Free Materials For Teachers
Image©2008 ABS Old steam engine
Windows 3.1? 95? 98?

General Requirements

Your activities will run better with the right engine. The system requirements for downloaded activities are the same as those for each application. If you can run the application an activity loads into, then it should open and run. The only additional requirement would be more than the absolute minimum RAM, since many activities are fairly large and involve movies. Mac OSX 10.3 or higher is required for Clicker 5® and Cloze Pro®. My Own Bookshelf® actually runs better in Mac OS9. Classroom Suite will run in Mac OS9.2 and OSX 10.2 and higher. All activities should run in Windows 98 or later.

Resources such as JPEG and GIF graphics should load into all these multimedia applications. IntelliTools Classroom Suite®, Clicker 5 Mac,® and My Own Bookshelf® can run QuickTime® movies. Clicker 5 Windows® does not run QuickTime, but will load most AVI movies. Frame animations for Classroom Suite only work in Suite.

Requirements By Application

Adobe Acrobat Reader®: I’ve tested the PDF’s for the Who’s in the Barn? Workshop in v. 5 on Mac 10.2.8, and v. 6 on Windows XP, and they seem to function perfectly. So, Acrobat Reader v. 5 or later for Mac, 6 or later for Windows.

Crick Software Clicker 5®: Activities were built in v.5.25 for Mac and Win. Check the Crick Software web site for free upgrades to this version.

Crick Software Cloze Pro®: Tests were constructed in v.1.0 for both Mac and Win.

HyperStudio 5: Activities were built in the latest build of HS5 on Mac. This application requires Mac OSX 10.4 or later. Activities should also run on HS5 for Windows.

IntelliTools Classroom Suite®: Activities were built in v.3.2. I believe they will work in v. 3.0 or later, but you certainly ought to upgrade at least to 3.2. I’m about to upgrade to v. 4.0

Microsoft PowerPoint®: I ‘m currently building activities in Keynote on Mac, and exporting them as PowerPoint. This export creates a media folders, which I hope will retain links to movies. The resulting ppt file and its media folders are then zipped and posted. The activities created in this format should run in PowerPoint PowerPoint 2003 (Win) and 2004 (Mac) or later.

Microsoft Word®:Activities with the .doc extension will run in Microsoft Word 2003 or later, Mac or Win. I have seen some formatting slippage in Vista, but this should be easy to fix.

QuickTime®: Online books require that you download and install the latest version of QuickTime, a free download. Some activities also have QuickTime movies (Classroom Suite, Clicker 5 Mac, HyperStudio 5, My Own Bookshelf.)

SoftTouch My Own Bookshelf®: Books were exported from v.2.0.4. You should update to this version, which takes care of several glitches. It’s a free upgrade.

SoftTouch Test Me Score Me®: Tests were exported from v.2.1. Definitely upgrade to this version! It’s a free upgrade.

Special Needs Access

Image©2008 ABS Samhein Shadowboxing
Maybe I should switch to a mouse!

Clicker 5 and Cloze Pro activities can be accessed with standard switches and the Crick USB Switch Interface®.

HyperStudio 5 activities can be accessed with adaptive switches that can emulate a mouse click and/or numbers 0-3 through the MBA Button Stepper. However, for now it does not scan anything except buttons, so things like graphic objects with actions would not be scanned. I’ve so far avoided this problem by using transparent buttons over graphics objects. For more details, see the comments for the HyperStudio Is Back! post.

IntelliTools Classroom Suite activities can be accessed with switches, including the IntelliSwitch®, and with IntelliKeys®. Custom IntelliKeys overlays are included with downloaded activities. Dynavox® .pkg versions of the overlays allow students to run these activities from their Dynavox AAC devices.

You can run Classroom Suite activities from the Prentke Romich AAC devices also. Click here for information about how to control IntelliTools activities from specific PRC devices

My Own Bookshelf and Test Me Score Me can be accessed with switches and with IntelliKeys.

PowerPoint is switch-accessible with a mouse adapted to have a switch plugged into it. I believe it also would be accessible with programmable switch interfaces such as IntelliSwitch.

For a PDF guide to switch interfaces and settings for specific software, click this link. This was a handout at CTG 2006 for a presentation by Deanna K. Wagner & Caroline R. Musselwhite.

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