There are many teaching and learning educational technology tools and programs available for students with SPLD. There is some useful information on the Dyslexia Association and the British Dyslexia Association on this topic. I will receive training for programs that students can use for support with the SPLD dyslexia ,over the next 6 weeks. I will review my experience, considering the effectiveness for learners and if these tools will enhance learning. Then, I will be critically evaluate them using academic resources to determine the usefulness and effectiveness of these technologies, on teaching and learning, from the teachers perspective.
The tools I will review are:
- Dragon Professional– Dragon eliminates barriers to productivity and creativity by letting you interact with your computer by voice. It turns your spoken thoughts into text and your voice commands into action, so you don’t have to worry about the mechanics of typing and spelling, as stated Nuance (2018)
2. Texthelp: Read and Write Gold
there is and easy-to-use toolbar making documents, files and web pages more accessible. Read&Write is a big confidence booster for anyone who needs a little support with their reading and writing, at school or in the workplace. And its friendly literacy features help English Language learners, as well as people with learning difficulties or requiring dyslexia tools.
From hearing emails or documents read out loud to text prediction, picture dictionaries, summary highlighters and a grammar, spelling and confusable words checker, Read&Write makes lots of everyday literacy tasks simpler, quicker and more accurate.
3. Mindview 7
Redefining Mind Mapping- MatchWare , mind mapping for business and educational use. With a new high-resolution Office 2016 interface, superior Office integration, and enhanced project management features, MindView 7 redefines mind mapping and takes productivity to the next level. If you enjoy and relate to mind mapper, MindView 7 will illuminate your ideas and help transform them directly to a word doc for instance report and headings for your work.
in the last few decades our access to information has grown exponentially, it’s practically limitless. We read, listen, and watch all manner of sources with ease, but how we capture that information remains largely unchanged: we take written and mental notes.
In 2007, Dr Roger Tucker founded Sonocent to explore the value of audio notes, recognising that students with disabilities like dyslexia often relied on lengthy digital recordings for note-taking. Hence this program records in chunks that you can highlight and turn into notes as you wish.
It also has a companion app.
I have had one training session so far and found that the overview of the tools was very promising.
Over the next 6 training sessions I will see how the usefulness unfolds and add my thoughts and reflect on the experience of using the technology.