Class #2: Delving into the world of AT

The second part of the class today was spent learning some of the Assistive Technology that is available. I had the option to discover the benefits of Start to Finish books. These books allow students to practice decoding and word recognition skills, allow for an increase in fluency and comprehension skills as well as building new vocabulary and background knowledge in context. The accompanying tests also require students to use inference skills.

These books allow students the option to have entire passages read to them or single words that they may not know (single sentence vs. single word support). The cloze tests can be multiple choice in nature or fill in the blank with choices provided. The student need only click on their answer. There is also a fluency section which will record student responses up to 3 minutes in length.

Various options also allows teachers to meet individual students' needs including options such as page sounds, read all, testing, sounds for tests, different test types, scanning capabilities (for students with single-switch input) that allow for various scanning speeds, scanning with speech and highlight colour. Each book is accompanied by a folder of the various art in the book which can in turn be used in a powerpoint presentation. Also included is a Co:Writer 4000 custom topic dictionary which makes it easier for struggling writers to write book reports and story predictions. Lastly, test results can be placed on file and then printed out for running records.

We also learned about Choose It Maker, Bailey's Book House, Classroom Suite and lastly Kurzweil. The last portion of the class was spent learning about the numerous capabilities of Kurzweil and its various toolbars. There are 4 different toolbars available in Kurzweil and they are as follows:
1. The Main Toolbar
2. Th Reading Toolbar
3. The Study Skills Toolbar
4. The Writing Toolbar

The main toolbar allows students to use a dictionary to find the meaning of a word. There is also a synonym option. Simply click in front of the word in question and select the desired option. You can also hook up to the web from this toolbar.

The reading toolbar (yellow in color) allows you to change the voice of the reader, the pace, the reading unit (word, sentence, paragraph, etc) which is important for bubble notes, the speed at which the text is read, the screen magnifier, thumbnails and the ability to jump to different pages.

The study skills toolbar (green in color) allows you to highlight information in several colours, erase highlights, add sticky notes, voice notes, footnotes, text notes and bubble notes. However, when adding bubble notes you must remember NOT to answer the question!!

Lastly, we learned that there are 3 ways to save documents after scanning. Files can be saved as .kes (which cannot be typed in or changed), .doc files (which will change the format although these could then be put on flash drives and then used in any text to speech program) and .mp3 files which can be used with iTunes.

One final thought that was expressed in the class is that attention to task is the gateway to learning. The assistive technology that we learned about today certainly increase that requirement.