Websites that are GREAT!

It has been great seeing, reading and hearing about these assistive technology tools.  The you tube vidoes and testimonials have been informative as well.
BUT
actually using them opens a whole new world of possibilities to myself as a teacher and as a result to the students that I will teach.  My advice is to take advantage of the free downloads and try them for yourselves. I just wish I had more time!

I first went to the Inspiration software site, http://www.inspiration.com to see what all the fuss was about.  I selected kidspiration and spent about an hour reading about the options and possibilities and decided to try the free download.  Once I had the software - I was off to the races.  I am actually using the graphic organizer tool tomorrow in my student teaching observation.  It is easy to use.  It has talking icons and a very forgiving correction ability.  For a single computer download it is $39.95.  So, relatively inexpensive for all it does.  As I said I will be using it for my reading lesson tomorrow.  We are working on comprehension and sequencing so the graphic organizer is perfect!  The students will be able type words and phrases onto the organizer (along with pictures) and then with the push of a button convert it to a sequence chart that has space for the student to add details.  
I will let you know how it goes!

After all the time I spent on kidspiration I was rather let down when looking at the readwritethink site.  It had useful tools and seemed easy enough to use but did not seem as user friendly.  The different websites offer were a plus and there were a lot of lessons from other teachers.  I am just anxious about tomorrow and hope trying the software will yield a positive result.

http://www.readwritethink.org
http://www.inspiration.com/examples/search