Skills for High School Success - Part 2

there we go okay welcome welcome everyone to this excel academy we'll give a few minutes to let people come in gotta okay welcome everyone to this virtual excel academy this is part two of skills for high school success and i am going to just go ahead and hand it over to amber and jen awesome welcome everybody this is high tech low tech and everything in between skills for high school and starting college success so we will i am jennifer stellmeck and i am a tvi from florida and i am amber hath and i am a tbi and o m from north carolina welcome everybody i see that we have a hand raise let me release isabelle's all right isabelle you are able to unmute so i'm so sorry i didn't make it until last week's session because i accidentally missed it could you guys no problem at all we did some organization stuff and we're going to touch a little bit on last week's stuff but mostly this will be new information so if they're not building your your you don't need last week to enjoy this week okay uh could you send me the recorded version for the last one i can definitely see about getting that over to you yes ma'am okay thanks you're welcome no problem all right i'm gonna mute you and then when just raise your hand if you have anything to ask as we go okay okay all right john you do have a question as well i repeat this class what is it huh repeat class oh the classes are posted on youtube so you'll be able to get them off the youtube channel as soon within a day or two of us finishing them don't ask ask her topic again i would like to know what this topic is today we are doing high tech low tech and everything in between okay so we're going to talk a little bit about technology that relates to schools technology that relates to a workplace and then how we can help it to function and help our lives function using it okay great awesome i'm gonna mute you just raise your hand if you have another question okay okay all right guys let's get rolling let's go over our academy rules real quick first if you want to unmute um you need to have been called on and you need to have a quiet background raise your digital hand if you have a question and we will unmute you like you guys just saw us do if you have not joined with a name we will assign you one but right now it looks like everybody is named this just helps us to sorry my computer's going through all the slides really quickly um this just helps us to keep track of who's talking and who we can call on we're gonna leave the chat open throughout our session today because a lot of what we're going to talk about is going to be a conversation but just be respectful and make sure you're it's not just random comments and that kind of thing we want to make sure we're sticking to topic because screen readers can be very overwhelming if there's a ton going on in the chat so when we ask everyone to chat that's the time to write if you have a question raise your hand that way we don't just have screen readers going off for anyone using a screen reader it can become a lot really quickly also don't forget that the session will be recorded so if you missed something or need to go back it will be available so that you can participate at your own time frame or you can look back on any of the resources we've shared and there's also an optional extension activity to put what you learned today into action and that will go out at the end and we'll talk about a little bit before we close today excuse me the skills we're going to cover today are learning about different low-tech and high-tech options and most of these are not vision specific we're going to talk a little bit about how we can use our vision devices along with these devices but a lot of these are just devices that are used in a workplace used in a school that we can help make work better for ourselves to keep ourselves organized and to keep our lives as functional as we possibly can we want to know the difference in technology terms and the available softwares for accessing our school and work materials and then these skills and concepts are beneficial to learn to help streamline your life and to make you the most efficient possible so the goal of today is to be able to demonstrate an understanding of three to five new technology skills softwares or devices for more efficient functioning within your daily life these skills might include determining the appropriate technology for your needs knowledge of what the microsoft suite includes knowledge of what the google software suite includes options for different calendar systems how a basket organization system works labeling or even um different features and options for different choices of calendars all right so now we're going to go put in the chats on a scale of one to five how familiar are you with different types of technology one being you barely know technology and you're very nervous about using it and five being that you are very knowledgeable we have john paul with a five and donnie with the five also awesome hunter i'm gonna go ahead and remove your mute you can um hold on it says that hunter is not able to be okay so if i promote him [Music] all right hunter you should be able to unmute now montgomery said that she's a five hunter if you are able to you can hold down your space bar and that will temporarily unmute you so you can share your knowledge of technology with us currently needed a button use currently unmuted plus a button so did you guys do last year's aph excel summer camp we did um isabel we're trying to get hold on one second for me hun i'm trying to get hunter unmuted make sure we call on you guys before you unmute or we'll have to revoke the mic privileges okay okay thank you just give