Inclusive Technologies Assisting Students with Learning Difficulties and Disabilities
Classroom teachers support students with diverse abilities and needs, cultural backgrounds, experiences and learning styles. As teachers, we are required to make use of strategies and resources that engage, motivate and encourage active participation and learning by all students.
This article looks at the needs of students with learning difficulties and disabilities who struggle with literacy and explores the types of technologies that can help them work around their problems and experience success in the classroom and beyond.
There is no doubt that technology has changed the way children learn in the classroom. Technology has altered how students engage in learning activities, the format of learning materials they use, how tasks are completed, and how they demonstrate what they know. The way we as educators design and deliver learning experiences, and what instructional materials we use to enhance student learning, has also changed.
What about students who experience consistent academic failure due to learning difficulties or disabilities? Are computers and other technologies going to assist them to access the curriculum, keep up with their peers and learn how to learn?
Students with learning difficulties can be defined as students who experience particular difficulties in achieving at school that are not due to a disability or impairment. (Ashman, 2005; Westwood, 2003) Students with learning disabilities include those students with chronic academic problems. These students may have been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalcula, disgraphia or other neurologically based conditions.
Students with learning difficulties and disabilities display a variety of characteristics that can be grouped into four main categories, academic, emotional, motivational, cognitive and metacognitive. (E. Twomey, 2006.)
These students typically encounter learning problems across all curriculum areas. Persistent failure throughout school, despite remediation, may lead some students to develop social and emotional difficulties including low self esteem, an embarrassing reliance on others, low motivation and disengagement from school activities. Poor handwriting, comprehension and organisational difficulties may also be barriers to learning for these students.
Inclusive Learning Technologies – what are they?
Inclusive learning technologies can be described as those technologies, whether software or hardware, that help students learn strategies to bypass, work around or compensate for their difficulties. Many of these technologies incorporate Universal Design features which focus on providing learning resources that accommodate for learner differences. A comprehensive source of information on topics relating to Universal Design for Learning and Technology can be found by going at the website for the Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST) http://www.cast.org/.
Inclusive technologies may be designed to remediate specific difficulties and contain key supportive features, while others have many features that support a range of learning needs. They may be standalone programs or may integrate with other commonly used applications.
What types of technologies are there and how can they help?
READING TOOLS
- Text to speech
Software that incorporates text to speech enables students to access content and information by having text read aloud, often in a high quality, realistic synthesised voice. This software may highlight words, sentences or paragraphs in selected colours to draw the reader’s attention to the text as it is being spoken. Using this method, students are assisted to decode words, and maintain reading fluency and comprehension. Using text to speech, they can read and re-read information as many times as they need.
Talking word processors are one kind of software that incorporates text to speech. Other software packages work with standard software programs such as Microsoft Word, to speech enable them. Many of these programs allow students to read aloud text in a range of formats, including Word documents, PDFs, emails and web pages. Text to speech is also an important support for proofreading, helping students listen for any possible errors in their writing.
- OCR
Optical Character Recognition (OCR), is a method of converting text from paper format to an electronic version. This is usually carried out by using a scanner. Software that incorporates OCR, may also provide the option of scanning text into a range of formats (such as Word, PDF or other documents). This means that books, printed worksheets, even photographs with graphics and text can be converted to electronic format and read aloud using text to speech. Reading material is instantly made accessible.
- Talking books
Talking books are essentially books that are in electronic format, often looking very similar to the paper version. They may read text aloud, and include a range of multimedia elements such as real photos, animations, videos and recorded sounds that make the reading experience motivating and fun. The advantage talking books is that they allow students of any age and ability to be independent readers and take advantage of supports if and when they choose. Additional extension activities may be included with some books to help support balanced literacy instruction. Using book making templates, teachers can create their own high interest individualised learning materials.
- Software that converts text files to audio
Being able to convert text to an audio file has the advantage of providing yet another format for accessing information and is an ideal way for students to engage in independent revision and study. Students can listen to audio files via their computer or their iPod anytime, any place. Software that has this feature may also include high quality synthesised speech and the ability to save the files in a range of formats including WAV, Mp3 and WMA.
