Monday, December 8, 2008

Boardmaker Dreams

Mayer-Johnson just sent out a survey about what people would like to see in Boardmaker 7. Here are somethings I would like to see:
  • Boardmaker Player available on a flash drive
  • Pre-programmed commonly used variables or a variable glossary you can use
  • Instant thumbnails of saved boards for easy finding
  • "About this board" button to click when you open a board that shows if it is interactive, if it is programmed for scanning and who the original author was (if that person chose to include that when they shared the board)
  • A symbol that you can paste into a cell that automatically shows the copyright information
  • Better voices, especially child and teen voices in Plus and SDP
  • Many more templates, such as the Accessible Book Collection templates for picture and chapter books and lots of worksheets that can be print or interactive
  • More symbols for things like sports teams, all of the steps of various task analysis including putting on different kinds of clothes, self-care, self-transfer, community and vocational activities
  • Wizards that an non-intrusive to do things like make cause and effect switch activities, "choose it" activities, accessible books, schedules, communication boards
  • Spell check when programming the boards
  • More symbols of specific adaptive equipment (like how they now have a accurate symbol for a Rifton Gait Trainer), even if they just look through catalogs of the larger adaptive equipment companies for ideas (also see a list of symbols I would like in the Slideshare embedded in this post)
  • Able to rotate images and cells (for making folded books and materials)
  • automatically fit, align and justify text in buttons according to user settings
  • a setting to make all text the same pre-set font on a board
  • a menu bar item to automatically take you to Adapted Learning and another to publish your board Adapted Learning
  • a point system that gives you rewards for publishing boards to Mayer-Johnson sharing (like Intellitools)
  • a "zoom" feature for when you are making boards in a multiple board layout (can't tell you how many typos and simple errors I make when I create large, multiple page boards because I cannot see what I am typing)
  • integrated "Make a Face" and for added flare it could work from digital images of people turning into PCS images -- oh-la-la
  • integrated photo editing
  • a feature that alerts you when the new addendum comes out, lets you link to the MJ website, purchase the addendum, download and install and and have the CD follow in the mail
  • a way to designate ASL or SEE when using the sign addendum and you have both installed
  • menu bar item that allows you to set Symbolate to be primarily in PCS, Widgit, picture this, ASL or SEE (if you have those addendums)
  • worksheet templates in the templates folder including matching, spelling, cut and paste, tracing, scissors, and other basics
And a huge dream... online Boardmaker Plus (like Write Online).

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