me one second and then i can call on you hunter i'm going to give you one more second just to see if you want to unmute all right all right isabel go ahead and on you if you had a quick question i'm happy to answer currently so i remember you guys did the excel camp from last year yes ma'am are you gonna are you doing any other aph stuff besides these two things we have these three days that we're doing right now um and then we haven't they haven't done any kind of sign ups for summer or anything yet so we haven't even talked about it okay let me know if you do okay we will it'll definitely come out soon um miss robin said that we will have a great lineup for summer so make sure you stay tuned and they'll share it on all the aph pages and emails and mailing lists and everything all right awesome i'm gonna go ahead and mute you hon and then we're gonna i'll let you unmute again all right guys so we're gonna talk a little bit about high versus low-tech technology is often thought of as the fanciest new devices or tools but a lot of the time assistive technology and technology is not always a fancy gadget with gadget with lots of bells and whistles sometimes technology is low-tech and has very little special features to it low-tech options for things would be like a basket organization system that you might use in a closet or pantry or refrigerator those can be a type of technology a pen and paper calendar system a communication book that you might have seen used in a school hooks and other organization supports for higher tech we might be thinking about a braille note a computer an ipad or a refreshable braille display alright so what defines high-tech devices versus a low-tech devices go ahead and put your thoughts in the chat what is a high-tech or low-tech device you might use donnie said he uses an ipad and i forgot to mention a minute ago if you haven't already done so make sure you change your chat settings to everybody that way you're not just writing it to the hosts and panelists that way everyone can see what you guys are inputting for our conversation john paul says he uses a high tech for a computer how about something lower tech does anyone have a lower tech thing that they use that really helps them in their house a microwave is lower tech yep that definitely something we use a lot there was a time that the microwave was considered very high tech but as things have upgraded now they have fancy microwaves that can bake and air fry and do everything under the sun uh monica uses braille labels so those are lower tech but those are definitely very functional options awesome guys all right so we got our one technology that we use regularly i saw a lot of high-tech things in a couple low-tech can anyone think of any more low-tech options baskets for organizing that's a very good one that's something i need lots of in my house to help with my crazy disorganization i like baskets and labels and i like to color code i'm all about the low tech myself all right guys so when we're thinking about technology it is important to think about what is best for you as a person what works best for me might not be the same thing that works the best for amber or somebody else so when you're considering purchasing a technology there's a lot of features you need to consider before making that purchase especially some of the more costly ones so we're going to talk kind of in detail about how to really break down and see what the best technology is for you so john paul said that a closet organizer is something lower tech that he can use that helps that's awesome so things to consider when you're going to purchase your technology one thing is the need do i really need this device or do i want this device and then the cost sometimes there's the coolest new item on let's available out there but there's also a lot cheaper device that maybe is more cost effective for you to get in that day in that moment how easy is the device to use are you going to need a ton of support getting it set up and learning how to use it or are you going to know how to use it right out of the box um so another one that's important is the prior knowledge if you've been using an iphone for the last five years and somebody asked if you want to get a surface microsoft surface pro or an ipad for your device it might be easier to go with an ipad because you know the software already and they have similar features another one that's important is the customizability so can you make this device do everything you need it to is it able to change to do exactly what you need it to do future uses is this gonna be an item that you only need for the next year six months the next week sometimes i'll go buy something because i need it once and then i regret it afterwards because i realize i wasted money to use something once when i could have gotten something that i could use for a lot longer i'm guilty of that too [Laughter] flexibility is it making sure that it's something that like we said for future use is kind of the same thing making sure it's something that's versatile and you can use in different functions um taking into consideration the accessibility features available on the device another one that i think is super important is the support options are you able to call the company and say i need help doing this because there are some companies out there that really don't offer much for support and there's some who will walk you through every step of how to use a device so kind of researching beforehand and knowing what companies really go above and beyond their support can be really helpful knowing the multi-use features of the device knowing the maintenance cost is another one how much is it going to cost for you to upgrade this