Percentally

My friend, Jason, and I are developing Percentally, a data collection application for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's currently in beta testing, but we are hoping to soon submit to iTunes. We are really excited to get the word out via our website, which launched today at http://www.percentally.com. Here is more information about Percentally:

Percentally is a tally counter that automatically converts tallies to percentages. It enables progress tracking in education, athletics, and other activities. Educators, parents, students, athletes and coaches use Percentally to document improvement in various environments.

Percentally offers two options for tallying: dual and single tallies. The dual tally, or Percentally, converts tallies to a percentage. Just record the successes and attempts, then Percentally automatically displays the percentage. The percentage demonstrates the percentage accuracy of a given behavior. The single tally enables tallying of a single number. Use single tally to record the total number of times a behavior was demonstrated. No percentage is displayed for single tallying.

Percentally is a mobile data tracking solution for the iPhone and iPod touch. It can track progress in different environments, including the classroom, field trips, basketball court, and more. Use it around the classroom to track educational goals, such as Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals for students with special needs. It can measure percentage accuracy of a student’s /s/ sound, percentage of homework completed on time, or the number of times a student interrupted. Percentally can also be used in extracurricular activities like sports. It can measure the percentage of football passes completed, percentage of basketball free throws made, or number of putts in a golf round. The pupil or mentor can document improvement with Percentally.

Percentally makes it easy to manage tally entries. Tallies can be re-ordered and deleted as necessary. If a tally mark has been recorded in error, undo is available. When it’s time to re-start tallying, just tap the reset icon.

Settings are customizable for clicking sounds. Choose to receive audio feedback via the same, different, or no clicking sounds. If different sounds are selected, it’s possible to record data without looking, by listening to the audio feedback. A teacher might, for example, use the different sounds to maintain sight of student behaviors while tallying.

When data has been collected, notes can be added and shared along with the quantitative data. The tally’s title screen allows notes to be added. Then, go to the clipboard to copy data and notes for selected tallies. Notes can be copied, then pasted in another application such as Safari. The information might be pasted in a existing Google Spreadsheet for student data.

Tallies can be organized in folders. Folders might be created for days of the week, a group of students, or one athlete. However you decide, the folders can facilitate an organization system that’s best for your tallies.

Bling Your Blog

Bling Your Blog

View more presentations from Eric Sailers.

I'm presenting at the San Diego Cue Conference this Saturday (10/24) at El Cajon High School. My session is titled "Bling Your Blog," and it pertains to embedding web 2.0 resources in blog postings. I'm presenting at 10:30 AM in rm. 310. Session titles and times can be viewed on the matrix of presentations. If you're interested in attending, register online, or in person on Saturday.

Such a Wonderful Day

"Such a wonderful day," said Sam Sennott on his birthday at Closing the Gap. He was not alone in that sentiment. Sam Sennott and David Niemeijer treated participants to a fantastic 2.5 hour session of Proloquo2Go. Participants learned how to utilize Proloquo2Go via lecture, demonstrations, tutorials, and exploration on iPod touch devices.

Sam and David's session was part of 200 sessions presented at the 2009 Closing the Gap Conference on October 15-17. The conference began with 25 pre-conference sessions on Oct 13-14, including a hands-on lab for using iPhone and iPod touch applications in assistive technology.

During the pre-conference, I was honored to present with Sam and David in the iPhone and iPod touch session. Sam and David presented Proloquo2Go in the morning. In the afternoon, Sam and I presented other applications for assistive technology including Cute Math, Five Little Monkeys, Eye Glasses, Tone Pad, Barbecue, AppBox Pro, and much more. Each participant borrowed an iPod touch to explore the applications, after learning from demonstrations and tutorials. At the end of the day, David facilitated a great Q & A for Proloquo2Go - each participant wrote down a question for us to answer.

On the next day, Thursday, I attended morning sessions on iPods for reading, AAC competence, and Universal Design of Instruction. I learned from all the sessions as I tweeted #CTG09 notes, but I especially enjoyed learning about how to implement iPods for reading. I was reminded of the importance for including administration in such a program, and I how I could utilize a Belkin Rockstar splitter if I didn't have 1:1 iPods.

