UD in ME

Last summer, I had the privilege of participating on a panel of national experts on universal design for learning (UDL) and the integration of technology in education. The occasion was the annual project directors’ meeting of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the U.S. Department of Education. A theme of the 3-day meeting was promising models for implementing Response to Intervention (RtI) frameworks in our nation’s schools. On the particular panel that I served, our focus was how UDL and technology complement RtI, and, in fact, how they should be integrated into any school initiative to implement an RtI framework.

RtI originates in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 04), which is the reauthorization of the original IDEA (IDEA 97). Per IDEA 04, schools will “not be required to take into consideration whether a child has a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability …” (Section 1414(b)). The “discrepancy” model is traditionally used to determine a student’s eligibility for special education services. While well-intentioned, one of the unintended consequences of this model is that a student must often fail before being provided with the accommodations or modifications needed to receive an equitable education. It’s a reactive approach.

RtI, on the other hand, is a proactive framework for providing interventions and supports, designed to prevent students from failing. Although written into special education law, RtI is an “all education” initiative. And, not unlike universal design, the implementation of a successful school RtI program will result in improved instruction for all students.

Although not prescribed, RtI is typically described as a framework of three tiers, with Tiers 2 and 3 designed to deliver increasingly strategic and intense interventions. Tier 1 is delivered in the general education classroom, which is why RtI is led by general educators. Tier 1 means “providing high quality instruction/intervention matched to student needs that has been demonstrated through scientific research and practice to produce high learning rates for most students” (NASDSE, 2008 – Blueprint Series). The RtI model works by ensuring that general education teachers have the skills and knowledge necessary to support the achievement of the widest possible number of learners. Once it is confirmed that a student is struggling for reasons beyond the quality of the curriculum, Tier 2 interventions to support that student are identified and implemented, followed by Tier 3 strategies, if necessary.

Aside from its systematic nature, the concept and approaches behind RtI are consistent with existing school initiatives, including differentiated instruction, data-driven instruction, formative assessment, best practices for integrating content and pedagogy, and student progress monitoring. Its intersection with UDL can’t be denied. Both are:

• Led by general education
• Research-based
• Integrated across professional development priorities
• Models of prevention and data-based decisionmaking
• Models of continuous improvement for both teaching and learning
• Designed to be flexible and fluid to support varied student readiness levels (e.g., moving among the tiers of instruction)

Technology is another critical partner of successful RtI implementation. With support from their local school districts and the MLTI, increasing numbers of Maine educators are learning how to use technology to more successfully meet the needs of diverse learners. Our teachers and students now have more tools and resources available than ever before, and many have witnessed firsthand how the use of teaching and learning technologies contributes to student motivation, individualized and learner-controlled instruction, positive attitudes, collaborative behavior, and active learning experiences. The more ways that students can independently access the curriculum, the more likely they are to be fully engaged and successful learners.

So, as your district and school implement an RtI framework, consider the intersection with universal design and technology.

To learn more about RtI:

Maine’s “parking lot” of links to policies, models, and resources

RTI Action Network

RTI: New Ways to Identify Specific Learning Disabilities

International Reading Association: Focus on RTI

We’ve got Bookshare, APH, RFB&D, the NLS, and the NIMAC, not to mention tens more, to rely upon for accessible digital formats of lots of the instructional materials that we use in the classroom. A discipline that isn’t highly represented at these repositories, however, is mathematics (and in many cases, science).

Perhaps you have a “digital math book.” Examine it more closely and you’ll discover that, while it may be on a CD or on the Web, it’s not accessible. That is, words and equations can’t be read aloud while being highlighted. The equations that you see in the electronic book are most certainly images rather than accessible digital text. If the symbols and numbers are embedded in an image, a student can’t manipulate them.

Making math textbooks accessible is the next frontier for publishers to meet the needs and preferences of all students, including students with print disabilities. Research indicates that accessible math books make a difference in students’ abilities to understand complicated mathematics. So why aren’t publishers producing accessible math books? The standard used to create accessible digital math text is known as Mathematics Markup Language, or MathML. It’s not a particularly new language to mathematicians, but it and publishers are just getting acquainted. And, of course, the matter of copyright is of concern to publishers. The original Copyright Law was written in 1931 and a lot has changed, even since a relevant amendment in 1996 (the Chafee amendment). I don’t think e-books were on the horizon in the years just before my father was born.