device how long is it going to last are we going to be paying the same if you buy a 500 device it might be a little more expensive to begin with but if you have to pay for a 200 device every year it's going to add up quickly so just kind of weighing both different directions to see which one over time is going to be more cost effective and then what all features the device has well you might not need a device for everything it can do at the time knowing that you have the option to add features later can sometimes be super helpful so we did i did make this really simple chart that you can use to um when you're going to look up for devices so if you are looking for a new device this chart covers the majority of the different things they just talked about so you can go in and maybe we could put an iphone an android phone and a google phone in our list and then we can look up the different areas and kind of mark them down so we can figure out which one is going to be our best so we would go through and you can put iphone at the top and go find the cost and then determine which one is easier to use to do that you might have to do some research though i know when i was buying my last car we made a chart that was kind of similar to this and we went through and i had to look up reviews and all the different specs and everything on every different car that i was thinking and we wrote it all into the list and kind of gave it a rating so we could see which one fit the most boxes that we were our needs at the time a couple we didn't talk about might be the portability do you have a big cctv that you love and works great for you in one class but you can't take it class to class with you so looking to see if maybe you can find a more portable option that might do most of the same features that you can love just as much um the battery life if you're trying to take something out to walk around with oh donnie asks what's a cctv a cctv is an enlarging device um it's got a camera on it often two cameras one that points further away for distance and then one that points close up so you can zoom in on papers um that you can use for enlarging materials like in the classroom or in a work setting um i think the support options is like one of the major ones and it's something that i've really thought about as i've um gotten more devices because i used to be a fan of microsoft computers but i've kind of slowly gotten into apple and it's just so convenient if i have an issue or if i have any questions i know that my local mall actually has an apple store and i can just go in and the genius bar will set me up um so that's definitely one that you want to consider and one that's super important if you know that you may need some tech help down the line and a lot of companies like freedom scientific you can call them if you have questions and they're all very knowledgeable and they'll walk you through a lot of things so that's definitely an important one to have on there another one we didn't talk about yet was battery life if you're going to school all day and you usually charge your device whatever it might be at home at night you need to make sure your device is going to last for the full day um if you're running out of battery after two classes on your device you're probably going to run into some issues in your next few classes before you get to go home and charge it again um and then i did leave a big gap here for notes and comments so if there's one that had terrible reviews you could write it in there or one that you couldn't find any videos on so maybe there's not a lot of support and help out there um that's something you could put in the notes and comments as a negative and you could also do positives though had lots of reviews um lots of how-to videos i don't know how many of y'all use youtube for a lot of stuff but that's how we learn how to do pretty much everything in my house anytime there's a new device or a new tool we need to use donnie said he uses youtube i'm not sure how people quite function prior to youtube but all right so back to low-tech a little bit um we're going to talk about a few low-tech things and then we're going to see if we can come up with their counterparts that might be higher tech so we have calendar systems including paper planners can you guys put in the um chat box if you guys can think about anything that would be you know a higher tech alternative to a paper planner the ipad yeah the ipad definitely has a planner function on it how about regular usb postal service mail oop hunter had one let me release your mike hunter all right go ahead and hit your space for hunter if you wanted to unmute and share montgomery said the braille note could be a good alternative you a higher technology use for the um planners that's awesome all right i don't think hunter was able to figure get the unmute to work but we will move on and if you do get it unmuted that's perfectly fine just let us know hunter um how about the alternative for usps mail what do you guys think a high tech option is to sending a letter all right hunter we can hear you did you you got yourself unmuted what was your suggestion for calendar systems a computer that's a great one yeah there's definitely calendar systems built into the computer perfect i'm gonna leave you with permission to unmute hunter that way we don't keep having struggles with it um just raise your hand if you need to mu and i'll still call on you though okay um montgomery said email is a really good alternative to u.s mail that's exactly what i was thinking yes email and mail are kind of synonymous in our generation i think we send a lot more emails than we do letters nowadays uh john paul asks why are in-kind apps and devices for the blind