a blind user can scan in print materials: bills, letters, books, etc. It can then be read by synthesized speech within the program, similar what Jaws would do for other programs on the computer. The file can then be saved as a variety of file types like txt, rtf, doc, and brf. This last one is an electronic Braille format. The user then could print the book or whatever on Braille paper.

It’s also got a lot of other cool features. A couple of my favorites are the audio file output and virtual scanning. Once the user has scanned in a book, it then can be converted to an audio file like an MP3 file. The user can then listen to it on a computer with no assistive technology. The file will open in Media Player, Winamp, or whatever program plays MP3’s. It will also work on portable players like the Ipod. The book could automatically be split up into shorter files for easier navigation as well.

The other feature I really like is the virtual printer. Rather than scanning from an actual scanner, other files can be scanned for text. When Kurzweil is installed, it puts another printer in the printers list. This can then be chosen from other programs like Word or Adobe Reader. Printing files to this printer will extract the text from the files and import it into Kurzweil, where it can be saved as an accessible format.

There are more programs on the machine at the library, but I’ll save that for next time. I really didn’t think I’d type this much about the ones so far. And later I’ll explain some of the other assistive technology available at the library and others I’ve used in the past. so keep checking back often.

2005-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

I'm back for another update. Sorry it's been a while. The last couple weeks have been pretty interesting. I started training on the assistive technology computer at the library. I did a couple of overviews to the library staff on the technology that's available and what it can do. I hope to start actual training on how to use the hardware and software next week.

I'm also starting to get some materials together for some outreach. The aim is to get many people interested in using the technology, and if successful, implament this in other libraries around the area.

Last weekend, I also went to my first real civic engagement. I attended the viewing of the Wal-Mart movie at the Mapps Cafe. The movie was called Wal-Mart, The High Cost of Low Price. It was actually a really interesting film about how Wal-Mart is involved in a lot of shady business practices, and a host of other things you wouldn't think they'd be involved in. It covered topics like poor to really no benifits, pretty much slave labor, environmental polution, and more. I won't say much more about the movie, but I will say it's definitely worth a watch. If even half of the information is true, it's pretty disturbing how one of the biggest and most successful companies today is involved in so much shady activity.

After the movie ended, we stayed a while longer and took part in some discussion about the movie. We had to leave a little early, but we continued the discussion on the way home. I have a friend who's dad works at Wal-Mart. He mentioned a lot of the benifits issues in the movie, but I never thought it was quite that bad. I'm definitely going to tell my friend to watch this movie.

That's all for now, but I'll post again soon.

2005-11-11T17:29:00.000-08:00

This has been an interesting start to the year so far, but it's been fun. I've finished my second week of work now, and things are going well. ITings are starting out a little slow, but that's how things usually sart. I'm just starting to really get into my projects. It looks like I'll have plenty to do at the Lexington Library, and I just learned that the Dayton's Bluff Library is looking for some similar help with their assistive technology computer(s). This is great because this is really what I want to do as a career, work with assistive technology, and getting people to know about it, learn to use it, and have cool opportunities like I've had in the past because of assistive technology.

Basically some of the projects I'll be working on involve training people to use the assistive technology computer at the library, and getting people to come in and be interested in it. I've started making up some cheatsheets for some basic commands for Windows and the various assistive technology programs that are available. I will post these here too later on, especially the Windows shortcut keys because I know there was interest from some people at the CTEP meeting last Friday.

I'm going to start doing a little training for the VISTA's on Monday I think. It looks like we're going to do some group overview stuff for different groups, like the VISTA's, staff, and eventually the public. But this will only give them the briefest of looks. It won't be enough to even know the basic keyboard commands and such, so I'm probably going to have some one-on-one training set up for everone, and customers as they come in and are interested.

I'm also going to make some contacts with organizations throughout the area that might have customers or staff that may be interested. We're also looking at an open house or two, like I attended on my first day of work. Another library had a similar thing, and it might draw some interest.

I'll also be working with the web designer for the libraries to insure the websites are accessible. We met yesterday and had a good talk. He's also really interested in learning the technology so he has an idea of how it works. We'll probably set up something next week.

So I have a lot on my plate at work, and I'm also trying to continue working on some projects for my Masters class in Instructional Design and Technology. It's a fun class, with interesting projects, but with the amount of stuff that's been going on lately, I just have no motivation to do any of it right now. I have a feeling I'll be working on it pretty hardcore in a few days. That's what today was supposed to be fore, but I haven't touched it yet.

I'm also very excited though because I hope to be getting some new technology fairly shortly. My laptop has been dying a slow and painful death for a while, so I am probably getting a new one. I'm working with State Services for the Blind on the upgrade, and a bit of assistive technology. The laptop I spec'd is pretty sweet, and I can't wait to hopefully get it. I'm also looking into a few different assistive technology software packages that I'll use, and train others in current and future jobs. The only depressing part of this is that the laptop will probably be even better than my current desktop machine, which I just repaired and semi-upgraded a couple months ago. But I'll talk more about the computer and various assistive technology packages another day, and maybe even my laptop battery rant for good measure.

There's probably a lot more stuff I could talk about here right now, but I'll save that for another day. Plus I'm tired of typing for now. Definitely more to come...

2005-11-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my first blog post, so here we go.

I just finished my first week of my job through the CTEP program. I'm working both at the Daytons Bluff and Lexington library. I'm working in the homework centers and with the assistive technology computer at the Lexington Library.

So far everything has been going well. It was a little chaotic witht he move though. The first week of work went very well though, and I'm looking foreword to this year.