Instinctively and experientially we know that giving students the option of having complicated equations read aloud can only support their emerging understanding of mathematical concepts. Add to that the independence and control with which students can adjust the rate of the speech, the voice character, the highlighting features, and the option to repeat the process as many times as necessary, and you’ve got a research study. Preliminary findings of a small pilot study by the University of Louisville indicate that accessible digital math textbooks can improve the algebra and pre-algebra skills of middle school students with print disabilities. The researchers have applied for additional funding to scale up the study.

The Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center released a new report yesterday – Special Education in America: The state of students with disabilities in the nation’s high schools. In conjunction with its release, Education Week is hosting a monthlong series of online chats related to the findings of the report. The first in the series, The State of Special Education in the U.S., was held yesterday.

I wasn’t able to be present for the chat, but I did submit a question ahead of time. I checked out the transcript today and was delighted to discover that my question was addressed by one of the moderators, Patricia Guard, who is deputy director of the Office of Special Education Programs, the division of the U.S. Department of Education serving the needs of children and youth with disabilities. Here’s the exchange:

Question from Cynthia Curry, Technology Integration Mentor, Maine Learning Technology Initiative: What federally-supported strategies, policies, or resources are being implemented or considered to improve the skills and knowledge of general education teachers to meet the needs of students with diverse learning needs?
Patricia Guard:
This is a very important question. Over half (55%) of students with disabilities spend 80% or more of their school day in a regular classroom. Therefore, the knowledge and skills of both general and special education teachers are critically important to learning for these students. OSEP supports the improvement of the knowledge and skills of general education teachers to meet the needs of diverse learners in a number of ways, including training stipends, national centers and the development of state teacher licensure models for general and special educators. For example: • Nearly 1/4 (1,679) of all scholars (7,501) who entered OSEP-supported training grants in FY 2006 were from general education. These general educators were preparing to pursue a career in special education. • In 2001, the Council for Chief State School Officers’ OSEP-funded project, developed model state teacher licensure standards on what both general and special education teachers need to know and do to teach students with disabilities in their classroom. • OSEP support the IRIS Center, at http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/ , that provides free web-based training modules so that general education faculty and general educators, and others can learn evidence-based practices for teaching students with disabilities. • OSEP is co-funding the OESE-funded Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality, which provides TA to State education agencies to support professional development for general education teachers to improve teacher quality for diverse learners in high needs schools. http://www.NCCTQ.org

I thought the reference to the IRIS Center’s trainings was particularly helpful. Here’s the schedule for the remaining chats (all at 3-4 pm):

11/10 Chat 2: Special Education and High School Reform

11/17 Chat 3: High School Completion and Transitions

11/24 Chat 4: Designing and Delivering High Quality Special Education

If you’ve got room for but one more thing between now and Thanksgiving, go to Atomic Learning and explore the Assistive Technology Tutorials…compliments of ACTEM. You can search the tutorials by “specialization” (hearing, learning, physical, speech, vision) and “category” (auditory word processors, communication devices, content authoring, educational software, keyboards, and software accessibility).

I’ve only had but a minute myself to preview what’s available, but I’ve got to say that the applications and devices will be of interest to everyone. In my short experimentation with selecting combos of specialization-category, here’s a few of the interesting apps and devices I stumbled upon:

Clicker, ImageBlender, MediaBlender, KidPix, Kidspiration, Inspiration, Boardmaker, IntelliTools, SMART Notebook, Writing with Symbols, WordQ, mimio, Kurzweil, Read & Write Gold, Google SketchUp, CoWriter SOLO, as well as DynaVox and Vmax communication devices.

The trial is available through November 27.

Username: maineactem

Password: atomic

Many thanks to Craig Dickinson, ACTEM Business Manager, for the alert.

Big news this week for those of us who’ve been waiting for a DAISY Reader for Mac users. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information System. It’s an international standard for creating accessible multimedia. It’s a powerful tool for all readers (emerging through avid) who have print disabilities.

Why? Let’s say a book is scanned with OCR software to convert it to digital text. That’s helpful for readers with print disabilities, but it’s not ideal. Imagine War and Peace as one long document – no way to navigate among chapters, jump to pages, mark pages, bookmark, etc. That’s where DAISY comes in. It “tags” components of the book, making it searchable and navigable by the reader. Doesn’t that make you want to read a DAISY book? Talk about taking a standard print book and making it flexible, usable, and accessible for everyone.

