Technology Resources

Visit our campus' Canvas Resources Page for guides, how-to videos, and the Canvas support hotline!

Did you know Canvas offers a built-in tool called Immersive Reader? Use it to declutter your screen so that only the primary text is available, then change the font size, adjust the background color, or even have it read out loud to you! Look for the Immersive Reader button in the upper-right corner of most Canvas pages and give it a try.

 

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Visual learners, rejoice. What makes this site unique are the mind maps, a web of information that breaks down broad subjects into smaller topics. When you create a map, it allows you to see how things are connected. This helps with both memorization and understanding.

The site also has numerous other helpful features like flashcards, a note-taking platform, self-created quizzes, study planner, a collaboration tool, and a way to track how much you’re learning. This versatile tool is also available across multiple platforms for studying on the go.

GoConqr is worth looking at.  It has a multitude of helpful tools and it's free!

Khan Academy is a free online resource that allows students to learn at their own pace, using videos to show step-by-step instruction and proving more than one example to solve a problem.  Simply select "courses" located at the top of the page and scroll through all the topics this robust resource has to offer!  You can find everything from Math and English to Astrophysics and Life Skills.

With this site, you provide the information and Quizlet provides the study tools. Users can create “sets” in any subject under the sun. Based on the set, the website will generate flashcards, quizzes, practice tests, matching games, and even auditory tools. Quizlet also has a free app for learning on the go and studying even offline.

The two games, Scatter and Space Race, allow you to learn the material and have fun doing it. In Scatter, users drag definitions or information to their related counterparts as quickly as they can, clearing the screen. In Space Race, definitions scroll across the screen and you type in the correct word or phrase associated with it before the definition reaches the end of the screen. With leader-boards and high-scores, you can compete to get the best times, adding the motivation of competition to your studying.

Studying can sometimes cover several different platforms, but with Evernote, all of your notes, information, and research can be together in one place. An invaluable organizational tool, this site can sync your info across computers and phones, share with other users, gather web-clips, and create all from one central platform.

Evernote can be used in a multitude of ways: keeping research paper information in order, organizing presentation notes, creating study guides off of in-class note-taking, not to mention everyday non-school related tasks, too.

Collaboration is the name of the game for this website. Chegg connects students through similar learning goals and subjects, allowing them to share and access flashcards, study guides, and more. Chegg can even connect students in specific classes, letting them message each other and collaborate on projects.

The site also has a diverse content library, multiple study modes, class-based study guides, storage for all your notes, and a real-time self-assessing score that tracks your progress on a subject. And with free mobile apps, Chegg can be taken on the go.

Despite making you hungry for some spaghetti, this site is dedicated to increasing productivity. Inspired by the Pomodoro method of productivity—working for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break—Marinara Timer allows you to customize your own personal timer (complete with entertaining alarm sounds like “alien bot ordering lunch” or “echoing into space”) to study effectively.

Taking a small break while studying increases attention span, focus, and productivity. This site can help you reward yourself for your hard work by letting you know it’s time to sit back scroll through your Twitter feed or watch a few funny videos. It then lets you know when it’s time to get back to work.

Studying with flashcards has never been so easy. StudyStack allows users to create flashcard sets and use what others have already made. When a card is flipped, you can choose whether you got it right or wrong. Wrong cards then repeat until you’ve learned it, making it a great tool for memorization.

Once created, the site can turn the information into a number of tools and games perfect for studying. You can play hangman, unscramble, or a matching game before taking quizzes and practice tests.

Intelligent.com is a one-stop resource offering a vast array of study tips. Discover some best practices that may help you learn better. As they say on their site, "There's no right way to study. But there's probably a way that works best for you."

Want to learn more about stress management? What about creating a schedule to write an essay in a week? HowToStudy offers help to students by collecting a wide variety of studying resources from across the Internet. Straightforward and easy to navigate, HowToStudy organizes resources by subject. You can also learn how to study, as their website name suggests, by looking through their collected guides on every part of the studying process, from starting your study session to managing test anxiety for the big day.

A variety of online organizations provide textbooks in alternate formats. Even though the EAC taps these resources to acquire books for qualified students, you are welcome to sign up for your own accounts and receive books straight from the source!

