After struggling through some early morning traffic, I made my way to the Convention Center and registered. After meeting up with one of my coworkers, we perused some of the sessions we had picked out that we’d like to attend before the keynote.
Luckily, we found a couple open seats in a session that focused on Google Chrome Apps for Struggling Learners, presented by Jennifer Heim of Ohio State Support Team 2. I’ve previewed some of the apps and extensions before attending the session, but being there for the majority of the meetup (we walked in a few minutes late) was a nice start to the day.
The most notable extensions mentioned were related to reading accessibility. When we walked in, Jennifer was discussing ATBar, an accessibility toolbar that is added to Chrome and gives some extra options for viewing and reading any text (including text-to-speech and display options).
Here are some of the other notable extensions that were mentioned:
ATBar
From the developer: “ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. The concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually achieve through the use of different settings or products.”
Cruxlite
Cruxlite allows users to simplify text by reducing the total number of words of the selected text. You can adjust the text complexity to the user’s preference, which would make it ideal for modifying reading selections for students with a wide range of skill levels.
Our first keynote is starting (Kevin Honeycutt) so I’ll finish this up later in another post. After walking on the stage and talking about being thrown out of a Wal-Mart for wearing Google Glass, I was sold.
EdTechToolkit 