In memory and honor of the visionary Mr. Jobs, this week we’re sharing some of the many education related resources that Apple Computer has made available.

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In Memoriam: Steve Jobs

Below I have provided summary information and select details about some of the many resources available from Apple on this page: www.apple.com/education/resources.

Professional Development
Apple offers 15 different Professional Development hands-on workshops for educators. Apple experts will show you how to integrate their products into your curriculum, assessment strategies, and overall student environment, for a richer teaching and student learning experience.  Workshops are held at your school (or district site of your choosing), and they can be tailored to your group’s specific needs. All Apple Professional Development workshops qualify for Continuing Education Units. Click here to download the PD workshops catalog.

I have to assume the aforementioned workshops are charged for (I’ll clarify that and update this accordingly), but there are also a number of free Professional Development resources available from Apple, including the “Tune-in Series” of technology seminars for educators and IT leaders, and these “iWork Tutorials”.

Special Education & Accessibility
Apple is clearly committed to accessibility, and provides extensive resources for students with special needs, and for developers looking to accommodate those needs. Resource sections are broken out by product types (OS X, iPad, iPhone, and iPod & iTunes), with subsections on each page dedicated to Vision, Hearing, and Physical & Motor Skills. Also, don’t miss the general resources page.

Here are a few examples of the tools and information that are offered in Apple’s Accessibility web pages:

• iPad – Vision Accessibility : “iPad includes an amazing screen reader along with other innovative accessibility features that make it easier to use for those who are blind or have impaired vision.”
• Resources for developers to make their applications accessible on the Mac and the iPhone.
• AssistiveWare.com/Community, which focused on how those with special needs use the Mac.
• The iPhone users guide, which has been designed with accessibility in mind – it is available in HTML, you can download it in ePub format for free from iBooks and listen using ‘VoiceOver‘ technology, you can download it in tagged PDF format, or in an electronic Braille version, and you can even order an embossed copy!
• “Users in Control: A Fresh Perspective on Accessibility“, offers an insightful look at how people with disabilities are empowered through Mac OS X.

Curriculum
Apple has developed and made available a variety of tools designed around curriculum support.

Challenge Based Learning: One of the curriculum tools Apple has compiled focuses on Challenge Based Learning, which “applies what is known about the emerging learning styles of high school students and leverages the powerful new technologies that provide new opportunities to learn to provide an authentic learning process that challenges students to make a difference.” Click here to download Apple’s Challenge Based Learning curriculum guidelines; click here to access their CBL Classroom Guide.

There happens to be a free webinar, “Challenge Based Learning in action” coming up on Tuesday, October 19 from 10 to 11:30 AM Pacific Time. Learn more and register for this webinar here.

Apple also has these other Curriculum Resources available: a “Moviemaking Curriculum”, a “Guide to Creating Student-Led Documentaries”, and a science learning piece titled, “How Notebook Computers, Digital Media and Probeware Can Transform Science Learning”.

Funding
Apple’s funding information resources include:

• This guide to “Using federal funds for Apple education solutions”.
• Getting Creative with Perkins: “The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act gives educators an opportunity to refresh their career and technical programs and, in the process, provide engaging learning opportunities, 21st century skills and better prospects for high school students on the brink of transitioning to their adult lives.” This document provides lots of insights and ideas into how these funds can be leveraged.
• This brochure about Apple’s Trade-In Program for Education.
• Click here for information about Student, Faculty, and Staff Discounts.

Apps for Education
This page includes different two sections of Apps – one section for the iPad, and another for the iPod Touch/iPhone. Each section is grouped into the following Academic Subject Categories: English Language Arts; Mathematics; Science; History and Geography; Language Development; Arts, Music, and Creativity; and Reference, Productivity, and Collaboration.

Thanks to Apple for providing all of these great resources!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
The year of the iPad in Education: they’re being distributed in more schools every day
Using The iPad As A Digital Whiteboard (Plus 4 Cool Free Apps To Try It Out)
iPads In Education – How’s It Going So Far?

This web based applications provides easy to use data capture and progress monitoring for any observable behavior.

I recently had the good fortune of having a walk through this breakthrough application, and just had to share it here. Created by an enterprising parent of two children with autism, this tool that will dramatically improve the ability of educators and therapists to collect and use data in an way that can have a huge impact on understanding progress and making well informed decisions about steps forward.