so much more expensive i think there is a lot of factors that go into that and i think a lot of it has to do with how specific and how much exact technology goes into it um and also that they're not used as often which makes it which is sad that that i believe is a factor but things that are more irregularly used often are a little bit more expensive for how about paper organizers like i have on my wall in my office i think that i can sort different papers in my students each have a paper organizer they put all their braille work in can you all think of something higher tech that we might use instead of that i thought i heard somebody i think connor may be raising his his physical hand i can't see anybody um hunter go ahead and unmute hon and you can let us know what you think google docs yeah that's a really good for paper organization you can scan stuff up into google docs and we're going to talk a lot more about google docs in just a few minutes but 100 that is absolutely a good one um and basket organizations kind of go in the same row you can organize stuff electronically you just have to scan it in first john paul said i love apps for navigation they're mostly free for most but things like blind square are expensive yes it can be very expensive that's for sure um so this one's kind of the in between on this one there is a lower tech way to do this one in a higher tech way how about a signature guide has anyone used a signature guide and can you think of a lower tech option and a higher tech option for it oh montgomery said for paper organization you could use braillenote folder so like folders on the computer braille note or ipad that's awesome that's perfect i see a hand up donnie i've given you permission to release your mic i don't know what that is a signature guide so for someone who's totally blind they make these little rectangles that are like credit card size and they have a rectangular cutout in them that you can line up on a piece of paper and use to help you stay in the lines when you're writing your signature so for anyone the lower tech option that i was thinking in my head was maybe just folding the paper so you could feel the line that's a very low tech option there's no devices needed there's no anything if you were to fold a piece of paper usually you can feel where the crease is pretty good and then you could just write your signature along that line and nowadays we have electronic signatures that you can do so if you're signing a pdf or another piece of paper um you can actually sign it right electronically so that was a higher tech option i was thinking um how about an alternative to a post-it note how about a higher tech option does anyone use post-it notes for stuff to keep notes and tabs and remember things hunter is raising his hand in video hunter go ahead and you can unmute um an ipad or google i can't see for the name yeah there's definitely electronic note-taking systems i definitely get what you're talking about um yeah there is on most devices there's either a note section or a i think my samsung one is just called notes yeah samsung notes google documents john paul said you could do it in that's those are all correct on my computer i actually have sticky notes and it's like an app and they look just like regular post-it notes and i use them i have like five on my screen at all times of different notes i need and then i know i won't lose them because they're on my computer screen and they won't fly away or fall off i have a samsung notes for just about everything we've got camping reservations passwords insurance information maintenance records and i just make little notes all in my phone so they can't get lost tony said a bigger piece of paper sometimes that is really helpful i make lists and for bigger things you might need a bigger piece of paper and you might need to actually type up your information to make it easier to see all right so we're going to talk about standard technology versus adaptations to standard excuse me standard technology versus adaptations to standard technology versus specialized technology so all of these are different kinds of technology but there's some that are just more standard to see in a school or in a workplace like a computer a cell phone a copy machine or a printer all those are just regular technology that we most people cited not cited use on a daily basis especially when they get in the working world some adaptations we could make to those standard technologies would be like a large print keyboard a screen reader on the regular laptop voiceover or talkback activated on your phone or device you could make enlargements right on the copy machine if your work at work or school has a copy machine or even just an enlarged monitor to hook right up to whatever laptop you have to use some of the stuff that's a little more specialized would be like a braille note for typing up um your work versus a computer a cctv instead of using the copy machine to enlarge or maybe a monocular or magnifier and then a magnifier and monocular those are a little bit lower tech than your cctv but they're also very specialized tools and honey is actually raising his hand with a comment about our tech awesome hunter go ahead there's something called like speak to touched on like google docs and stuff where you are it you can like tap a microphone or something and after you're done with saying you like saying what you have to say all you got to do is like tap the microphone again and then it types in your sentence yeah you can absolutely dictate stuff you can do that even on a phone a computer a lot of the time uh on the ipad or in google docs there's lots of different um items nowadays that you can really dictate stuff into you're