WRITING TOOLS
Common problems for students with learning difficulties and disabilities centre around spelling, grammatical errors, tense and punctuation. They may have ideas which they can articulate very well, but because of spelling problems fall back on using simple sentence construction and vocabulary. These students often need scaffolding to help organise and articulate their ideas into a written format.
- Organisational software
Organisational software helps students brainstorm and display their ideas using a concept map of words and/or pictures that can then be transferred to a document outline with the click of a button. Templates to assist students develop their ideas for different writing tasks may also be included as an added feature.
Another strategy for developing a written draft is to use highlighting tools and extract main points from a document or web page. By creating an outline of what has been read, students can use this as a starting point for their writing.
- Onscreen word banks
Learners needing support to spell words or construct meaningful sentences can quickly and easily carry out written tasks using on-screen word banks. This software provides the additional support of text to speech and pictures for those whose visual recognition of words is poor.
- Word prediction
Word prediction is a strategy that assists with spelling and word completion by making suggestions as you type. These suggestions are displayed in a window. Word prediction can help students expand their vocabulary, as they are less likely to avoid words for which they are unsure of spelling. In some cases, the word prediction program may accommodate for phonetic spelling errors. Such programs also learn words that are used frequently. Research studies have reported up to a 70% reduction in spelling errors when using word prediction programs.
- Voice recognition
Voice recognition software allows students to create large amounts of text or control their computer entirely by voice. Documents and e-mails can be dictated without spelling mistakes and the need to extensively use the keyboard and mouse is significantly reduced.
- Portable word processors or notetakers
For students whose handwriting is untidy or illegible, and who find writing with pen and paper frustrating, these devices help overcome these barriers and encourage students to independently take notes rather than rely on a scribe or peers. They are low cost, portable alternatives to laptops. Infrared capabilities mean that no cords are needed when transferring text to a computer for further editing. These devices are lightweight, sturdy and have the advantage of a long battery life. They are easy to use and can be used in conjunction with word prediction programs if the student struggles with spelling.
Final thoughts
Many of the technologies outlined in this article will not eliminate or fix learning difficulties. There is evidence, however, that such technologies can compensate the students’ disabilities and difficulties as well as assist students to develop skills to improve their literacy, (Lange et al, 2004). They definitely allow teachers to encourage students to capitalise on their strengths and work towards independence and self-reliance.
References
Wahl, L. and Duffield, J. (2005), Using flexible technology to meet the needs of diverse learners, online publication available at http://www.wested.org
E. Twomey, Linking learning theories and learning difficulties, QUT, AJLD Vol11, No.2, 2006, pp. 93-98
Ashman, A. (2005). Society, culture and education, in A.Ashman and J.Elkins(Eds), Educating children with diverse abilities (pp.5-36). Sydney: Pearson Education Australia.
Lange, A., McPhillips, M., Mulhern, G. and Wylie, J.(2004), Assistive software tools for secondary level students with literacy difficulties. Queen’s University, Belfast, UK.
About the authors
Bill Smith Dip. T Grad. Dip. App. Ling (Literacy)
Bill has been teaching for twenty three years. Originally trained as a Middle School Teacher (when Middle Schooling wasn’t trendy), Bill has moved freely between Primary and Secondary education. He has had the opportunity to experience a number of teaching, middle management and leadership roles in New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania. His greatest passion is in the area of literacy, where he is very focused in assisting students with learning disabilities and difficulties to overcome the academic, motivational, social emotional and cognitive/meta-cognitive barriers through the use of technology.
Penny McCulloch
Penny has worked as a teacher in inclusive and special education as well as post school settings for over 20 years in Australia and overseas. She has supported students with a range of disabilities and learning difficulties to access the curriculum. She has also worked as an assistive technology consultant with Education Queensland supporting teachers and students in the use of inclusive technologies.
Bill is currently employed by Spectronics to support their range of inclusive learning technologies and their applications in educational facilities and trainers.