Posts by Jane Farrall

About Jane Farrall

Jane has been working in the disability and assistive technology field for over 20 years. She has extensive practical experience in both Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and in teaching children and adults with disabilities to acquire literacy.

Jane has worked as a school and adult service based therapist and literacy teacher. She has also worked as an assistive technology specialist at both ComTEC and at Spectronics and is currently working as an independent consultant in literacy, AAC and Assistive Technology.

She has completed a Masters in Special Education focusing on literacy acquisition in children and adults without speech. Jane is a former Chairperson of AGOSCI (Australian Group on Severe Communication Impairment) and is the founder and organiser of the Big Mouth Camp, a camp for school aged students using speech generating devices and their families. You can get more information about Jane at her website www.janefarrall.com.

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Intellipad – the Write tool for the iPad

Intellipad – the Write tool for the iPad

Intellipad is a relatively new writing app available for the iPad. Developed by an Occupational Therapist who wanted a custom keyboard for her client – the App has become much more than a custom keyboard creator and is a very clever writing and literacy teaching tool. At the most basic level, Intellipad offers a keyboard with word prediction, some basic spell checking and text-to-speech …

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TarHeel Reader Books – a great resource for iBooks on your iPad

TarHeel Reader Books – a great resource for iBooks on your iPad

Over the past few weeks I have presented quite a few workshops where I have talked about making custom bookshelves within iBooks for self-selected reading time – or just for making a range of books available for students to enjoy! One of the resources I have been using to contribute to custom bookshelves is TarHeel Reader books, imported into iBooks. TarHeel Reader, as I’ve …

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iPads in Special Education

iPads in Special Education

This presentation was created for a series of workshops on iPads in Special Education in late 2011 held in Perth and locations in Victoria. The presentation uses links and information contained on our Apple and iPad information page at http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/blog/apple/.

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DynaVox Series 5: Hands on Training Perth August 2011

DynaVox Series 5: Hands on Training Perth August 2011

These resources are designed to accompany the DynaVox Series 5 (V/Vmax/V+/Vmax+/Maestro) training that we provided in Perth in August 2011. The presentation used at the beginning of this workshop is shown as a Slideshare document below. DynaVox Series 5 Hands-On training Resources Series 5 Comprehensive Quick Start guide DynaVox Implementation Toolkit Opening the Box – Series 5 AAC 101 Introduction to InterAACt Teaching Vocabulary …

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AAC – All Day, Every Day

AAC – All Day, Every Day

This presentation was created for a workshop for SPOT on DD  on “AAC All Day, Every Day” in August 2011. Videos were removed from this presentation for privacy reasons – but some of the videos available are on You Tube and links to these and other resources are provided below.

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The iPad as Assistive Technology

The iPad as Assistive Technology

This presentation was created for a workshop for SPOT on DD  on “Using the iPad as Assistive Technology” in August 2011. The presentation uses links and information contained on our Apple and iPad information page at http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/blog/apple/.

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TarHeel Reader – a fabulous literacy resource for ALL

TarHeel Reader – a fabulous literacy resource for ALL

I strongly believe that everyone has the right to learn to read and write and it is our role to make sure that every student we work with develops the best literacy skills possible. As part of this we need to have high interest texts on topics of their choice available to all the students we work with – so that they can read …

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Read2Go App – Ready Set Read! for Students with Learning Difficulties

Read2Go App – Ready Set Read! for Students with Learning Difficulties

Read2Go, the new accessible eBook reader for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is now available for download from the iTunes App store. Read2Go works with Bookshare. Any book available to you through your Bookshare login can now be downloaded to your iPad or iPod touch and read on your mobile device – offering a more accessible, portable library. (If you need more information …

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Willans Hill School on Radio National

Willans Hill School on Radio National

Recently I blogged about the fabulous literacy program at Willans Hill School in Wagga Wagga. (See “Literacy for All at Willans Hill“.) This week, we were very excited as The World Today on Radio National also did a segment on the program. The segment is included below. “Small school talks up literacy program” You can also find the original link to the segment at …

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iPads for Special Education (Presentation)

iPads for Special Education (Presentation)

This presentation was created for a series of workshops on iPads in Special Education in June 2011. The presentation uses links and information contained on our Apple and iPad information page at http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/blog/apple/.     Click on this link to download the iPads in Special Education – Handout. The list of Apps for the National Secondary Schools Computer Funding (Victorian Special Schools) can be …

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