not yeah john paul said that you could do it into a cell phone absolutely a lot of the time i am quite lazy when it comes to typing and i will very often type or talk my text messages in uh isabel i'm going to go ahead and release your mic so you can unmute lower hand button so i have a phone that has a longer lasting battery life and it is a iphone 13 pro max that's awesome that is super helpful i got it i got it for my birthday last year that was a great present yeah from my dad that was you will probably use that for the next five to ten years that's a really long lasting gift yeah um with that another thing that may help save the battery are you a um screen reader user or like a voice over user i think she's muted again ray's head button i am a screen reader user so i use voiceover and jaws do you usually keep your screen curtain on i bet that helps let make your battery last a little bit longer too uh no it's not the screen being turned on it so if you use it more if you use it more it will be likely to die but if you use it less it will stay a lot longer yeah no that makes perfect sense that's what most technologies if you can use in the least they last a lot longer that's for sure yeah all right and hunter has his hand raised go ahead hunter um my mother just wants to know because i have to go eat currently i needed how long does this mean currently i'm muted it's until seven so it's 30 minutes but it will be recorded and put on to the youtube channel so if you have to go have dinner with your family you can always go back in and re-watch the information uh in the next couple days it'll be uploaded onto the youtube channel okay thank you you're welcome all right so when you're talking to your school or your employee about your technology needs it's important to be your own advocate i know a few of you were here this summer we talked a little bit about advocating for yourself and turn off the john paul said using speech to text is a good one and then turning off your screen will make the battery life longer that is very true that brightness really makes a difference when the screen's having to run so things to consider when you're trying to be your own technology advocate would be the cost of the product um talking to your school and making sure you know the cost when you're asking them for something and kind of explaining to them like this is why i need this these are the uses for the items and this is why it's worth spending the money so i can get this device and this is how it's going to help me knowing if there's a simpler or cheaper device available that we can use that can be accommodated to use and if something simple or may not work explaining to them why why you need the other device and then considering if a standard device can be adapted to suit your needs so i know with one of my students this year our we would ask for a regular full-size laptop for him and he's a blind braille user uh and the school said we can get you one we can order it'll be a little bit or we can give you a student laptop right now um so the student laptop ended up working we were able to add the screen reading software and some braille keys and a refreshable braille device and it worked just fine so just knowing what your options are and how those can work how we can adapt those for your needs another important thing to think about when you're talking about technology needs with somebody is knowing your needs versus your wants because i may want that newest iphone 13 plus because it's the coolest device in the market but what i need is a device with voiceover or talkback for independent access where i may be able to find that on an iphone 10 or 11 for a much more affordable price or somebody may actually have one available that you can use or have um and then you might want the top of the line laptop with the 24 inch 4k um screen with the highest available resolution but what you really need is some form of an enlarged monitor so you can connect it to the laptop and actually be able to see so making some what is independent access johnny asked being able to do it all by yourself would be independent access so you're able to access every feature on it and you don't need someone sitting over your shoulder telling you how it's working so when you're just talking to school or employee making sure that you're taking into consideration those differences in want versus need and then explaining um simply to the school what the difference is for you why you need this device instead of the other one and this can come into play too with um security systems of the school i know i've been in counties before where they only really allow android or they only allow apple products so thinking about what the security system of the school and what will work with them is also a factor that you want to consider definitely because i know my district does not like apple products so we've had to really we did fight for ipads that managed to get through but getting like a mac computer we've had to go ahead and settle for a different screen reader and using nvda on a microsoft computers had to become our new um district push it's kind of difficult when the other kids have them and this is one some kids are given devices by their parents some kids are will fight for them through a grant or a different program um but if you're asking the school to buy it more than likely the school is going to buy the same device for everybody or a workplace is going to buy the same device for everybody in that situation but i definitely can see how it becomes difficult and frustrating when other kids do have them around you so we're going to talk a little bit about the different software out there that's readily used in our day and