• Bookshare - A great resource for alternate media, Bookshare provides digital and audiobooks in a variety of formats. It's available to individuals who have a qualifying reading or perceptual disability, a visual impairment, or a physical disability that affects their ability to read printed works. And it's free for students! You don't need an account to search their inventory, so pay their site a visit and see if they have the books you're looking for. With over a million titles in their inventory, there's a good chance they do!
• Learning Ally - If you prefer audiobooks read by real people rather than synthesized voices, Learning Ally has you covered. As with Bookshare, you don't need an account to search their inventory. Drop by their homepage and see what they have to offer!
• VitalSource - VitalSource might just have the digital textbook you need, and at a lower price than you were expecting to pay. Rather than purchasing digital books at their full cost, most books on this site can be rented for a matter of months at a deep discount. Best of all, their eTextbooks open in their Bookshelf eReader, which offers a read-out-loud feature and various study tools.
• OpenStax - Part of Rice University, OpenStax provides openly licensed books on a variety of academic subjects. Their comprehensive digital books are just one click away from showing up on your computer screen. For free.
• ProjectGutenberg - This site offers over 60,000 free ebooks to absolutely anyone. Think of it as a library with unlimited copies of each title. All books are in the public domain, meaning most of them are classics. If your academic diet requires Charles Dickens or Plato, feed on ProjectGutenberg.

Have you ever written a note, but when you read it later, you aren't sure what your note means? (Hint: We all have.) Would you like a tool that allows you to relisten to the lecture at the exact moment you wrote that note? If so, check out Glean. Glean not only audio records a lecture, it syncs your notes with the lecture as you type them. It also lets you upload slide decks, speed up or slow down playback, and refine your notes each time you listen.

Not sure if Glean's for you? Take advantage of their free 30-day trial.

If your EAC counselor approves you for alternate media, you may be given access to Kurzweil and the Kurzweil Read the Web extension.

Add the Kurzweil 3000 Read the Web etension to read aloud web content. You can listen to articles for that research project you're working on, comments or directions on your school learning platform, or just catch up on news, all in 30 natural text-to-speech voices that read aloud in 17 languages and dialects.

• Read efficiently with audio (text-to-speech) and visual (moving highlights)
• Reduce reading fatigue with human-quality text-to-speech voices
• Improve comprehension with instant access to 3 types of dictionaries
• Customize reading rate and presentation to suit your preferences
• Highlight important passages or key facts and extract them to a mind map or bulleted list

Read Aloud uses text-to-speech (TTS) technology to convert webpage text to audio. It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, and online university course materials.

Read Aloud allows you to select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft.  Some of the cloud-based voices may require additional in-app purchases to enable.

Read Aloud can read PDF, Google Docs, Google Play books, Amazon Kindle, and EPUB (via the excellent EPUBReader extension from epubread.com).

Read Aloud is intended for users who prefer to listen to content instead of reading, those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities, and children learning to read.

Pixie is an all-in-one tool that makes virtually any website more accessible with a variety of options. You can use it to read text out loud, change and enlarge font, increase line spacing, change the color palate of the page, narrow your visual focus, define words, adjust contrast, upload epubs, make your cursor larger, and a number of other things. It's available as an extension for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox!

Improve your writing with Grammarly. With comprehensive feedback on spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, and writing style, Grammarly is more than just a proofreader. It’s a tool that helps you write with confidence, find the best words to express yourself, and communicate your ideas with ease. 

➤ How it works
Grammarly analyzes your sentences as you write and adds color-coded underlines to words and phrases where you can improve your writing. You can apply Grammarly’s suggestion with a single click, or expand the suggestion to learn more about it. 

➤ Go beyond grammar 
Grammarly’s advanced spelling checker and grammar checker go far beyond the built-in tools of word processors. Grammarly can detect not only misspellings, but also commonly confused words used in the wrong context, like “affect” and “effect.” In addition, it can flag and fix complex grammar and punctuation issues like sentence fragments, comma splices, and subject-verb disagreement.

But great writing is about much more than just grammar and spelling. That’s why Grammarly also helps you streamline wordy phrases and rewrite sentences that are likely to confuse readers. It also suggests word choice improvements to help keep readers engaged, and helps you adjust your tone to ensure you come across the way you intend.

➤ What’s included?

FREE
The free version of Grammarly includes basic writing suggestions designed to help you produce clean, mistake-free writing.

• Grammar checker
• Spelling checker
• Punctuation checker
• Tone detector

PREMIUM
Grammarly Premium includes everything available for free, plus an expanded range of writing feedback designed to help you produce high-quality writing that makes an impact.

• Clarity-focused sentence rewrites
• Tone adjustments
• Vocabulary improvements (word choice, formality level)
• Fluency suggestions 
• Additional advanced suggestions

➤ Works where you write
Grammarly is designed to work seamlessly in your browser—no copying or pasting required. Use it in Google Docs, email clients, social media, and across the web. Grammarly for Chrome works across:
• Google Docs
• Gmail
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Facebook
• And more!