So, here’s the October 31 headline from ATMac.org:

Yesterday marked the first public beta release of Olearia, a free and open source DAISY talking book player for Mac OS X Leopard. DAISY is an international standard for digital talking books for the blind and print disabled. Previously, there was no actively developed and supported DAISY player available for OS X users, so the release of Olearia is fantastic news for those with all types of print disabilities.

Olearia is a DAISY digital talking book player for the Macintosh computer platform. Olearia will play DAISY version 2.02 and DAISY/NISO 2005 digital talking book. This version 0.90b will play audio only and full text full audio books. The final version of Olearia will support text only DAISY books as well. Olearia supports VoiceOver. Olearia requires MacOS X version 10.5 or better.

For more information about DAISY and the folks behind it, please visit the DAISY Consortium. For more information about Olearia, visit the Curtin University Center for Accessible Technology (CUCAT).

If you attended ACTEM but didn’t have a chance to catch up with the accessibility features built into Mac OS X Leopard, here’s a rundown of what’s new (and some reminders of the oldies but goodies). Thanks to Mike Shebanek of Apple for his informative workshop!

Note: The “command” (cmd) key referenced below is the key on either side of your spacebar (sometimes called the “Apple” key).

Desktop Features
From the Finder, press the cmd and J keys together (cmd-J) . Alternatively, choose View > Show Options from the Finder menu. A “Desktop” floating palette will open, from which you can change the:

• Size of your desktop icons

• Amount of space that each icon takes up (”Grid Spacing”)

• Size of the icon text label

• Position of the icon text label (i.e., it doesn’t have to appear at the bottom)

• Arrangement of your icons (e.g., by name or date created among other options)

When you press cmd-J while inside a folder (be in the icon view), note that the floating palette changes. The palette is contextual, changing based on the location that you want to customize (i.e., desktop or folder). When in a folder, for example, you can change the background color, allowing you or your students to color code folders as an organizational strategy.

Desktop Navigation You can navigate the Menu Bar via the keyboard by pressing the ctrl-fn-F2 keys together. Your Apple menu will light up, from where you can press the arrow keys to move across the Menu Bar and down menu items.

Dock Preferences
You can get to Dock Preferences (size, magnification, position, etc) by ctrl-clicking on the “highway strip” on the Dock. If you haven’t changed your Dock, the highway strip should appear to the left of the MARVEL springboard. If you’ve shaken your Dock up a bit, look for the highway strip at the end of the series of application icons. Note that you can still get to Dock Preferences from the Apple menu.

Mouse & Trackpad Options
Go to System Preferences and choose Universal Access > Mouse & Trackpad. Nothing new here but it was good to be reminded that all of us who project our computers for any audience should enlarge our cursor size. Although I get a lot of rubbing for it, I tend to leave my cursor enlarged all the time. That way, I won’t forget to change it before a presentation. Mike also rightly suggested that we should use the Desktop floating palette (cmd-J) to enlarge our icons and their text label sizes when projecting. These “access” features are obviously there to support low vision, as well.

Zoom
While in the Universal Access panel, choose the Seeing tab. The Zoom feature is another helpful display tool in addition to being supportive of low vision. Turn Zoom on and you can press the option – cmd – = keys together to zoom in and option – cmd - – keys to zoom out. (Note that the “=” key also has a “+” on it (”make bigger”) and you can think of “-” on the zoom out combination as “make smaller.) For better control of zooming, choose the Options button and consider experimenting with the following:

• Zoom follows the keyboard focus (helpful while typing)

• Only when the pointer reaches an edge (keeps the screen from moving with the cursor)

• So the pointer is at or near the center of the image (forces the cursor to stay in the center of the screen)

An alternative to the Zoom keys is to “ctrl – 2-finger scroll” on your trackpad. That is, while pressing the ctrl key, place your index and middle fingers together on the trackpad and gently push them away from you to zoom in and pull them toward you to zoom out.

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling
If you use the scroll arrows to move scroll bars up/down or left/right (as opposed to clicking and dragging the scroll bar), you may have had the experience of clicking the down (or right) arrow when you meant to choose the up (or left) and vice versa. This could be due to the default placement of those arrows being together. To move them apart so they are placed at the top and bottom (or far right and far left) of a scroll bar, choose System Preferences > Appearance.