age um so we're gonna have a little bit about apple versus android a little bit about google versus microsoft how braille versus digital tech and then even just some app selections and what the differences in those are so when we are comparing our options in many instances they do the exact same thing if i need to type up an um essay for school or work i could do that on google docs or i could do it on microsoft word and i'm gonna get the same result in the end it's really a preference thing or it could be an availability thing if your school is google based and you're using google classroom and google docs and your computers are run on a google i john paul says sometimes the school devices aren't as accessible and that is very true and that's when you can definitely advocate and say this is why i need this other device um but that's where knowing um all the information we talked about a few minutes ago and filling out that chart can come in really helpful because you can take something tangible to the district and say that see here is the data this is why i need this other device this is why this device isn't working for me you're welcome um so for a lot of these apple versus android for the major functionality purposes i can make calls on both i can text message on both i can open my email on both i can take notes on both that those are going to be personal preference and availability options which which we're going to be able to get at the time your school like amber was just saying your school may say we don't do apple or we don't do android that you have to get one versus the other and as long as they're providing a device that is comparable and functional and accessible it's going to be hard to argue otherwise but when you take them the data and take them the information they are a lot more likely to go ahead and say yes to your requests a lot of the time all right donny school to use this dell so that would be a mic um a pc computer versus an apple computer so your computer probably avoids apple things like mine does so what does your schooler work use do you guys use google stuff do you use google classroom um google docs and that kind of stuff or do you use microsoft like microsoft word outlook uh do you guys use a little bit of both or do you use something else completely in a different platform in general donnie uses google chrome so that would be your internet browser my schools use chromebooks for the most part unless you need um zoomtext or um jaws then they get a dell computer also my schools use chromebooks and they have pushed for nvda this year as our district-wide screen reader isabelle do you know what software is your school are using or montgomery go ahead and unmute isabel that's fine currently unmuted plus a button so i'm homeschooled so i'll usually you usually use apple a little bit of google and microsoft so you get to use a little bit of everything yeah it's a little bit easier when you're doing it at home because you don't have all the restrictions sometimes school districts have no and on and on the notes app that i use on my phone i can make shopping lists on there and i can dictate all the items that we need from the store oh that's awesome yeah um montgomery said that she uses a chromebook and then donnie's on zoom zoom is a microsoft um application but it's pretty readily used how about microsoft teams does anyone in school have to use microsoft teams for anything cause that would tell me you're a microsoft district for sure no okay so you guys maybe oh leslie's did her school district has been using teams all right so let's talk about some of the comparables oh now let's check first does everyone know what the difference in something being cloud-based storage versus hard drive storage if anyone knows the answer you're welcome to unmute and let us know the differences or if you want to type it that's perfect too and if you just have absolutely no idea what the difference is that's a fine answer as well i think everyone's thinking on this one did i throw you guys a curveball here montgomery's got it 100 on the hard drive is actually built in storage on the computer and then cloud is all internet based storage so applications like google docs and anything google based those are all on your internet and those are going to be things that are stored in what's considered the cloud and then we're kind of in a gray area because now microsoft word has cloud-based storage but like the original microsoft word if you just type it on the computer and don't set it up to auto-save to your onedrive then you're typing it into hard drive storage and that's only going to save your computer so if your computer crashes it's gone and lost forever that's just important to think about before we start talking about this next part so google and microsoft are very similar in the products that they offer for functionality in a classroom or in like the work environment so does anyone know what microsoft's email server or email platform is called i may have been better going google on this one does anyone know what google's email platform is called gmail donnie got it right yep gmail so microsoft has an app called outlook so they are very similar both can do email um both google and microsoft have a calendar option does anyone know what google's cloud-based storage is called you often hear people say they're gonna save it to their google something it's not google cloud in this instance i have the app on my phone it's one of my favorites i use it a lot it's yeah john paul got it it's your google drive so um yep montgomery got it too she was definitely typing before i said it and then onedrive's alternative to the google drive is or microsoft's alternative to the google drive