A Deeper View allows for the definition of learning goals, at a level as detailed as the user wishes, and provides a precise ability to define and measure progress. You can even upload videos and associate specific measurements to the video, tagged to specific time events within the video.

Interested parents can get licensed very inexpensively ($25) and share the application and it’s potential with stakeholders and organizations playing a role in their child’s education.

If you work with or know anyone whose life involves children on the Autism spectrum or with other special needs, please stop by A Deeper View, have a look around, and share what you learn. You won’t be disappointed.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
5 online communities for educators working with special needs students
Internet resources for educators teaching students with special needs
Helping Autistic children learn with Video Modeling techniques

An inspiring use of technology, helping students challenged with Autism and similar disorders.

This week’s mid-week update provides an introduction to a use of technology that should be wonderful to see unfold – expanded use of video technology, in the form of Video Modeling, to help Autistic children.

In this article, Michael Leventhal explains how, “Video Modeling is a method of teaching in which a student learns by watching a model on a videotape demonstrating the target skill. Video Modeling has been tested to help with communication, disruptive classroom behavior, increasing on-task behavior, … teach complex social sequences, as a treatment procedure, as an evidence-based treatment for children with autism.”  Today’s technological environment makes increased use of Video Modeling much easier and more affordable than it was in the not-too-distant past.

Below is an example of a Video Modeling clip from the Technology Integration in Special Education social network hosted by Mr. Leventhal (this site was established as a sort of spin-off of Greg Limperis’s Ning based Technology Integration in Education social network). This video models using a tissue when you sneeze.

Find more videos like this on Technology Integration in Special Education

Video Modeling strikes me as a logical step in the evolution of the idea of using visual tools to help Autistic kids learn. While my knowledge of this area is quite limited, I am familiar with the idea of image based tools, like Picture Schedules, as seen on sites like Joeschedule.com. Progessing to the use of video to build on this concept seems like a natural progression.

If you wish to learn more about this, and be a part of the Technology Integration in Special Education community, then click on over and become a member today (it’s free), introduce yourself, and check out the resources available there.

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check these posts out):
Internet resources for special needs educators (this week, Autism & PDD)
5 online communities for educators working with special needs students
Internet resources for educators teaching students with special needs

Final post in a series on Internet resources for Educators working with Special Needs students.

This week’s post is a bit of a mixed bag. I’ll wrap up this 5 part series with some information on resources for students with physical handicaps (other than visual impairments, and hearing impairments, covered the last two weeks). I will also cite a few more general resources for working with special needs students, as the focus on specific categories of needs in these recent posts could not (by its very definition) include all types of disabilities. I have come across a number of informative links pages that can be useful to educators and administrators working with the wide variety of physical, mental, and emotional disabilities that students can face, and wanted to share them here.

Resources for educators working with physically handicapped students
A range of resources, including accommodations, techniques, and more, for helping students with physical handicaps.

• I’ll start with this informative overview of assistive technologies for the physically handicapped from Wikipedia.
• Next, these techniques & insights from specialed.about.com.
• Followed by these accommodations and interventions, also from the specialed.about.com pages. 
• This page provides links to a wide variety of Assistive Technologies, including adaptive keyboards and a hands-free mouse from NaturalPoint (along with other technologies for other physical disabilities).  
• This site features ”Special Education Keyboarding Programs that work” (and includes tools specific to a variety of physical handicaps, and more).

Other resources for working with the special needs students
Special needs come in many forms and I have not been able to address them all in this series of posts. With that in mind, following are a few resources to lead you to further information in dealing with the different challenges you may be come across in your work with special needs students.

• This site, Special Education Resources on the Internet, is devoted to this topic, and provides hundreds of links, grouped into 23 different categories.
• Internet Special Education Resources: Another site wholly devoted to the topic.
• The Special Education Resources Page from “The Teacher’s Guide” website.
• This Educator Resources page from the U.S. Government’s “Disability.gov” web site contains many useful links (the initial page starts with 5 groupings, such as Instructional Strategies, Student Supports & Accommodations, etc.).
• This ‘practical guide’ to teaching students with disabilities, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a great example of the guidance educational institutions can provide for the educational community. Many educational institutions hosts similar pages, and are pretty easy to find with a quick search. 
• Last, this page from the Edutopia site discusses assistive technology success stories, and there are a handful of similar pages linked here (on the right hand side of the page). While this is not the same kind of encompassing resource as the others provided here, it is an interesting and relevant site and I thought worthy of inclusion here.