Access to Characters
Does the standard keyboard limit your ability to communicate in the language of your content area? The International panel is for you. Go to System Preferences > International > Input Menu tab. Choose the Formats tab and in the Region pull-down menu, choose United States. An American flag icon will appear on your Menu Bar (in the vicinity of your battery charge icon). Next, choose the Input Menu tab (to the right of the Formats tab, and choose Character Palette. Now, click on that American flag icon and choose Show Character Palette. Open TextEdit and click and drag characters from the palette to a TextEdit document (or double-click the character). Note lots of categories that span math and language. The Action Menu at the bottom left corner of the palette (the “gear” icon), will give you additional options, such as creating a favorites list for quick reference.

Onscreen Keyboard
Returning to System Preferences > International > Input Menu, note the Keyboard Viewer. Select this and the option to Show Keyboard Viewer will be added to the choices under your American flag icon in the Menu Bar. Click on the maximize button to enlarge it (round green button in the upper left corner of the Keyboard Viewer). This onscreen keyboard may be useful for switch access, but I haven’t tried it.

Searching your computer
Spotlight is a fast way to find just about anything on your computer. You can access Spotlight by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner of your desktop or press cmd-space bar together. Type the first few letters of what you’re looking for, and Spotlight will immediately begin to return results. Click once on the file/app/folder/definition (whatever you search for and find) to open it. You can also launch applications right from Spotlight. To open the folder that a file is in, cmd-click on it in the list of Spotlight results. You can customize Spotlight from System Preferences > Spotlight. Under Privacy tab, you can drag and drop files/folders that you don’t want to appear when Spotlight searching.

Keyboard Shortcuts
I’m often asked about keyboard shortcuts. A list exists at System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Note that these are systemwide shortcuts, as opposed to those for specific applications. Also note that you can change the shortcuts for your computer or create your own (for all or just specific applications).

Trackpad Sensitivity
Diverse users often struggle with the default settings for how the trackpad responds to touch and finger movement. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad tab to put your trackpad in its place!

Text-to-speech
Note that Leopard has a new voice known as Alex. He’s the default system voice, but to find him, choose System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech tab. You can speed him up or slow him down. You can also set him to speak whenever you select text on your computer (from any application as long as the text is digital as opposed to an image). To do this, choose Speak selected text when the key is pressed, and then choose the Set Key button (it may automatically drop down for you). Choose a combination of keys to press together to activate text-to-speech (ctrl + two other keys is a good choice). The keys will appear in the window automatically when you press them (no need to click inside the box). Test this out by selecting some digital text from a word processor or a Web page. Press the combination keys that you chose in the Set Key window and Alex should begin speaking (a bit of delay is typical). Press the selected keys again to stop him.

If Alex isn’t the voice for you, certainly experiment with the other voices available. I’m hoping that “Alexandra” will live in the next OS X!

And if you want more voice options, check out Cepstral or Assistiveware These will cost you a little, but may be worth the expenditure.

Other options in System Preferences
So many options, so little time to blog. Lots more to examine in the Universal Access panel of System Preferences. Note that these are hardware options, meaning that they apply across applications on your Mac.

Know what you’re looking for but can’t seem to uncover it among all those panels in System Preferences? Try the Search field in the upper right corner of the System Preferences pane.

Safari Accessibility

• Make changes to the toolbar: View > Customize Toolbar. Drag and drop toolbar items. The “little A/big A” icon is a nifty one to add because it allows you to increase/decrease the text size from the toolbar (cmd-+ and cmd– are the shortcut keys).