In the afternoon, I presented Speech-Language Pathology Sharing 2.0. I think that it went pretty well, but I still think I could improve many things. One of the things is that I could use Keynote instead of Powerpoint, to have a more professional looking presentation. At the end of the session, I received a question about how much time I spend per day on web 2.0. It was a difficult question to answer because it really depends on my time and what I'm doing. I ended up saying that it depended, and that it could be anywhere from a half hour to several hours per day. I wonder how others would have responded to such a question.

On Friday, I attended sessions for PODD, Proloquo2Go, and cool/free applications. It was great to see Linda Burkhart, who vibrantly spoke about PODD. I enjoyed learning more about the organization and social components involved in PODD. It was also great to hear, as I've heard her say before, that individuals can utilize both high-tech and low-tech AAC. The last session I attended was Dan and Sam's cool/free applications. It was great to see them dueling back and forth, trying to out do one another's application. They both presented dual-platform applications, but Sam focused on Mac applications while Dan focused on PC applications. Among many applications, I learned about DSpeech, iLighter, and VocabGrabber. And, although, I knew about Mac's voiceover, I learned from Sam that it could be used for text-to-speech in iChat.

Throughout the conference, I had a great time meeting people. I was able to put faces to many QIAT contributors. I learned a lot from them and many other people I met at the conference. I will definitely cherish my first Closing the Gap Conference in 2009.

P.S. I didn't include any information about the vendors in this post because I spent about 95% of my time at sessions.

Speech-Language Pathology Sharing 2.0

I am presenting Speech-Language Pathology Sharing 2.0 at Closing the Gap. Above is my presentation for the workshop. I will be presenting on 10/15 from 3:30 - 4:30 PM. Click here for more information.

I am now home from my first Closing the Gap. It was such a great experience to present individually and with Samuel Sennott and David Niemeijer from Proloquo2Go. They are awesome guys who taught me a lot. It was also very cool to make new friends and to connect with QIAT contributors. I am definitely going to cherish the memories from the 2009 Closing the Gap.

One final thing regarding Closing the Gap. I spent a decent amount of time using Twitter for notetaking. Since other participants did as well, I'd like to share the #CTG09 tweets aggregated in Tweetizen. Just click the hyperlink to learn from the tweets.

Ning Tutorial

I created a video tutorial for the Parkway Middle Ning. The tutorial was created for Parkway staff to learn how to use the Ning. The Ning was designed as an educational network for the staff to share information with one another. It is one of the many ways that Parkway staff communicates in professional learning communities (PLCs).

Although the Ning is closed to Parkway staff only, the tutorial can be viewed by others to learn about our PLC.

A New-Age Bicycle

This week, I'm going to do a lesson on the Velomobile with my students. The Velomobile is an environmentally friendly vehicle that is powered by pedaling and/or an electric battery. I will use the embedded MyStudiyo quiz as the means to delivering my lesson. The images in the quiz are included as cues for my students.

Believe

Video vocabulary and summary: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATf7mKULGDRhZGQzNnNta3ZfMTA2ZGQ1bmRxY3c&hl=en

This week, I did a lesson plan with my middle schoolers using the "Believe" video. Before showing the video, I displayed a Google Doc that I created for vocabulary and a summary. We used an iPod touch with the Dictionary.com app to look up the vocabulary words. The great thing about the app is that it includes word prediction and text-to-speech - two great features for my students who have difficulties with spelling and reading. I also discussed the video summary template. I highlighted the information they needed from the video, including their favorite part.

Then, I played the video without stopping it. There are occasions when I pause videos periodically to check for comprehension, but I didn't feel like I needed to this time. After the video, I asked my students to text the vocabulary definitions in the notes app. Then, I asked them to do the video summary using iMovie. Some of my students needed to use the summary template as guide; whereas, my other students summarized without looking at the template. Once my students recorded their summary, then I played their iMovie, and I pointed out errors in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and volume. Finally, with scaffolding, I required them to verbally correct their summary errors.