Rebecca+Forte


 * //[[file:How Animals Communicate.ppt]]//**

=Sofware Evaluation=

Math Pad
On the information of MathPad in the Internet, the company, [|Infouse], describes the software as an electronic worksheet for students who have trouble with traditional pencil and paper worksheet. For the students with disability of fine motor skills who experiences difficulty at lining the numbers for grouping and regrouping, this program will be great; all the numbers on the worksheet are clear and big. To help students concentrate on solving a problem, only one problem appears at a time on a worksheet. The software provides pre-set of math problems of basic operations from level 1 to level 3. Students can practice their operation skills by simple using the preset list of problems. If they do not want to use the preset lists, they can make their own list of problems. They also print out their problems. They can check whether their answers are right or wrong immediately. Students and teachers can print out one of each problems or the list of problems. When students need to focus on a certain area, they can re-practice the problems of that area.

The software provides good accessibility. There is a voice feature; a problem on the page can be read with a click on the menu. This voice feature will help students with attention deficit difficulty. The colors and sizes of fonts can be also changed; even the background of the page can be highly contrasted for students with visual impairments. For the students who do not feel comfortable at using a regular computer keyboard and a mouse, alternative input devices such as IntelliKeys Overlay can be connected.

=Website Evaluation= [|autismtown]

I think this web site is very interesting. As the author of this web site mentions, this web site is designed to build a virtual community for autism. All the links, whether personal pages, non-profit organizations, or business, are related with autism. Like a real neighborhood in a town, all sites of this web page co-exist side by side. If you buy an area, composed of pixels, on the web page, you can upload your own stuffs. Due to this situation, some visitors, who wish to get some information of autism from a non-profit organization might be confused with the personal and business links on the web page. Another obvious problem of this web site is that the size of a link on the web page. Some is big enough to be obvious, but many of links is too small to be identified. The size of each link of this web page is decided by the amount of donation to the organizations which run this web site. One thing that I really like about this web site is its role as a resource. In some way, it functions like a “yellow pages” in the area of autism. If a visitor needs a commercial help in your area, this web site provides information of business and professionals in the area.