• Change your homepage: The default homepage is MLTI Educator. If you prefer another, go to Safari > System Preferences > General

• Set the minimum text size on all Web pages: Safari > System Preferences > Advanced (note that this only applies to text – images, Java, Flash, etc don’t apply)

• Choose your own stylesheet: If you have a student with specific needs when it comes to how a Web page appears, Safari will allow you to add a customized stylesheet. Go to Safar > System Preferences > Advanced

VoiceOver
I gave (attempted?) a VoiceOver workshop for Maine’s Teachers of the Visually Impaired (TVIs) a couple of years ago. I muddled my way through it, and now realize why VO didn’t come to me more intuitively. I learned how to use a screen reader with JAWS for Windows, and was applying what I knew based on that program. VO is much different, and I must say that I’ve been underestimating it. Much more than a screen reader, VO is an accessible operating system because it’s built in and combines audio, text, and Braille. A tutorial is beyond the scope of this blog (already endless), but I encourage you to examine VO and to know that it is a viable option for many students with unique access needs. For some perspectives on VO, join Screenless Switchers or visit MacVisionaries

One last note to consider: iChat is Sign Language – supported when coupled with an iSight camera.

Lots to digest, which is a good problem to have when it comes to options for supporting the widest possible number of learners!

The MLTI staff has been delivering leadership meetings across several regions of the state for the last two weeks (remaining destinations are Farmington tomorrow and Aroostook County in early November). A running joke has been the continuous spewing of 2-, 3- and 4-letter abbreviations during these sessions (we’ve even come to debate whether any given combination of letters technically constitutes an abbreviation or acronym…or is it an initialization??).

A PLC (I believe that’s an abbreviation) has been called upon as a model of how leadership teams might continue their work beyond the regional meeting. PLC stands for “Professional Learning Community,” and we’re promoting it as a way for leadership teams to return to their schools with a structured approach for moving forward with effective and meaningful initiatives that impact student learning. The term PLC is often used to describe any number of ways that teams of educators come together to problem solve, but a true PLC differs from a committee, workgroup, and even a Community of Practice (CoP – I believe that’s an acronym).

A PLC is grounded in student learning. That may not sound profound, in fact it may appear downright obvious. But when we really think about the roads that we go down when we meet as groups of educators within a building, we realize how often the focus diverges from student learning and winds it way to more indirect topics and priorities. Those topics and priorities are important, but if your group’s work is not immersed in student learning, you’re not in a PLC. In fact, it can be argued that discussions of teacher practice, without being centered on an artifact of student learning, don’t belong in a PLC. Again, discussions of best practice are important, but the purpose of a PLC is to uncover how and why specific kids are or are not learning.

One last critical characteristic of PLCs that make them unique is the necessity of consensus-building. Members of traditional groups often agree to disagree in a way that stifles a compromise and disables progress. You know you’re in a PLC when – after all voices have been heard – the will of the group is recognized and each member, even those most opposed, agrees that the group move forward in a common direction.

In the MLTI’s leadership sessions, the TPCK and SAMR models have provided the context of the need for PLCs. Indeed, looking at student work (yet another abbreviation – LASW) through these lenses can be highly revealing – “Is there evidence that the student has learned what was intended? If so, what is the combination of Technology, Pedagogy and Content (TPCK model) that promoted it? At what level (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, or Redefinition – SAMR model) is technology being used to make this learning possible?”

Although not introduced in our MLTI meetings, I’d like to suggest that a broader framework for a PLC to adopt is RTI (that’s an abbreviation). RTI stands for “Response to Intervention.” I’ll continue a discussion of RTI in my next post, but I’ll say here that the RTI framework is a perfect complement for a PLC because, in and of itself, it forces the focus on student learning. The determination of whether or not students are learning is the paramount purpose. Please understand that “students are learning” refers to the outcomes of general education – content area – teaching. RTI is rooted in student learning within general education. So, the second question becomes, “What is or is not working in the core instructional practices in the classroom?” This brings us full circle to UD (that’s an abbreviation, too): Is the disability within the learner or is it within the curriculum?

Over the summer I met literacy researcher Karen Erickson. Karen specializes in the most complex issues related to literacy development, and I was fascinated by her work. She asked me to share with Maine teachers a new tool for creating preprimer/primer level texts for students. It launched in May and there are already over 900 books across numerous topics. It’s called the Tar Heel Reader, having been researched and developed at the University of North Carolina. Karen explained to me that the books can really serve as study tools for some students while meeting the reading level of others.

For content creation, the site is linked to Flickr Creative Commons, but images can also be uploaded (and Flickr images are served from the site, eliminating firewall interference.) Each book can be speech enabled (selection of 3 voices), and the site is compatible with assistive technologies and augmentative/alternative communication.

What’s more, the Tar Heel Reader is continually supported and updated based on user comments and feedback.