BeeLine uses a color gradient to guide your eyes from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This seemingly simple tweak makes reading easier and faster because it allows you to transition between lines quickly and effortlessly. Many people are able to read 20% or 30% faster with BeeLine, even on their first try.

Equatio makes math digital, helping teachers and students at all levels create math expressions quickly and easily.

Type or handwrite virtually any mathematical expression directly on your keyboard or touchscreen. There’s no need for any complicated code or programming languages.

Equatio instantly turns your thoughts into clear, accurate on-screen formulas. When you type ‘sq’, it knows that you mean ‘square root’. And it listens, too. When you dictate a formula aloud, Equatio is smart enough to ignore ‘umms’, ‘errs’ and other unwanted non-math words.

More than a replacement for pen and paper, Equatio makes math and other STEM subjects engaging and rewarding for every student.

Clearly Reader makes reading web articles simpler. Use it to view a web page without ads, floats, or any other irrelevant things that can prove distracting. Plain and simple.

Make productivity your priority with BlockSite!

⏰Stay Focused Extension
You can now remove all distracting and harmful websites from your life by blocking them while you need to stay in the zone and be productive. You can even set yourself a focus timer and make sure you keep on track throughout the day while at work or school.

👨🏼‍💻Focus Mode
The focus mode timer feature enables you to control your schedule via the Pomodoro technique timer. Break down your tasks into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes followed by a short break. With ‘Focus Mode’ you can set times when to disable websites and when to browse freely - no willpower necessary. 

📅Scheduling 
Set up your own daily schedules and daily routines when you need to keep on track with the ‘Scheduling’ feature that enables you to set days and times when you can access certain sites and apps. 

Organize work and life with Todoist for Chrome.

Use Todoist for Chrome to:

• Add websites as tasks: Add a blog post to your reading list. Save an item to your wishlist. Add work tasks to follow up on.
• Plan your day: Quickly organize your tasks for the day right from the extension. 
• Complete tasks from the browser: Once your tasks are done, check them off without switching context.

Do more with Todoist on desktop and mobile: 

• Capture and organize tasks the moment they pop into your head.
• Remember deadlines with reminders and due dates.
• Build lasting habits with recurring due dates like "every Monday".
• Collaborate on projects by assigning tasks to others.
• Prioritize your tasks with priority levels.
• Track your progress with personalized productivity trends.

With access to 60+ app integrations like Google Drive, Dropbox, Zapier, Evernote, and Slack, Todoist will quickly become your hub for getting work and life organized.

Do you have trouble hearing what's coming out of your computer's speakers? With Volume Master, you can boost their volume up to 600%! Independently control the volume of any tab in your browser in fine-grained increments to nail the perfect volume level for each application.

OpenDyslexic is an open-sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. This extension overrides all fonts on web pages with the OpenDyslexic font, and formats pages to be more easily readable. 

Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters. OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening. Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of "gravity" to each letter. You are able to quickly figure out which part of the letter is down because of this feature. It aids in recognizing the correct letter and sometimes helps to keep your brain from rotating them around. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent confusion by flipping and swapping.

From the website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/canvas-student/id480883488

Access your Canvas courses on the go and in the classroom with the Canvas Student mobile app! From any device, students can now:

• View grades and course content
• Submit assignments
• Keep track of course work with to do list and calendar
• Send and receive messages
• Post to discussions
• Watch videos
• Take quizzes
• Receive push notifications for new grades and course updates, and much more!

Copied from the website: http://www.modmath.com/about

Taken from the website: https://apps.apple.com/US/app/id778848692?mt=8

Learn to meditate and be more mindful with MyLife Meditation, formerly known as Stop, Breathe & Think. MyLife Meditation is an award-winning meditation and mindfulness app that offers daily wellness check-ins and suggests activities personalized on how you feel. Learn to maintain perspective through your mental and physical wellness journey. Develop simple habits so you can get to a better place in just a few minutes a day.

“Wind-down” with us and embark on this meditation journey to help you relieve stress and relax. Let experts guide you through journaling prompts that help you think on and let go of emotions, aiding you through your wellness journey. Destress with a meditation guide to gain a better, calm mindspace.

Anxious? Sleepless? Angry? We’re here for you. Our personalized meditation and mindfulness experience won the 2017 Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Health App and has been featured by the Today Show, Apple, Cosmopolitan, Parents and many more. Guided meditation and relaxation are a great way to destress and become happier.

