Haugen’s Tech Tips Blog

ATMac is a blog that offers news, reviews and opinions on assistive technology for Mac OS X, by Ricky Buchanan who is himself an avid Mac and AT user.  Organized by type of user, for example “text-to-speech users,” or “deaf users,” or “primary switch users,” and by audience (”content producers,” “developers,” “edcuators,” “users”), you can quickly find relevant entries.

Bottom line - direct, honest info and reviews about state-of-the-art assistive tech for the Mac.

As shared in Exchange Every Day, from Child Care Information Exchange, a new study reports a link between consuming food dyes and sodium benzoate, and hyperactivity in children.

A UK study reported in Work & Family Life (November 2007; www.workandfamilylife.com)
demonstrates the impact of food additives on children’s behavior.
Researchers at the University of Southampton served 300 children in two
age groups (3’s and 8-9’s) three different fruit drinks daily.
One-third of the children were served a drink that contained the amount
of food dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a British child’s
diet. The second drink contained a lower concentration of those food
additives, and the third was free of additives.
Over three
seven-day periods, teachers, parents, and graduate students used
standardized evaluation tools to measure the children’s concentration,
restfulness, fidgeting, and talking or interrupting too much. Those
doing the testing did not know which children received which drinks.
The children in both age groups were found to be significantly more
hyperactive when drinking the beverage with higher levels of additives.
The greatest impact was observed in the three-year-olds! In response,
the British Food Standards Agency issued an advisory to limit
children’s intake of additives if parents noticed an effect on behavior.

Reprinted with permission from ExchangeEveryDay. To sign up for a free subscription to this daily newsbrief, go to www.ChildCareExchange.com.

Starting today (Nov 12-26, 2007), for $400, you can give - and get - one of the most unique laptop computers on the planet.

One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.
The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

SchoolNetAfrica is a pan-African education portal for practitioners, policymakers and school communities across the continent with resources in English, French, Kiswahili, Portuguese and Arabic.

SchoolNetAfrica is made up of the African Education Knowledge Warehouse:

• SchoolNet Centre, which has tools and resources to support national SchoolNets
• Policy Centre, which provides resources and studies to support policy development on ICT integration in education
• Learner Centre, which houses resources for learners and provides space for networking and collaboration among young people
• African Teachers Centre, the meeting place for the African Teachers Network
• Gender Watch, which houses gender and ICTs related resources and captures voices of women and girls using ICTs for their advancement
• Innovation Watch, which tracks innovations and innovators to inspire learners and educators in using ICTs for Education
• Campaigns, which include their One Million Computers for African Schools campaign.

Their campaigns include:

• One Million Computers for African Schools
• Global Teenager Project
• Researching ICTs for Education in Africa
• Building African SchoolNet Champions
• Supporting National SchoolNets
• African Teachers Network
• ThinkQuest Africa
• From Guns to Computers

On a personal note, I’m delighted to call as a friend Babacar Fall, from Senegal, one of the governing members of SchoolNetAfrica.

Chauncey Rucker’s ConnSense Bulletin has long been a favorite of mine for news, reviews and updates related to assistive technology. It’s quality stuff, and he taps into key issues. In addition to online articles and an e-mail bulletin, ConnSense also has begun providing podcasts. Maybe I’m a luddite, but I’ve never quite figured out how or when to listen to podcasts. Still, I began browsing the ConnSense podcasts on iTunes, and quickly decided I wanted to see what they were talking about. After a quick google, I had onscreen references to what the podcast was discussing, each informing the other. For some reason, this really worked for me, and takes me a step beyond listening to podcasts as I drive.