is one drive so both are called drop have drive in them but that's your cloud-based storage for each um how about powerpoint powerpoint is something i don't know how often i use powerpoint as a like name for all different presentations i would call what i have up on the screen right now a powerpoint when in all reality i did it in google um slides i do the same thing it's kind of my go-to phrase um google docs and microsoft word are synonymous they both are um word documents that you can type into google sheets and microsoft excel are the two that coincide um for google there's google meet which is a video calling software donnie said zoom screen share so the google meet and zoom are the same you are correct or not the same they definitely have their own features but they are the ones that kind of compete with each other um for google we have google classroom and microsoft has microsoft teams the ones that do not quite overlap google has a forms maps and photos and microsoft does not have those but microsoft has onenote which is like a notebook filing system which can be really convenient if you're doing schoolwork and you can actually make folders and files for every different class or if you're doing a project for work you can save things specifically and then it also has sharepoint which is where you can share files with co-workers or other people so those are the only few that i couldn't find like matches across the board for so i did break it down a little bit to talk about each different one um gmail is an email provider with emails ending in gmail.com which you guys probably see quite a bit oh and leslie says microsoft does have forms i just was unaware so i'll have to research on that to see how the microsoft forums work and also these companies are so huge they're coming out with new stuff all the time so it's definitely something to try and keep up with um because you will especially as you get into college you will have so many assignments that are electronic based knowing what's available out there um can make it a lot easier to um complete these assignments because you know what you how you want to present them um gmail also has a phone app but not really a desktop app for the computer unless you're using a google based computer outlook on the other hand is an email provider and it has an app to access email on the phone and on the computer so you can download the microsoft outlook app and then you can pull up you can actually put different emails right into that program so i can use my duval school's email i can use my florida school for the blind email i can have my gmail i'll all go to the same application so i can pull them all up together um google docs is a words processing software that is cloud-based um it usually only saves the cloud unless you download it specifically excuse me um and then microsoft word can be either cloud-based or hard drive based uh a lot of the time you open a word document and what your first option to save it is going to go to your hard drive but you can then choose to make it um cloud-based see it's saving and you can then open it on other devices and also if your computer were to break or get lost or stolen it gives you the option to pull it up on another device later it's also free when you access microsoft online so you don't have to have a subscription which is nice yes that makes a big difference because the microsoft suite to download can be quite costly if you don't have a school or work that is paying for the subscription for you um for basically it's a similar on all the different microsoft ones they can be either hard drive based or cloud-based um and then for the google ones they are directly cloud-based unless you download them john paul mentioned google lookout john paul would you like to even tell us what google lookout is i'm not sure i know that one it's it's a google app for people who are blind oh i'll have to research that when i hadn't heard of that one before are you aware of that one amber that you know can tell you no i haven't heard of that one either but there's always new apps and new programs coming out i'm sure i've missed a few we'll definitely get our research going and maybe we can talk about it a little bit next session and just bring it up so we can touch back on it um so the next thing that's used a lot in schools and workplaces is adobe or another pdf software so pdfs stand for portable document format which i actually had to look up last night because i didn't know what it exactly stood for but a pdf is in like a read-only format so instead of you being able to edit where the words are or delete things it usually is set to be very specifically placed there is good and bad to that the good is that people can't delete words so if you want something if you're turning in a flyer or you're sending out information about something that you don't want deleted or edited then a pdf is often the best way to do it unless somebody goes in though and make checks the accessibility features they're not always except screen reader accessible donnie asked if you could read pdfs on the ipad it depends who made the pdf and if they've made it accessible or not um pdfs are almost like a picture when you pull them up on the ipad and they're getting better a lot of devices are now able to read them and can see the words versus just seeing it as a picture more readily um but there's still some glitches to it and not all pdfs can be read on without having some accommodations made to it oh you're on the ipad um it just it really depends who's use who sent it and if it was made to be accessible excuse me and jack i just looked up uh google lookout also if we want to share what the description is oh for sure it says with lookout