Podcast with Izac Ross
In this podcast, Izac Ross discusses the types of technologies he has been using to support his specific learning difficulties whilst at school and now moving to university. Izac mentions the differences he has picked out between Kurzweil 3000 and TextHelp Read and Write. Mind mapping does not work for Izac, but he discusses the merits of PowerPoint. He is very aware that he needs a scheduler to aid organisational skills, but has yet to find one that suits. Izac finishes by saying that he would like to develop other tools and has many ideas.
Continue Reading April 21st, 2007
This article is older, May 2005, but is extremely interesting research into what is Dyslexia.
QUOTE:
“Misfiring neurons perhaps make it difficult for dyslexics to pick out relevant visual and auditory cues from the expanse of surrounding sounds and patterns, or “noise”; it is this inability that may bear heavily on how easily a child can read, says lead author Anne Sperling, who conducted the research as a USC graduate student, alongside co-author Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison psychology professor who left USC in 2001.” —Medical News today
Read Entire Article
April 20th, 2007
This extension for Firefox has come to my attention. There are many free softwares I have looked at and this is the simplest that I have seen for reading the web and also the one with the smallest footprint on a computer. This is a great FREE tool for students with Dyslexia and related reading and processing difficulties. It gives access to the World Wide Web and helps with reading quick pieces of information without having to open up Kurzweil 3000 or similar more intensive applications. The application has a simple three button tool bar which has a read selection button, a stop button and an auto read function. The latter, however, is impractical for sighted students as it reads the web page in a disassembled way.For many students higher quality voices such as Neospeech or RealSpeak will be required and this is by no means a complete solution for students with dyslexia and other related learning disabilities. But it is a good support tool for all. CLiCK Speak is an easy one click installation on the PC and works on the Mac with a little bit of hackery (
Mac Instructions).
Links:
Thanks to E.A. Draffan and Ira Socal’s Blog SpeedChange.blogspot.com.
PLEASE NOTE: purchased high quality voices such as Cepstral will not work with CLiCKspeak on Mac OS X.
April 19th, 2007
I want to thank all of you who attended my presentation at the 21st Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference: THE EDUCATE MODEL: EFFECTIVE DELIVERY OF UNIVERSAL CURRICULUM VIA A.T. FOR K-12 EDUCATION
This ‘topic’ certainly demanded more than one hour of time. We covered a broad framework that if implemented, could immediately begin to address the needs of the majority of our students and provide the requisite tools to prepare students for careers, most of which do not now exist.
“I think that the structure in K–12 and higher ed … are doing exactly what they were designed to do… The system … was set up to get about 30% of the kids ready; to actually get that other 70% ready is totally beyond the current capacity.”
—Peter McWalters, Commissioner, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, State of Rhode Island
The positive feedback has been overwhelming and much appreciated. I encourage your continued feedback, as well as success stories,contributions of important new research, promising practices, student work, and more.
Thank you to, Lori Milstein, who provides much of the cutting edge research that adds context and meaning to my presentations.
March 29th, 2006
Title: The E.D.U.C.A.T.E. Model: Effective Delivery Of Universal Curricula Via A.T. For K-12 Education
Session Summary: Effective & efficient system-wide delivery model of assistive technology with compatible universal curricula materials, enabling k-12 learning challenged/disabled students to maximize their educational experience and opportunity.
Place: Newport C - Hilton Time: 10:40-11:40AM
www.csun.edun.edu/conf/index.htmx.htm
March 19th, 2006