Conclusions
As I have mentioned throughout this series of posts, there are countless resources on the web that provide information and tools that can be helpful in working with special needs students. I hope I have managed to bring together some quality resources that are targeted primarily towards educators and the educational process, and will save some time for those searching for this type of information. As always, I remind readers that I welcome their insights, comments, and suggestions – others are very likely to find your input and feedback useful, so please comment if you have something you would like to share (and thanks for doing so).

Next?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I am going to cover next week. I have a long list of potential topics set aside, but I also welcome reader input, so feel free to shoot me a request to consider (and please be sure to come back and see what kind of Internet based technology for education we’re going to learn about next)!

The 4th post in a series providing an overview of web based resources for educators that work with Special Needs students.

We started this series a few weeks back by looking at resources for teaching students with ADD & ADHD, we focused on Autism & PDD the next week, and Visual Impairments last week, and this week we’re looking at resources for instructors that work with Hearing Impaired students.

Below I provide a number of web based resources in each of a few specific categories: techniques & strategies, assistive technology, and ‘other’ resources. I am really just scratching the surface here, as there are many resources available out there – I have culled out some of the cumbersome and poorly organized resources and zoned in on a concise, helpful set of information sources focused on our target topic.

Articles discussing tips and techniques for instructing the Deaf or Hearing Impaired
I came across plenty of articles about this subject, but have provided just a handful of the better ones, as there was often a fair amount of redundancy from one article to the next.

This page from the Ball State University website is intended for faculty working with students who are deaf or hearing impaired, and provides a great overview of the challenge of working with hearing impaired students, followed by tips and testing and classroom accommodations.

Best Practices for Hearing Impaired (students) from SpecialEd.about.com: Strategies for hearing impaired students.

Strategies for Teaching Students with Hearing Impairments: An informative set of insights and suggestions from Western Virginia University. The emphasis here is on how hearing impaired students often learn to “feign” comprehension, making it important to obtain feedback from them at every opportunity.

Working with Hearing Impaired Students: Another good set of insights and strategies, from Teachersfirst.com.

Assistive Technologies for the Deaf or Hearing Impaired student
As with the articles about teaching techniques for the hearing impaired student, there was a good amount of repetition when combing through the variety of listings I found on the subject. Again, I just picked a small set of articles that seemed to cover the full range of tools I came across.

An Educator’s Guide to Hearing Disability Issues: I put this page first in the list, because it is thorough and quite informative, and because it bridges the informational sites (like those above) with those focused primarily on Assistive Technologies (below). There is a lot of information here, and many useful links are included as well.

This thorough article by Thomas J. Brown provides a more in depth view into many of these technologies.

This EducationWorld article provides a wider view of Special Ed, along with specific content regarding assistive technologies for the hearing impaired student.

Technology for Hearing Impaired Students: This page from Suite101.com discusses technologies that can assist the hearing impaired students. 

Other web based resources

Described and Captioned Media Program: This U.S. Dept. of Education-funded nonprofit provides a library of captioned and described educational videos for free loan to teachers, parents, and others working with K-12 students with vision or hearing loss. They’re kind of like Netflix, except their collection only includes educational material (and they charge no fees of any kind, including postage, but you must meet the eligibility criteria for membership).

Forums: The forums I discussed in a recent post can provide an opportunity to learn from, or interface with, other educators. I direct the reader to this post to learn more about online communities for educators that work with special needs students.

Next week we will wrap up this series with a post focused on resources for teachers working with students with other physical disabilities. In the meanwhile, I invite readers to contribute any comments, thoughts, requests – anything that fits in with this series of posts. Thanks!

In line with the series we’ve been running on Internet based resources for educators working with students with Special Needs, this week’s mid week update is about a series of webinars from the ATIA (Assistive Technology Industry Association) on Assistive Technologies. I have listed summary information below for the next 3 Educational Webinars being offered by ATIA – there are many more listed there (click the link below to learn more).

For more information, and to register, go to: http://www.atia.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3628.

Weaving the Threads of Communication
Thursday, August 13:  4 – 5 p.m. Eastern time
Learning outcomes:
Increase their knowledge of research-based vocabulary selection methods.
Raise their awareness of strategies for customization of low tech communication systems.
Increase their understanding of strategies for integrating the use of the communication systems.

Augmentative Communication Evaluations:  A Toolkit Approach 
Thursday, August 20:  4 – 5 p.m. Eastern time
Learning outcomes:
To identify components of an AAC evaluation toolkit.
To identify which components of the toolkit can be used to evaluate the specific skills of an individual.
To name a variety of website resources available for additional research.