you can get details about objects and text around you lookout uses the camera and sensors on your android device to recognize objects and text and tells you what it finds it's pretty cool it's like um like a be my eyes almost it sounds like yeah thanks for sharing john paul we're gonna i'm definitely gonna get on and play around with that this week to see how it works um so let's do google that's like seeing ai okay awesome be my eyes is another video or picture software that you can take pictures and get descriptions of things um for a person who's blind or visually impaired same with seeing ai they're very similar johnny was asking what those two items were um so if yours teachers are sending out pdfs to you and um they are not accessible what are some solutions you could talk to your teachers about to see if we could help them do you think you just refused to do the work and just tell them you couldn't see it and end the conversation there i'm gonna vote no on this one donnie let's see if we can come up with some solutions to help the teachers because they may not realize that a pdf is not accessible so going into your teacher and just explaining that because you're sending this out in this format i'm unable to read it there's a really good youtube video on abc channel that could help you see how to make it accessible for me or talking to your tvi and having them maybe do a presentation to the teachers about how to make things accessible because that while at your school you're going to have a tvi when you get out in the workplace which is going to come sooner than you guys think you will always have a tvi that can fight those battles so going in and knowing how to advocate and knowing where the resources are available can be very helpful all right so there's a million different technologies out there what technology do you guys use that we didn't talk anything about i'm sure there are a few since we had never heard of google lookout yeah we could probably learn a lot voiceover we did mention voiceover but we definitely didn't delve very far into it um it is a very relevant part of the apple world for sure do you think voiceover will be something you'd use in the classroom in college in the work setting or in all of the above a pc yeah computers are really good when we ooh the alexa mine's probably dinging right now because i just said it my whole house is wired with it because i love the ease of functionality with it then the pc is a really good one if you go into a regular office work environment a pc is something that is readily available if you are able to accommodate a pc computer and just tell your work i need a braille keyboard or a braille display to go with it and this voiceover or um screen reading software those are easy fixes that a workplace should have no problem making for you and for you to be able to come in and say this is what i need this is how much it costs and this is where you get it from um it makes their lives easier for to get those for you and donnie said all the above yes you abs voiceover is one of the ones that you could just use everywhere uh how about the alexa how do we think we could use that in our daily lives would that be a at school thing maybe in college in the work setting or more than likely at home yeah don't sit at home you know i actually have an alexa in my car and it's like one of my favorite things like if i'm ever thinking of anything i just ask it to do what i need to so yeah the grocery list is ideal yeah and you can actually access it on your phone too so if you had it on your phone you could say save this to go to my grocery list and it would do that too so it there isn't definitely more than just the at-home features but i doubt it would be very functional in the classroom setting in the most part just because it's out loud and it might be disruptive whereas something you could put headphones in and don't say that standards on the road but really you're just talking to it so that's not you don't look at it you don't have to turn towards it you that's it's almost a safer way to be able to take notes hey alexa remind me to do this tonight or add this to my calendar something like that it saves you from looking down at a phone or trying to write something in a notes that way i have it give me directions a lot of the time too so all right guys so we're down to just like one minute so for your extension activity i want to cover real quick um you're gonna use that chart that we made and you're going to look up three different technology features um one could be a device you already own use the chart to config compare the features and determine which would be the most efficient in your daily life do the research take a little bit of time on this look up specifications of the device look up youtube tutorials look up reviews and blogs use this information to fill in the chart once you've filled in the information there's a system to make giving each thing points and determine which device would be the winner for you and then next week we're going to learn about resources to help you transition from high school into college and post-secondary life it'll also give you resources like college information on completing tasks such as paying taxes where to get information from how to pay a bill how to register to vote and many other things like that that are just things you might not think about having to learn as you come into um adulthood thank you so much and uh yeah come back next time uh i believe same time same place uh for part three and um thank you so much to our presenters jyn and amber i'm gonna stop the video awesome thanks guys see you next week bye you

2022-03-04 20:33

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