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Blog vs. Wiki

A blog would be used more by someone who is trying to figure something out, or is using a blog for entertainment purposes. A wiki would be more used by someone who is perhaps working on something with a group of people.I think wiki's usually have more valid information than blogs since in most cases, a blog only has one author who did only a little research on what he's talking about; While with a wiki, it could be one topic, but there could also be many more people talking about it, more people means more research, so the information should be more relevant.A blog would be more useful for someone looking at a persons point of view on something, and then looking at a different blog about the same thing and comparing the two peoples point of view on that topic. Information is also usually more organized on wikis than on blogs because as you post on a blog, the posts before it are moved down and become harder to find, while with a wiki, usually the content is categorized.

New Domain Names

ICANN is the name of the non-profit organization that will allow websites to change their domain levels. Companies will have to pay $185,000 plus a $25,000 annual charge to change this domain level and they will have to fill out the application form which is 360 pages long. Some of these new domains are going to be .asia, .aero, .biz, .cap, .coop, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .post, .name, .post, .pro, .tel, .travel, .xxx. It works by allowing companies, businesses, cities, organizations and even single people to put an extension on their website that will make it easier to categorize and find. It is important to companies because they can actually have their domain level be .phone or for named after certain brands, like Coca Cola can have their domain be .coke if they want to pay for it. Tomorrow is such a big deal for the future of the internet because this change could change the way we find everything on the internet and it can change how businesses find other business partners depending on their domain level and extensions. Everything is going to become a lot clearer after this change since similar website will most likely have similar domain levels. Like car websites can have .car instead of just .com since you cannot tell what the contents of a site will be just by .com. I could not find any non-profit organizations that are similar to ICANN, so it looks like ICANN will be receiving all the traffic from those who want to change their domain level.

Assistive Technology Comments

The most interesting assistive technology that I found would have to be the prosthetics. I also think that the prosthetics are the most beneficial to the users. I say this because without limbs, that leaves you with the ability to do very little, but with the help of these fake limbs users can once again do things that they loved to do before they lost their limbs. The most surprising thing I found was the sip and puff systems. I didn’t think that you could get something to function just with breathing patterns and sucking on a straw, that’s amazing to me.
I think it would be a learning experience to use some of the assistive technologies that are out there because it would show us that what we may find difficult to use, someone else finds extremely useful and they’re happy to use it. I think the technology could help with a lot of things, like if you had to type a long paper. Instead of spending hours typing it and backspacing and changing things, you could just use a speech recognition program and talk to the computer and have it type everything for you, so instead of spending hours typing you can just spend a fraction of the time talking.
I know that people who use assistive technologies are most likely going to be looked at since they are different, but usually people don’t say anything. If you were to see a person with a tube coming out of their mouth and they were sitting in a wheelchair completely still, yet they were still obviously controlling the wheelchair to go somewhere, I think you would stare at them too. Not in a disrespectful way, but in a “How is he doing that?” type of way. Most people do not know a whole lot about assistive technologies so they may think it’s weird or unusual to see people who are disabled doing things that the rest of us could already do. I think that if everyone was informed about assistive technologies and how they help disabled people, these people wouldn’t be stared at or thought of differently than any other person.

Assistive Technology

There was a 4th grader named Eli who could not match the sounds of letters with the way he saw the letters. Because of this, his school found a program that showed the letter on the screen as the program said it, and once it went through all the letters, it would start over and this time it would say the letter, show it on the screen and then it would show a picture of something who's first letter matched the letter that appeared on the screen. After using this program for a year, Eli has improved a lot of his reading skills and is catching up with the other kids in his grade.

Taba is a 9 year old third grader. He has a disability where he cannot translate his thoughts into writing. He is actually very intelligent compared to his fellow classmates, but since he cannot translate thoughts to writing, he gets very upset and as a result he misses a lot of school and comes to school late. His school gets him a program that when synchronized with a special microphone, he just has to talk and his words appear on the screen. After he is done talking he just edits his text, saves it, and moves onto his next assignment. This program has helped Taba quite a bit.

Camille is an eight year old second grader and she suffers from down syndrome. She is eager to learn, but her disability disables her from being able to type information into a computer. Her school combined several assistive technologies together to create a keyboard that could be programmed to have custom keys with different colors, pictures, shapes and sizes. These keys can be programmed to mean a letter, number, word, or even whole phrase. Thanks to this technology, Camille has improved greatly with her self-esteem and education.
http://www.edutopia.org/assistive-technology-success-stories

90's

Chiribit

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Voki vs. Blabberize

I liked using Voki more because the mouth was already set where it needed to be and moved on it's own. All you had to do was change the appearance and plug in your audio. I think the Blabberize website could be used in other classes because you'd be able to take an important person from the subject you're researching/presenting and 'blabberize' them.

Stephen Hawking

Voki

Halloween