Selecting Software for Students with Learning Disabilities:  An Instructional Resource 
Tuesday, September 1:  4 – 5 p.m. Eastern time
Learning outcomes:
Recognize examples of good and bad educational software design.
Use resources to identify key aspects of specific cognitive and achievement deficits.
Understand the history and future of the project.

If anyone has participated in one of these webinars, or has any related comments, your input is welcomed – comment and let us know about your experiences. Thanks!

3rd post in a series examining web based resources for educators that work with Special Needs students

Just as with my recent posts focused on ADD & ADHD, and Autism and PDD, it is not difficult to find resources focused on this week’s special needs category – Visual Impairments. What I’ve focused on in this posting is finding resources intended for educators that work with the visually impaired, looking them over, and gathering together a useful and concise set of them. Inevitably, some of these listing are link lists, some of which may in turn lead to other link lists, which can be frustrating, but I tried to avoid duplicate listings, and to produce a set of resources that is informative and in depth. If you are a teacher or educational administrator (or parent!) looking for information and tools to help you succeed in your work with the visually impaired, I am confident that you will find some of these resources very worthwhile.

Tools (software, other Assistive Technologies)
The links below focus specifically on tools to assist the visually impaired student. In the section that follows, “Documentation-based Resources”, I provide a number of links to online sources of documentation designed to help educators working with these students, but some of these also contain further information about tools and assistive technologies.   

This page from Arizona State Schools provides a nice overview (by way of a list of examples) of the types of Assistive Technology available for the visually impaired student.

The Assistive Technology page on the web site for the Texas School for the Blind: This educational institution provides extensive information on line, and there are many useful links on this page, grouped into 17 categories, followed by a table of annotated links to over a hundred resources. (The TSBVI web site is referenced again below, as it rose to the top as the most thorough and useful site I came across - most link lists about teaching visually impaired students refer to pages on this site).

Magnification Programs for the Computer Screen (for partial site visual impairments): This web page explains various approaches to screen magnification, and includes a link to this page, which provides access to overviews of 14 screen magnification products.

In this video, a teacher demonstrates various devices for helping visually impaired students.

Documentation-based Resources

The Instructional Resources page from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired: This is the most extensive, and most referenced, site that I came across in my research. In addition to the information and links on this site, TSBVI was publishing a quarterly newsletter, but it appears that this may have stopped. There are nearly 10 years worth of archived newsletters online in PDF format.

V.I. Guide: This site is another rich resource of extensive links, organized into 14 different categories.

e-ADVISOR’s Teacher Page: e-ADVISOR is a collaborative project of eleven agencies that serve children with visual impairments. The information is presented in non-technical language, and is designed to facilitate communication between parents, teachers and doctors of visually impaired children.

The Teacher’s section of the AFB (American Foundation for the Blind) site lists a handful of texts that deal with the subject of educating visually impaired children from birth through adulthood.

Position Papers from Council for Exceptional Children’s Division on Visual Impairments: Professional practice, curriculum, and adaptations for students with visual impairments.

Next Week
Next week we will examine web based resources for educators working with hearing impaired students, after which we will wrap up this series with a look at resources for educators working with students with physical disabilities. I hope you’ll join us. As always, reader comments are welcomed – if you have any related observations or thoughts you would like to share, please do!

Second post in a series on Internet resources for educators that work with special needs students

Last week I started this series of posts by researching web based tools and resources for teachers who work with students with ADD & ADHD. This week we continue this series with a look into resources specifically geared towards helping educators that work with Autistic students, and those faced with similar disorders such as PDD and Fragile X Syndrome.  

Web Based Tools and online Communities
I located a number of web based tools designed to assist young people with Autism, PDD, or related disorders, or to help those challenged with instructing these students (if any readers know of other such tools, please comment and let us know about them!). I also provide some information about online communities with resources and information for educators that work with these disorders.

iSocial 3D Virtual Learning environment: I’m taking the easy way out here and quoting directly from the web site, “iSocial is a three dimensional virtual learning environment, developed using Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland toolkit for creating virtual worlds, for teaching social competence to youth who have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).” 

Zac Browser: Again, per their web site, “Zac Browser is software that allows your child to access games (a lot of games) activities (based on diverse interests) along with videos (that allow a stimulating experience and encourages children to talk). All games, activities and videos are specifically chosen for their positive effect on children suffering from autism.”

