Google just recently announced the Chromebook for schools. This web device would be available to schools at a rate of $20/per student device. This would possible open in an affordable and adaptable system real one-to-one computing for students. The devices that are available via the Chromebook for Education program will have 3G and wireless capabilities, meaning that it will be able to tie into existing wifi school network, and when that isn't available use the 3G cell network system, which is important for students may not have access to the Internet at home. But beyond the classroom and home this device would open up education for a lot of other places. Students could use the device while on field trips, doing labs, at the beach, in the bus, pretty much anywhere. And of course one of the apps would be Google Books, so this would also open up a portable library too. Chrome though does need to develop a better interactive reading program, something more like Kindle, so that students can bookmark, take notes, add drawings, highlight, and such.
In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels. I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support...
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