Electronics and the Disabled Student

The Livescribe Echo Smartpen 

I wanted to share with you the electronic "assistants", so to speak, that I'm using this quarter to help me through school. I've got to say, this is the most organized and productive quarter I've had so far. Here's what I'm using and what I'm using the item for:

• Livescribe Echo Smartpen 
• records lectures in real-time and syncs them to the place you touch in your handwritten notes
• Sansa Fuze + MP3 player 
• I use it to play audiobooks, which I got from RFB&D -- "Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic" site
• Asus EEE PC 1000HA (a netbook that weighs under 3 pounds)
• used for notes, papers and correspondence with instructors online -- light enough to put in a large purse

With the above tools, I can come home and plug my Live Scribe pen into my computer, watch my notes pop up on the screen and click in any area to hear what the prof. was saying at that point in the lecture. Then I can pop my headphones in and listen to any textbook I have on the Sansa  -- that way my lack of concentration doesn't get the best of me. The computer is small enough to take anywhere, so I can work on a research paper at home or even while waiting in the doctor's office. NEAT-O!

I can honestly say that I am grateful to be a disabled student in this day and age. The electronics that have been developed in just the past 20 years are amazing! I remember, as a sixth grader, sitting at a *clunky* desktop computer and being taught how to write MS-DOS -- wow. I thought it was a cool thing to make patterns across the screen by writing a particular line of code. What we can do today, even playing around, is much more than we ever dreamed of back then. I'm truly amazed. [Click blog title for link to Livescribe]