Just posting a note that I heard from a CNET representative regarding my inability to uncover closed captioned videos at their site. Apparently, there was a problem that caused temporary prevention of captions. Sure enough, when I returned to the CNET site today, it didn’t take long to find a video with CC. For fun, here’s an overview of the T-Mobile G1 with Google – the “world’s first Android-powered mobile phone.” (Choose the Product Videos tab. To view captions, choose the CC button on the player.)

Have I ever learned a lot about captioning video for the Web. In a previous post, I provided a list of captioning services for hire (AKA “outsourcing” your captioning needs). Since then, I have acquired and accumulated information that resides in my browser bookmarks, my delicious, CDs, TextEdit docs, notebooks, Stickies on my desktop, even scraps of paper in my briefcase. I’ve finally had a chance to filter through it all and regurgitate it here. Suffice it to say that the process of choosing how to get your media captioned is complicated, and trying to summarize it feels like I’m chasing my own tail. My purpose in this post is to report some options for self-captioning (prefaced with words of caution), followed by a “well, if I were you…” lecture in my next post.

Begin digression.

OH! Before moving on, I must digress to additional interesting points about the benefits of captioning. If you have followed this blog (or listened to the Accessibility in the MLTI series on the Maine Department of Education iTunes U site…or are just plain smart about accessibility), you know that captions are much more than a service for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Here are two more bullets on the list of benefits: Searchability and Navigability.

“Searchability” because search engines (e.g., Google) can’t search video/audio files on the Web. If it’s captioned/transcribed however, then the engine can uncover it and list it in the search results. Kevin Erler of Automatic Sync Technologies (AST) recently reported that after CNET hired AST to caption its media, its hits on Google increased by 30%. (I spent some time at CNET TV and could not uncover one video that is closed-captioned. Their player has a “CC” button, but I was continuously greeted with a message stating “Sorry, closed captions are not available for this video.”)

The appeal of “navigability” is not unlike the benefit of searchability: Searching text (captions) within a video allows you to navigate from one point to another. Captions are kind of like “tagging” the video content. This, of course, is most relevant to lengthy video clips.

End digression.

What I’ve learned about self-captioning (AKA “insourcing”) is that, well, it’s tough to make an argument for it. Insourcing means that you use your own process for captioning the video that you and/or your students create. This means time and labor, and if you plan to employ students, money. The time and labor are primarily a product of the generation of the video transcript, which can be painstaking and mind-numbing. Shortcuts are strongly discouraged as the quality of the transcript forms the foundation for the quality of the captioning. And speech recognition software (e.g., MacSpeech Dictate), although highly accurate for sitting at your computer and talking purposefully, is not so effective when it comes to capturing spoken language during more informal and impromptu situations common to making movies.

Another pitfall to self-captioning is having to know the technology. I recently learned that you caption for the player, not the media file. I’m no techie, but that was a serious conception blower for me. Furthermore, many players don’t support captioning.

Having said what I needed to say about insourcing your closed captioning needs for the video created in your classrooms, if you choose to explore your options, there are many. I have learned of several that I feel comfortable enough to share (i.e., I know enough to be dangerous rather than reckless):

YouTube As of August 28, YouTube supports captioning. While recognizing the need to support its viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing, YouTube is also strategically marketing for multiple languages by referring to “subtitles” (120 languages are available).

Flash I must admit that I never considered Flash to be of the accessible type. I don’t think it always has been, but Adobe Flash CS3 has a built-in captioning component. Adobe provides a list of tools and services for adding captions to Flash video.

National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) ccPlayer with cc for Flash

Captionate

Hi-Caption Studio

NOTE: Automatic Sync Technologies has tutorials for using its CaptionSync software to add captions for Flash media in Flash CS3, Flash 8, JW FLV Player, cc for Flash, Captionate, and Hi-Caption.

Overstream for Flash video hosted on YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, Dailymotion, Veoh, and others

MAGpie (also enables audio description)

CapScribe

MacCaption for Final Cut Pro or any Non-Linear Editing (NLE) system

So that’s what I’ve got. Do I understand all of this? No. And I really care not to. And I doubt many teachers will care to go down multiple roads only to turn around and start over at the original intersection to try yet another. In my next post I’ll propose a possible workflow for schools to get their media captioned and up on the Web in a timely, efficient, and cost-effective manner.