Blog Entry #8 - Assistive Software & Learning Disabilities
My first year of teaching I was blessed to receive a specialized eighth-grade Humanities classroom with Language and Literacy (L&L) students integrated into it. The Language and Literacy program is for students that are reading and writing at an elementary school level. For example, I had eighth-grade students who were reading and writing at a fourth-grade level. This teaching assignment was a blessing in disguise as it taught me all about modifications and accommodations for Individual Program Plan (IPP) students. It also taught me that our traditional education system was not designed for students with learning exceptionalities, as they cannot keep up with the fast pace of their courses. As a result, each of my L&L students received a laptop which they could use to complete their schoolwork in all their courses. This quickly taught me the power of technology use for students with learning disabilities.
Today, I will be exploring the question:
What innovative technology exists to help students with learning disabilities?
In my own personal experience, Read and Write Gold is an innovative technology that helps IPP students in a meaningful manner. “Read and Write is a text-to-speech program that provides visual and auditory feedback of text” (Northern Arizona University, n.d., para. 1). Students can log onto websites and have the program read the content aloud to them. The program will also help them define unknown words while they are reading and keep a personal dictionary. However, there are limitations to every program and students should be reminded that after using the text-to-speech feature they need to edit their work for punctuation, grammar, spelling mistakes, etc.
Word prediction is another example of a simple technological innovation that has been helping students with learning disabilities in writing for a long time. The word prediction program recommends words for students, so that they can form sentences without having to worry about spelling or word-choice. “An analysis of 25 years of research found that word prediction increases transcription accuracy and may also increase word fluency and compositional quality of writing for students with learning and academic difficulties” (Young & MacCormack, 2018, para. 14). So, it appears that word prediction really can make a meaningful impact on students with writing difficulties.
In conclusion, I wanted to finish with a caution that assistive software like Read and Write Gold or word prediction is only successful when the person operating them is competent. So, it is important for teachers to receive professional development opportunities that relate to these programs. It may also be beneficial to provide students with modelled examples of when these programs may work best for them.
What assistive technologies or software have you used with your exceptional students? I would love to hear what has successfully worked in your classroom!
Resources
Northern Arizona University. (n.d.). Read and write. Disability Resources. Retrieved July 23, 2022, from https://in.nau.edu/disability-resources/read-write-gold/#:~:text=Read%20and%20Write%20is%20a,a%20Second%20Language%20(ESL)
Young, G., & MacCormack, J. (2018, May 4). Assistive technology for students with learning disabilities. LD@school. Retrieved July 23, 2022, from https://www.ldatschool.ca/assistive-technology/
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I wrote a similar post recently about technology and struggling students, and discussed different types of assistive technology. This past year one of my ASD students began using speech-to-text software. For him there were so many speedbumps to writing: First, understand the prompt, then generate some ideas, then think of the words and how to scratch them onto a page with something resembling correct spelling, then to proofread... Writing would often turn into a meltdown, and it wasn't until we began using the talk-to-text feature that he was able to get his ideas down on paper. He went from being basically a non-writer, to writing three or four-sentence paragraphs. He used the tablet to speak into, and then he'd copy the resulting sentence into his journal. This provided opportunity for reflection and proofreading, to make sure that the tablet was accurately representing what he had intended to say.
I had been reluctant to use this technology before, but having the tremendous support it provided, I will be using it to support other students in the future for sure.
Thanks,
Dan
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ReplyDeleteHi Megan,
ReplyDeleteIn my most recent position, I taught grade 7/8 at a middle school. I had a student in my class who was in grade 7, on an IEP. He was working at meeting grade 4 Literacy curriculum and grade 5 math Ontario curriculum. He refused to do any work in the classroom, especially during literacy. So, I met with the support teacher at our school and asked if the student could go into his room for an hour a day. The teacher agreed, and I couldn’t believe the difference. The student would use his Speech to Text on his Chromebook that was an extension of Google. He went from typing 4 words, to full paragraphs.
I also did a project during one of my Additional Qualification (AQ) courses on Ghotit. Ghotit is an assistive tool that was developed to address the needs of students with dyslexia and dysgraphia, but it can be beneficial to any student whose writing and reading have been adversely affected. It dramatically improves their literacy skills. The tool learns from students’ past mistakes and personalizes suggestions for spelling and grammatical errors. It can predict words, check messages of text contextually, read text aloud and recognize split and merged words. It also includes an integrated dictionary for students to look up a word! One example of how it is used is, if students were to type “How are…” the device would recommend words like, “you, your, the, etc.,” and the student would be able to choose the word to have it read to them. It also lets them click on the word and hear the definition. There are so many benefits to Ghotit!
I hope this helps!
Giulia