Original teaching materials with dot codes, which can be linked to multimedia such as audio, movies, Web pages, html files, and PowerPoint files were created for use with autistic children with intellectual and expressive language disabilities. A maximum of four audio recordings can be linked to one dot code icon. One of the authors (S. I.) also created “Post-it” icons, on which dot codes were printed, and shared these with teachers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). As part of this project, many activities using dot code materials were successfully conducted at special needs and general schools. Basic information on the creation of these materials and their use in schools are presented in this paper.

Original teaching materials with dot codes, which can be linked to multimedia such as audio, movies, web pages, html files, and PowerPoint files, were created for use with students with disabilities. Hand-crafted original teaching materials can easily be created by the users themselves—for example, by schoolteachers—with newly developed and easy-to-handle software. A maximum of four multimedia files can be linked to each Post-It sticker icon and/or dot codes overlaid with a specially-designed software (GM Authoring Tool), and such multimedia files are replayed with a specially-designed sound pen (G-Speak) and scanner pen (G-Pen Blue) with Bluetooth functionality just by using the pen to touch the Post-It sticker icon and/or the dot codes on the printed document. Many activities using dot code materials have been successfully conducted, especially at special needs schools. Basic information on the creation of these materials—and on their use in schools—is presented in this chapter.

Original e-book teaching materials containing media overlays were created for use in teaching students with reading disabilities. FUSEe developed by FUSE network, Japan was used to create EPUB 3 e-books, where an audio was replayed with synchronized highlighting of the corresponding text. SMIL language or JavaScript package for iOS, ibooks.js was used to replay the audio reproduction. These EPUB 3 e-books were read effectively with an EPUB 3 reader (for example, iBooks for iOS, and Sony and Kobo Readers for Android). E-books created with special needs school, general school, and Japanese Foreign Language Institute schoolteachers were implemented at many schools for students with reading disabilities and dyslexia. Some assessments of the reading activities were performed to clarify the e-books containing media overlays. Basic information regarding the creation of these e-books and their use in schools is presented in this chapter.

Most of the present authors, the teachers at the School for the Mentally Challenged at Otsuka, University of Tsukuba, have been creating original teaching aids and materials using low-tech and high-tech methods. Original teaching aids created with woodworking and metalworking are usually used for students with an intellectual disability. The original teaching materials with Grid Onput dot code, which could link multimedia, such as audio, movies, web pages, html files, and PowerPoint files were created in collaboration with one of the present authors, Professor Shigeru Ikuta, who organized a large research project, and Gridmark Inc. that developed Grid Onput dot code. The present authors have recently developed a new software program, SmileNote, to help students create presentation slides in expressing their feelings, will, and desires to classmates, teachers, and parents. Basic information on these materials and their use in schools is presented in this chapter.

Practitioners have been using three communication aids in conducting many school activities at both special needs and regular schools. In the simplest system, voices and sounds are transformed into dot codes, edited with pictures and text, and printed out with an ordinary color printer; the printed dot codes are traced to be decoded into the originals by using a handy tool, Sound Reader. In the most complex system, in addition to audio files, multiple media files such as movies, web pages, html files, and PowerPoint files can be linked to each dot code; just touching the printed dot code with sound or scanner pens reproduces their audio or multimedia, respectively. The present chapter reports the software and hardware used in developing originally handmade teaching materials with dot codes and various school activities performed at both special needs and regular schools.