Breathe, meditate and relax. Mind and body need to be realigned, and it can be achieved with guided mind meditation. At MyLife Meditation, we believe that taking a few minutes each day to take care of how you feel and relaxing is as important as regular exercise. Let us be your meditation guide to relaxation and calming sleep. By developing this simple habit, you can better navigate life’s ups and downs, reduce your stress and get more sleep.

Meditate with a community! Over 5,000,000 downloads and 17 million emotional check-ins and counting!

 

**MINDFUL MEDITATION TUNED TO YOU**

 

MINDFUL MEDITATION

• Calm yourself with personalized meditation recommendations just for you
• Relax with daily meditations for beginners or experienced meditators
• Meditate with deep breathing exercises and guided meditations
• 20+ meditations available in Spanish
• Practice mindful eating with our new series

 

TRACK YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

• Check-in with how you feel
• Track your mood before and after your daily meditations
• Explore your feelings with expert-guided journaling
• Track your mindful minutes by connecting MyLife with the Apple Health app

 

ANXIETY RELIEF

• Users were 82% more likely to NOT be anxious with consistent use of MyLife Meditation
• Create space for yourself through mindful breathing and self-care
• Stress relief is here with specific exercises tailored for any age
• Use our meditation timer when it’s time to meditate

 

BREATHING EXERCISES

• Learn to cultivate your breath to find calm, improve focus and feel more grounded
• Count your breaths to calm your mind and live more mindfully
• Meditation timer helps you stay focused and time each meditation

 

SLEEP BETTER

• Sleep sounds help you fall asleep, faster
• Meditation timer helps you relax while you fall asleep
• Fall asleep to soothing meditation sounds
• Sleep better and relax with our ‘Wind Down’ series

reader - Reading Reinvented.

From the Website: https://www.voicedream.com/reader/

Summarized from the website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/otter-transcribe-voice-notes/id1276437113

Otter records and transcribes in real-time, so you can stay focused on the conversation and rest assured that all information is captured, reviewable, and searchable. Otter.ai is also available online via the web.

Supercharge your note-taking with AI and use Otter for all your classes, homework, and everyday voice conversations.

• Take meeting notes automatically
• Record and transcribe lectures, discussions, podcasts, and videos
• Provide live captioning for anyone with accessibility needs
• Record instantly in one tap, with widget and shortcut too
• Transcribe in real time (when online) with high accuracy
• Highlight the key points to review later
• Insert photos of whiteboard discussions, slides, etc.

From the website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/audionote/id369820957

AudioNote combines the functionality of a notepad and voice recorder to create a powerful tool that will save you time while improving the quality of your notes.

By synchronizing notes and audio, AudioNote automatically indexes your meetings, lectures, interviews, or study sessions. Trying to remember what the professor had to say about a key point? With AudioNote there is no need to waste time searching through the entire recording to find out. Each note acts as a link directly to the point at which it was recorded, taking you instantly to what you want to hear. Didn't take any notes during the lecture? No problem, you can add them later.

A fully functional note application, AudioNote also increases the value of your notes. Watch as your text, drawings, and photos highlight during playback, helping you to remember the context in which they were taken.

Taken from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seeing-ai/id999062298

Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world and describe nearby people, text, and objects.

The app enables you to recognize:

• Short Text - Speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the camera.
• Documents - Provides audio guidance to capture a printed page, and recognizes the text, along with its original formatting.
• Products - Scans barcodes, using audio beeps to guide you; hear the name, and package information when available. (works with iPhone 6 and later)
• People - Saves people’s faces so you can recognize them, and get an estimate of their age, gender, and emotions.
• Scenes (early preview) - Hear an overall description of the scene captured.
• Currency - Recognizes currency notes. (Requires iOS 11)
• Color - Identifies color.
• Handwriting - Reads handwritten text like in greeting cards
• Light - Generates an audible tone corresponding to the brightness in the surroundings.
• Images in other apps - Just tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to describe images from Mail, Photos, Twitter, and more.
• Photo browsing experience - Describes photos on your phone

From the website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notability/id360593530

Welcome to Notability: powerful, yet wonderfully simple note-taking and PDF annotation. Find inspiration, capture ideas, and unleash your creativity with Notability. (Only available on Apple products.)

CREATE MEMORABLE MULTI-MEDIA NOTES

• Work with a variety of note-taking, journaling, and drawing tools like ink, highlighter, text, and audio.
• Mark up imported textbooks, documents, lecture slides, class assignments, and images.
• Instantly create notes from a selection of templates with customizable spacing and backgrounds.
• Explore endless ideas with continuous page scroll.
• Add photos, GIFs, web pages, and more.

