Journal

We are now ordering the Fusion Suite from APH for all of our JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion licenses. When you receive a Fusion Suite license, you’ll have the option to install and activate all 3 apps (or just the ones you want). 

That sounds straightforward, but we’ve all had some confusion about exactly how to activate these licenses and install the software on student computers. I reached out to Freedom Scientific, and I got some helpful videos to guide you through the process. 

• How to Help a Student Access the Software Licensing Portal and Activate Their License

• How to Activate FS Student Suite

If you prefer to have written steps, follow the guide below. 

1. Place your order through OTMC (APH #: D-11111-ED).

2. Once the order is processed, you’ll receive a license from Freedom Scientific. The email contains 2 links: “This product is for my own use” and “This product is for someone else”

   • • Most often, we will be choosing “This product is for someone else” so that we can forward the license to district IT staff to complete the installation. 

       1. • Choose the “This product is for someone else” link, and enter the email address you want to forward to. 

          • That person will receive a similar email, and they will choose “This product is for my own use”.

     • If you select “This product is for my own use”, the license will be associated with your Freedom Scientific account (described below). District IT staff will need access to this account during activation, so you will most likely need to be present during that step.

3. After clicking on “This product is for my own use”, you’ll be directed to the Freedom Scientific Portal. You can login to an existing account, or you can create a new account and then login. Your license will now be associated with this Portal account.

4. THIS PART IS IMPORTANT! For the remaining steps, you must be on the student’s computer. To activate the license on your student’s computer, you must login to the Portal account using the student’s computer. 

5. In the Portal, you’ll see your license information displayed (if you have more than one license, you can select between licenses). Click on the “Activate this computer” button to assign the license to the student’s computer.

6. The computer will automatically download a “License Activator” file. After installing JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion, run the “License Activator” file to complete the activation. 

Nano Banana is the latest version of (Google) Gemini's 2.5 Flash, an AI image generator and editor. Nano Banana has been getting a lot of praise lately, and one important reason is that it's getting quite good at editing existing images without changing important details. 

I tested an earlier version of this tool in the spring, and I decided to check it out again after the most recent update. I'm primarily interested in using this tool to help with tactile graphic production.