Using Assistive Technology to Support Struggling Readers and Writers
with Cheri Polster, Tomorrow River School District
(Closing the Gap: Computer Technology in Special Education and Rehabilitation, Feb/Mar 2004, Vol. 22, No. 6)
The evolution of the assistive technology program in the Tomorrow River School District in Central Wisconsin is a story many school districts can learn from. It consists of concerned teachers, timely financial support from a grant, and, very importantly, a school district’s decision to invest in the professional development of their teachers.
Other than the everyday accommodations that effective classroom teachers make for their students, the assistive technology program in this particular school district began to emerge when a concerned parent (who was also a teacher in the district) looked for ways to help her son compensate for his dyslexia. When speech recognition software first became available to schools, she became aware of its potential and requested that the district try the software with her son. Because the less expensive version was purchased at that time, there followed numerous difficulties with the technology.
At the same time, a speech and language teacher in the district was using assistive technology with her students who are cognitively disabled. At a school board meeting, she requested that a district assistive technology committee be formed and given a small operating budget. Both the concerned parent and the speech and language teacher have been members of that committee since it formed. The committee published an Assistive Technology Newsletter and held workshops for teachers. The committee also purchased many resources for classrooms: color overlay bookmarks, highlighting tape, erasable highlighters, school subscription to a books-on-tape service, slantboards, pencil grips, and raised writing paper. They also purchased technology to assist in vocabulary acquisition and technology to support writing, including graphic organizer software, software for ear training, software for screen reading as well as better speech recognition software.
The committee works closely with WATI (Wisconsin Assistive Tchnology Initiative) and also made ample use of the lending library and professional development assistance available through the local cooperative educational agency. This district committee began as a special interest of committed professionals and grew to become an integral part of their district’s support for achievement for all students. The important point, however, is that their organized and efficient use of assistive technology grew from within the district, not from external mandates.
In an attempt to encourage more teachers to use assistive technology with their EEN students, the district recruited the resources of their 21st Century Grant, which assumed the task of monitoring which books on tape would need to be ordered for students with dyslexia and students with visual impairment. They also purchased multiple copies of ear training software to be used in an assistive technology lab that was then being developed. EEN and Non-EEN students were scheduled in this lab for short sessions with the software. Their progress was monitored by 21st Century staff and the reading specialist. The grant team also purchased four new computers to expand the assistive technology lab.
These developments were a natural evolution of the district’s concurrent writing initiative using 6+1 Traits of Writing and the 21st Century grant objectives, and the assistive technology aspects of this support were especially helpful for the reading and writing needs of EEN students. Some copies of voice recognition software were purchased and installed and several students were selected to be trained on the software; the most severely learning disabled were selected first. These students found writing extremely difficult since they could only write what they could spell.
One elementary student with dyslexia commented after her first time dictating, “I couldn’t have written this much in a year!” She came to the lab every time she had a writing assignment. Because her teacher coached her well in prewriting activities, she came to the lab prepared to write. Her teacher was amazed at the vocabulary the student used when she dictated compared to her writing at the beginning of the year. The classroom teacher as well as the 21st Century staff saw, too, the boost this successful writing gave to her self-esteem and her identity as a writer. The assessment data gathered for the 21st Century Grant shows that not only did her writing improve, she improved in reading skills as well.
A high school student with dyslexia was amazed at what he was able to write using the voice recognition software. He came to the lab during the writing portion of his English class with his ideas on paper and continued to write for two to three hours, since the lab remained open after school. He not only found out what great ideas he had, but the dictation software helped with the flow of his writing as well. He said he had usually avoided any classes that involved a lot of reading and writing but after using voice recognition software, he took a publications class and was very successful. He commented, “Other kids always thought I was dumb, but when they heard the stories I wrote, they realized I was a better writer than most of them.” It would be difficult indeed to measure the changes in the confidence level of this young man, but they are quite apparent nonetheless. His special education teacher feels the voice recognition software has helped this young man more fully express his ideas in his own unique way.
Voice recognition software is simply a tool to do a job. The students have to have strong ideas and language because the computer cannot predict what they will say. The staff at Tomorrow River School District have found students need to have the computer read back their writing so they can see if the text sounds the way they thought it should. They also need to have someone help them edit for punctuation, since the computer needs to be told when to add commas or periods. The results from voice recognition are, nevertheless, impressive.
Partly as a result of the efforts of the Technology Committee, the Tomorrow River School District recognized the need for professional development for their teachers. The 21st Century Grant paid for a software representative to do an all-day inservice for several classroom teachers, special education learning assistants, and the 21st Century program assistant in using the screen reading scanning software. In the previous year, the 21st Century Grant had purchased scan-and-read software. The district also provided workshops for classroom teachers and EEN teachers on Assistive Technology devices and software, from low tech to high tech, and provided training in the 6+1 Traits of Writing for the entire school district staff.
Many staff feel the greatest reason for the success of the assistive technology lab is that there is always someone in the lab who can help students when they need it, thus avoiding frustration for the students. The students value the privacy of the lab, too. The classroom teachers have all been trained on the software, so they are aware of what the students are doing and have learned to value the support the technology provides for students who previously struggled with writing assignments and projects. The high school students especially like that the lab is open until 5:00 PM.
The Tomorrow River School District has worked hard to leave no child behind. District support and commitment, combined with resources from the 21st Century Grant have provided tools and assistance so that all students can be successful. It is clear that not all programs work for all students, but the resources in assistive technology have enlarged the possibilities of success for more students. The district is currently working on ways to continue the support for assistive technology when the grant period ends.