Do2Learn & Joe Schedule: These applications focus on the use of picture schedules and similar techniques to help Autistic children get through their school work and other challenges. I came across this concept in articles such as this one on eHow.com: http://www.ehow.com/how_2306537_create-picture-schedule-autistic-children.html. The interface in Joe Schedule may lack flash (and the .mov help files may require the download of a player on Vista based computers) but both of these applications look like they may be useful to parents and teachers alike. They both require an inexpensive paid subscription.

Online Communities: There are many online communities available with resources and information on Autism, PDD, Asperger’s and related syndromes and disorders (such as the AutismAwarenessCentre, with this US-specific page providing many resource links), and quite a few of these have areas for teachers (such as the TEACCH program). These types of communities can be a rich source of information and communication. Additionally, there are also more general online communities for teachers who work with students with special needs, such as those noted in this post from last week.

Consumer’s Guide to Technology for Autism: This is a new effort under way, spearheaded by Michael Leventhal, and it is intended to evolve into “a Zagat-format guide …[a] creation of teachers and parents who will field test, evaluate and report on their experiences using specific technology with children on the Spectrum.” Sounds like something that could become quite useful to both teachers and parents. Those interested can visit Michael’s blog at mleventhal.typepad.com to learn more.

Online document resources
There is no shortage of documented information available on the Internet geared towards helping parents and teachers to work with children challenged with Autism and related disorders. Following is just a brief selection of the many articles available through a quick Google search (or other search engine of your choosing):

• This article by Andy Humphrey provides insight and tips on teaching autistic children.
• This article focuses on the use of “printables” to assist in teaching Autistic children.
• This article from a special ed teacher provides 7 strategies for the classroom.
• This Wikipedia article about the use of “Virtual Environments for AS Students” discusses the use of MMORPG’s (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games) for individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, which falls on the high end of Autistic disorders. 

Next
Next week I will continue learning about Internet resources for educators working with special needs students, looking specifically at visual and hearing impairments. In the meanwhile, comments, suggestions, and feedback are welcomed and encouraged, so feel free to share your toughts and experiences about this week’s topic, or any related matters! Thanks.

This week’s mid-week update builds on the series of posts I am currently publishing, focused on Internet resources for educators who work with students with special needs. While each of my main weekly posts in this series will focus on a specific category of special needs, there are various resources on the Internet that are geared towards the larger general category encompassing all such needs. One useful type of  web based resource is the topic-specific online community. I came across a number of online communities that have been created for educators who work with special needs students, and wanted to share some of them here. Most of these provide interactive forums (this sort of interaction, to me, makes a true ‘community’).

• Special Education forum on Teachers.net: At a quick glance, this looks like an impressively active and useful forum. Anyone can read and respond to the posts. A must see if you are interested in this kind of interactive community forum.
• Education World’s Special Ed Community: This site bills itself as a ‘community’, but I did not notice any opportunities for interaction (there was a link to a message board but it was no longer active). What I did notice, however, was a good number of resources in the form of articles and links, many grouped into categories (on the left hand tool bar). The site is kind of busy to look at, but it seems like a pretty useful set of resources.
• The Special Needs forum on Classroom20.com: I am a big fan of Classroom20.com, and they have many active forums, and over 26,000 members (!), but this specific forum has not been highly active. Anyone can read the forum contents, but you have to sign up to reply or create new discussions. I can assure you that if you create a forum topic, you are highly likely to generate responses, as this is a very active educator’s community, with tremendous membership.
• Technology Integration in Special Education: This is a pretty new site, but it looks promising, as it (like Classroom20.com above) uses the excellent and highly interactive Ning social networking environment.
• Teachersfocus.com Web Site’s Special Ed Forum: This does not appear to be highly active, but there have been hundreds of topics discussed here over several years, and simply scrolling through them may provide some useful insights. Anyone can read the content here, but you have to become a user to reply or post a new topic.

If you’re an educator working with students with special needs, I hope you find some of these useful!

This week I begin a series of posts focused on web based tools and resources for educators who work with students with special needs. 

