#7 - Assistive Technologies, Webpage Design, Diigo

   In the podcast, I learned about the Americans with Disabilities Act, and how the ADA states that accommodations must be made for people with disabilities, and these people cannot be discriminated against. In the textbook, examples of assistive technologies for people with disabilities include Braille printers, spelling checkers, voice recognition software, and a joystick instead of a mouse. I think the biggest challenge of using these adaptive technologies is that they are flawed and there is no "perfect technology" that can act as a full replacement. For example, there are readers for either people who cannot read for themselves or people who can't see the text. But these readers may not know the correct pronunciation of every word, which can cause confusion. As the podcast says, there are so many technologies available. It is all about matching the right technology to the right person.


    I learned a lot through the web page design assignment. I think the most useful thing I learned is how to embed things. I embedded a Google calendar, a Sign Up Genius button (for a parent-teacher conference), and my newsletter design assignment. I spent a lot of time making the webpage, and I had a lot of fun exploring the different tools that you can use. I am pretty happy with how it turned out, but if I could redo it, I think I would change the home page to make it look a little better. (http://eme2040allison.weebly.com/)

    I love using Diigo and I think it is such a great tool! For personal use, I think it is extremely helpful to be able to read an article online and have the ability to make annotations and highlight directly on the online article! The best thing about Diigo is that it is Internet-based, and so these annotations will be there, no matter the computer or web browser I am using. For professional collaboration, I think it would be very useful to keep a shared folder of helpful teaching websites, blogs, and resources, similarly to what we have in our class.