Assistive Technology and Learning Disabilities

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Assistive Technology and Learning Disabilities

• Karen Janowski
• Simmons College
• 3/08

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Assistive Technology Consideration

• Brief
• Someone knowledgeable on IEP team

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Four Possibilities

• Current Interventions Working no need for AT
• AT already in place
• Consider New AT
• Team needs additional information to make a
  decision

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How do we learn?

• Inspiration

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What does it mean to learn?

• Active Process
• (What do students do on own time? Summer Break!)
• Acquire knowledge
• Retain knowledge
• Apply it to life situations
• Use strategies

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Where is the Breakdown?
http//flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/276131991/
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Task Analysis

• What skills are needed for this task?
• What is the point of this academic task?
• copying

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Guiding Principles
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• Nothing a child does requires more energy than
  sitting still.
• Denckla as reported by Mel Levine at a
• Conference, 1999

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Guiding Principles

• Free, appropriate education
• Mistake Tolerant vs. Mistake Tolerant
• Teach strategies
• Accommodation vs. Remediation/Instruction
• Independence vs. dependence
• (upon adults)
• Universal design

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Written Expression
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Written Output

• What skills are required?

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To achieve competency as a writer

• Sustained Mental Effort
• Selective Attention
• Graphomotor Function
• Visual recall
• Motor Automaticity
• Regulation

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To achieve competency as a writer

• Ideation IDEAS!!
• Brainstorming/Topic Selection
• Research
• Elaboration

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To achieve competency as a writer

• Memory
• Motor Memory
• Active Working Memory

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To achieve competency as a writer

• Expressive Language
• Vocabulary
• Word Retrieval

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To achieve competency as a writer

• Organization
• Narrative Generation
• Planfulness/Previewing
• Step approach
• Revision

Mel Levines Work
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To achieve competency as a writer

• Spelling Skills
• Richard Wanderman says Spelling is the spoiler
  of thought.

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Research Findings

• Elementary school children spend 31 to 60 of
  their school day on fine motor tasks including
  handwriting.
• McHale Cermak, 1992

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Research Findings

• Studies show teachers grade papers with better
  handwriting higher.
• Only difference was quality of writing.

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Research Findings

• Students are less hesitant to reevaluate and edit
  their written work produced on a computer.
• (Graham and MacArthur, 1988, Jones, 1996
• Productivity increases (Mayer-Nichols, 1996)
• Quality increases (Jones, 1996)

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Difficulties with writing

• Writing Mechanics physical, spelling and
  grammar
• Writing Process generating organizing text,
  planning and editing.

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Inspiration Kurzweil Solo Writing with
Symbols Read and Write Gold WordQ Fable Vision
Essay Express Clicker 5 Classroom Suite (you will
explore this more in the next class)
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Agenda

• Voice recognition software
• Discuss written expression software
• Word prediction, voice recognition,
  text-to-speech, writing strategies software
  (DraftBuilder, Inspiration)
• Identify important criteria for selecting tools

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Agenda

• Components of Reading
• Technology for Literacy Development
• Technology for Reading Support
• Ie, Thinking Reader
• Start-to-Finish Books
• Technology to overcome reading problems, ie.
  Kurzweil, Scan Read Pro, etc.
• Tool exploration
• Introduction to Blogging

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Voice Recognition

• Why use it?
• Helps students bypass writing mechanics
• Increases independence
• Record ideas before losing them due to slow
  handwriting or typing

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Research

• LD 4th 6th graders produced essays
  significantly faster than typing or handwriting.
  (De La Paz 1999)
• Stories written with VR were longer, more
  complex, contained fewer grammatical errors
  compared to other methods. (Graham,1999)
• Research shows marks improvement. (Graham, 1999)

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Research

• Has remedial effects (Higgins Raskind, 2000)
• Significant improvements in reading
  comprehension, spelling and word recognition over
  a control group (Higgins Raskind, 2000)
• Improvements with working memory with continuous
  speech programs. (Higgins Raskind, 2000)

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Research

• Motivation to write increases (Graham al, 1998)
• Significant improvement writing (Lewis, 1998,
  MacArthur, 1998)

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Research (continued)

• Identified characteristics of Ideal VR
  candidate
• Ability to use computer
• Limited traditional writing skills
• High need
• Ability to tolerate frustration
• Motivated
• Perception that they can benefit and they have
  time to learn it

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Disadvantages

• Training
• Hardware Requirements
• Different cognitive Demands
• Skilled personnel arent available to provide
  support
• Dedicated space or computer

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Reading
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Summary Table for the FCRR Reports
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What does the research say?
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• What Works Clearinghouse

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Tools for Developing Reading Skills
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Components of Reading
Shaywitz, 2003
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National Reading Panel
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The Big Five
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Task Analysis of Reading

• Phonological Awareness understanding language
  sounds
• Sound-Symbol Association paired association
• Visual Recognition instant sight recognition
• Word Analysis or word attack the ability to
  take apart or put together the sounds within words

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Task Analysis of Reading

• Semantic Facility dependable and rapid access
  to the stored meaning of words
• Automatization simultaneous, automatic
  occurrence of all of the above operations
• Sentence Comprehension the ability to derive
  meaning from the structure of sentences
• Discourse comprehension the understanding of
  large chunks of written language.

Levine, Mel, 1994
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Where is the breakdown?
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• Intact phonemic awareness and not intelligence is
  the best predictor of reading skills.
• Shaywitz, 2003

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Successful intervention

• Identifies the weakness in getting to the sounds
  of words

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Successful intervention

• Identifies the strengths in thinking and reasoning

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Successful intervention

• Then provides early help for the weakness
  (remediation)

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Successful intervention

• Finally, provides accommodation to help access
  the strengths
• (Sea of Strengths Model, Shaywitz, 2003)

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Technology for Literacy
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Why should we provide it?

• Allows individualized instruction
• Customizable
• Allows for repetition
• Computer is forgiving (are adults?)
• Provides record keeping

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Focuses on

• Phonological awareness
• Sight words
• Vocabulary

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• Soliloquoy Reading Assistant
• Read Naturally
• Simons Sounds it Out
• Lexia
• Edmark
• Earobics

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Technology for Reading Support
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• Start-to-Finish Books
• Thinking Reading
• Solo ReadOutloud

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What are the Features? Do we need a distinction?
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Technology for Reading Accommodation
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Thoughts?
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Technology for Reading Support
WHY?
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Interactive Accessible
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• TechMatrix.Org

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A New Tool for Instruction

• Web 2.0

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The 3 Cs
Collaborative Creative Cool
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Educational Benefits (not researched)

• Kids love it
• Motivates Struggling Students
• Innovative way to engage in reflective writing
• Democratization of information dissemination
• Provides students with supportive audience
• Get feedback from peers (Jackson from
  Educationworld.com)

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Blogging for Education

• Blog as Classroom Chronicle
• Blog as Daily Journal
• Blog as Anthology
• Blog as Communicator
• Blog as Collaborator
• (McKenzie, 2004
• On Cue from MassCUE)

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Resources

• ReadingK12.pbwiki.com
• SPND456.wikispaces.com
• Voice Thread Tutorials