My first challenge is to determine what sorts of categories of “special needs” I will investigate. There seem to be endless groupings and subgroupings of special needs and learning disabilities. After researching and discussing it with some colleagues, I have settled on the following special needs areas to look into over the next few weeks (I may expand on the list as I proceed, or at a later date): ADD & ADHD, Autism & PDD, Visual or Hearing impairment, and other Physical Disabilities. There are many other learning disabilities and mental and physical disabilities which I will not be delving into, but I believe that some of what is covered in this series of posts may be relevant to some individuals who fall into those other groupings. [I should also state clearly that I have no specific expertise in any of these areas - I am an IT executive working in higher education, I blog regularly about the use of Internet technologies in education, and am interested in how these technologies can play a constructive role for those charged with educating students with special needs.]

First Up: ADD & ADHD
There are countless ADD & ADHD related resources available on the web today. The information I have gathered here is not very difficult to find. I simply reviewed many documents and information resources, and gathered together some of the more comprehensive and informative resources geared specifically towards the education of students challenged with these disorders. Most of these resources are reference documents, but I did also locate a few interactive web sites and applications focused on this topic.

Online Document Resources

• http://www.ed.gov/teachers/needs/speced/adhd/adhd-resource-pt2.pdf: This 2004 report from The U.S. Office of Special Education Programs contains an exhaustive list of tips for educators. The 32 page report is in PDF format.
• http://www.addinschool.com/: This site boasts over 500 interventions for students, organized into two large groups – elementary school children, and junior high and high school students.
• http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/specialed/adhd/: What impressed me about this site from British Columbia’s Ministry of Education was the 5 well documented case studies for students from grades 1 to 11, including clearly edified Accommodation/Support plans.
• http://www.helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_teaching_strategies.htm: This web article from the non-profit “Helpguide” organization is full of great ideas and tips for teachers and parents.
• http://www.teachervision.fen.com/add-and-adhd/resource/10503.html: Over 20 useful articles are listed on this one concise page, with summaries to help you understand what each article has to offer.

Most of the above sites also include sections with links to other web based document resources (you may notice a fair amount of redundancy, as many of the same resources are cited on different link listings).

Web based tools

• http://www.time4learning.com/ADD.shtml: This site’s approach to learning “offers children a refreshing change from sitting in a classroom or at a table reading textbooks. In a home setting where school bells, background noise and other distractions don’t exist, students can work through the learning system without pressure. The program lets them go at their own pace, repeating the lessons as needed. This approach gives students a feeling of independence and sense of ownership over their progress, which is a great motivator and confidence builder. Exercises are shorter than classroom lectures, so kids with ADHD can take breaks more often … and come back to the material refreshed.”
• http://www.playattention.com/educators/: This is not a web based tool, but it is a software application. I struggled to find many applications geared towards helping ADD & ADHD students learn, so I had to broaden my scope beyond my traditional web-based focus. This page provides a good summary overview, an introductory video (that plays as soon as you access the page), and online webinars to help prospective users learn more. Based on the overview information provided, this sounds like an application with a lot of potential (the site claims that over 450 schools systems are already using their system).
• Forums/Discussion Groups: Discussion forums are one of the types of interactive environments available on the Internet, and there are many of these on the web focused on ADD & ADHD. I identified a couple that included areas specifically geared towards educators. For example, this forum: http://www.addforums.com/forums/ includes a section titled “Teacher’s Lounge” (you have to sign up to participate). Facebook also has a number of groups focused on ADD & ADHD - I quickly located a group titled “Teachers of Children with ADD/ADHD”, although there were only two members so far (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=46255853802&ref=search - you have to log in first, then paste this link in). Another site that was referenced on various sites was “Chadd” (this link goes to their online communities, but again, you have to sign up to participate: http://www.chadd.org/Content/CHADD/Support/OnlineCommunitiesGuidelines). 
• General Special Ed Online Communities for Educators: “Tech in Special Ed” (http://tech-in-sped.ning.com) is a relatively new online community, and while it is not focused purely on ADD & ADHD, it is intended specifically for educators that teach students with special needs. Interested educators may wish to become a member of this growing community. This is just one example of on online community such as this - there are more, and they can be found pretty easily with a Google search and little time spent clicking and reading.

I was actually somewhat surprised, and discouraged, by the difficulty I had finding interactive web based resources for students with ADD or ADHD. If any readers know of other interactive web based tools geared towards helping teachers who educate these students, or towards the students themselves, please comment and let us know about them.

Next Week: Autism & PDD 
I hope this post has been useful to anyone interested in resources for educators who work with students with ADD or ADHD. In next week’s post, we’ll look into web based apps and resources for educators working with students who have Autism, PDD, or related disorders. Please join us, and as always, comments, insights, and ideas are welcomed and encouraged. Thanks, readers!