STAY ORGANIZED, PAPER-FREE

• Always keep your notes with you, without the weight, the hassle, or the paper waste.
• Group notes with customizable subjects and dividers.

HANDWRITE AND SKETCH NATURALLY

• Ink is fine-tuned for the Apple Pencil for the most responsive, precise writing experience yet, including a double-tap gesture for switching tools, erasing, and more.
• Precisely erase freehand ink or shapes with varied brush sizes.
• Quickly switch between ink or eraser styles with the Favorites Toolbar.

RECORD AND PLAYBACK AUDIO

• Get more out of your lectures and meetings when you record them.
• Replay audio recordings and tap anywhere on your note to hear what was said at that moment.

DO MORE WITH MULTI-NOTE

• Work with two notes side-by-side.
• Quickly switch between notes and Drag & Drop handwriting, typed text, images, etc.

TYPE ANYWHERE

• Full-featured, left-aligned typing with word count and a wide range of fonts, custom fonts, sizes, and colors.
• Create outlines, interactive checklists, and text boxes.

IMPORT AND SHARE

• Import PDFs, DOCs, PPTs, images, GIFs, and more.
• Easily create searchable multi-page PDFs using the built-in Document Scanner.

Do you have an iPhone or an iPad? Apple has been baking accessibility features into its devices for years. It's likely more powerful than you realize.

The Accessibility Assistant is a good place to begin learning what your Apple device is capable of. Access it by opening your Shortcuts app and searching for "accessibility assistant," then add the result to your shortcuts menu.

Use the Assistant to hone in on the features that may be most useful to you by selecting specific disabilities. Begin by listing broad categories (vision, hearing, mobility, and cognitive), then narrow them down further. For example, if you select "vision," you may then specify aspects such as "wears reading glasses," "sensitivity to light," "depth perception issues," etc. Multiple disabilities can be selected.

The Assistant will then create a comprehensive list of all the accessibility features that pertain to your specifications. Brief descriptions of each feature, as well as links to web pages and tutorial videos, will show up in your Notes app. Possibilities unlocked!

Here are but a few accessibility features built into iPhones:

• Optical Character Recognition (NEW!) - When you take a pic with your iPhone camera, it will automatically detect text and make it interactive. Touch the text in the image to highlight it. Select "speak" from the options presented to you to have the text read out loud.
• VoiceOver - Allows you to hear what's on your screen. Reads out loud to you. Allows you to use specific finger gestures to interact with your phone without even seeing what is on the screen.
• Voice Control - Control your iPhone with just your voice. Speak commands to perform gestures, interact with screen elements, dictate and edit text, and more. Navigate with screen locations by verbalizing locations on a grid overlay.
• Zoom - Use this feature to magnify your screen in a variety of ways.
• Guided Access - Limit your device to a single app, as well as certain features within the app. Useful if motor skills are limited.
• Speak Screen - The read-out-loud aspect of VoiceOver, readily available if you want to have any text on the screen narrated to you.
• Live Listen - Use your iPhone like a distant microphone that transmits what it's picking up into your earbuds.
• Braille Screen Input - Change your touchscreen into a Braille character keyboard to enter text.
• Reader Mode - Hide distracting advertisements on the website you're viewing. Isolates the screen result to pertinent text.
• Patterned Vibration - Set your phone up to vibrate differently depending on the notification.

There are more where these came from. Check out where the Accessibility Assistant guides you!

Are you an Android user? Like Apple's iOS, Android has been incorporating accessibility options into its operating system for years.

A good place to begin familiarizing yourself with what it has to offer is its Android Accessibility Overview. From there, you can take a deeper dive into each feature. Here are a few worth mentioning right away:

• TalkBack - Allows you to interact with your device with touch and spoken feedback.
• Braille Keyboard - Enter 6-dot Braille in your screen.
• Display/Font Size - Adjust the size of select items on your screen.
• Magnification - Zoom in and out of your entire screen.
• Contrast/Color Options - Change to high-contrast, dark theme, color inversion, or color correction.
• Select to Speak - Point your camera at something to hear it read or described aloud. (Yep!)
• Sound Amplifier - Filter, augment, and amplify the sounds transmitting from your device to your headphones.
• Hearing Aid Support - Pair hearing aids with your device.
• Live Transcribe - Captures speech and sound and presents them as text on your screen.

There are more where these came from. Explore the accessibility suite within your device's settings to discover more!