We are enrolled in Barbara Welsford's Assisitve Technology: Access to Literacy course at Acadia University. As part of this course we have been researching software, apps and low/med./high technology that supports Universal Design for Learning. This Blog focuses on technology that can support a wide variety of students in all aspects of the writing process. Since technology is rapidly changing, this will be a continuous work in progress.
Ask any teacher to describe their view
of the writing process and expect to hear them respond with, “Well
we follow the Writer's Workshop model. You know, use a writer's
notebook, teach a mini-lesson, and follow the steps, of planning,
drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.” If only it were that
easy! As teachers we assume a great deal. We assume that all of our
students have the graphomotor, executive functioning, auditory/visual
processors, and cognitive processors in tip top shape and ready to
write. Mel Levine describes writing as a juggling act, trying to
keep all the processes needed to write, balanced in the air, ready to
access at any moment. Talk about multitasking! So the question
remains, “Why is the writing process such an intense and involved
process for our brains to complete?”
“Writing
is a complicated process that involves the
interaction
of motor and language skills. It relies on
good
fine motor functioning, visual-motor, planning,
attention,
sequencing, thinking, memory, and knowledge
of
grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary and the
purpose
of writing. It also involves visual monitoring
with
the co-ordinated use of both eyes.” (page 1)
(Bardos
& Maybury).
If you don't have issues with
completing a writing task, then you have probably not given a second
thought to all that is happening in your brain when you write. But
if you have ever experienced difficulty with writing tasks, or know
students or family members who have, this will hopefully give you a
little taste of the enormity of the writing process.
What are we really being asked to do
when we are asked to write and what processes do we need to have
access to in order to write? Well it first starts with our ability
to focus on the task at hand. We need to get our bodies and minds
ready to write. Our brain needs to start visualizing not only about
what we are going to write (our idea) but also about how we will form
letters, words and sentences. We need to access language,
vocabulary, organization skills, and sequential processing all before
we ever put our pen to paper!
Don't forget about working memory!
Remember, you have to hold all of your ideas in your working memory
as you move from task to task. Once you have activated your prior
knowledge and have turned those visions into vocabulary, you may be
ready to pick up your pencil and get started...But wait...Don't
forget you are now going to need to utilize some of that brain that
is already working to use that pencil! We're talking about your
fine motor, graphomotor, visual spatial, and motor planning skills.
Last but not least, your automatic memory better get ready to remind
you to use the appropriate pressure when your pencil touches the
paper.
Now that you are holding your pencil
and are ready to write your brain needs to efficiently recall and
form those letters, space the letters well and move them in the right
direction. But it is not enough to just get the letters down neatly
on the page...you now need to pull in all those rules you need to
follow for punctuation and spelling. You better hope that your long
term memory and working memory are up to the task! Make sure you get
your sentences structured well and don't forget to follow our English
grammar rules. Had enough yet...There's more to come!
Now I'm sure you think that you are
ready to write, so go ahead, get started...just remember to spell
your words correctly. Start accessing that long term and working
memory again. Remind your visual and auditory processors that you
are going to be relying on them to help you get your words spelled
correctly on the page. Start using your phonemic awareness and
phonological processing to help you sound out your words. Getting
tired?
“Writing
is a demanding cognitive task that requires coordinated
implementation
of a large set of mental processes that must
be
performed in a simultaneous and recursive manner.”
(Fidalgo,
Raquel and Garcia, Jesús-Nicasio, 2008, 77).
So now that all of your systems are a
go, let's integrate all of these systems together and complete our
writing task. Depending on how quickly you can access all of these
systems in your brain, will determine how fast your motor response
can run, which will determine how fast your writing task will be
completed. I'm sure you are thinking, “Come on, I just pick up a
pencil and start writing,” but to truly be able to empathize and
understand what people who experience difficulty with the writing
task endure each time they are asked to write, a more explicit
description of what is actually happening in our brains is necessary.
“It
is vital for teachers to provide task- specific tools that help
students
with
LD engage in the entire process so they will gain writing
competence.”
(Scott
& Vitale, 2003, 223).
If
you did not get the complexity of the writing process from my
description above,
take
a look below at the writing task analysis created by Barb Welsford.
Fidalgo,
Raquel and Garcia, Jesús-Nicasio (2008). Orchestration
of Writing Processes and Writing Products: A Comparison of
Sixth-Grade Students With and Without Learning Disabilities.
Learning
Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal. 6(2),
2008, 77-98.
Scott,
B.J., and Vitale, Michael R. (2003). Teaching the Writing Process to
Students with LD. Intervention
in School and Clinic. March
2003 38(4)
220-224.
The writing process is a very complex and intricate task, as you will have noted in our introduction and from viewing the "Writing Task Analysis" by professor Barb Welsford. The longer and more complex the process leads to a greater potential a student may have difficulty with any given area in the process. Some of the many difficulties students can experience are:- executive functioning difficulties at the beginning and when attempting to sustain attend to task
- hypotonia (low muscle tone and strength)
- apraxia (impairment in the ability to execute skilled movements despite having the physical ability and the desire to do so)
- dysgraphia (inability to form letters correctly and quickly)
- various motor impairments / dysfunctions
"Teachers should not assume that an individual with efficient fine motor skills for other kinds of activities should be able to develop and refine handwriting skills. Different neural pathways are involved that do not include the movements, positions, and processes involved in manipulating a writing instrument." (Broun, 2009)
When we see a student struggling to complete/be successful at a task like writing, the next step is to figure out where in the process the difficulty begins and implement remediation techniques to assist them. In all of our classrooms there are at the very least a handful of students that benefit from the implementation of remediation techniques. Dave Edyburn comments on the frequency at which teachers do this on a daily basis.
"Teachers are extremely comfortable with the options associated with remediation: reteach the
information, use alternative instructional strategies, breaking tasks into smaller parts to analyse
what the child knows and what components are problematic, reduce the number of items that must
be completed, provide additional instructional practise, engage in one-on-one tutoring, etc.
However, if this approach always worked, we would never see high school students that couldn't
read independently beyond the second grade level or students who failed to master the basic math
facts." (Edyburn, 2002.)
This being said, if these techniques and tactics are not helping the student experience success, then more needs to be done. "Sometimes with extra practise, their skills improve. But there is a group of students who do not progress, no matter what intervention is tried." (Broun, 2009). There are also students where, because of their disability, remediation tactics are not beneficial. Carly Fleischmann and Ms.Baggs are two motivating examples of this.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guides us to allow the use of materials and strategies that promote learning for students of all ability profiles (CEC, 2005). So this answers the question, At what point do we start implementing compensatory measures? - when remediation strategies are not producing successful results. Realising that "fair is not giving everyone the same thing, fair is giving people what they need", (Baurn 2009). The next post highlights some of the plethora of useful stratigies, tools, software and apps that can be used to enable students to succeed, work and communicate independently.
References
Broun, Leslie. (2009). Take the Pencil out of the Process. Teaching Exceptional Children.
Sept./Oct. 2009.
Council for Exceptional Children and Merrill Education. (2005). Universal design for learning: A guide for teachers and education professionals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pearson, Merill, Prentice Hall.
Below is a list of apps, software, tools and strategies that could be used to aid students in the writing process. I have briefly described each and have indicated in bold print, whether it is compensatory or remediation strategy. We have underlined where we have identified where in the writing process this strategy would best fit. The specific components of the writing task analysis used with each are italicized. Each strategy is also identified as high, mid or low tech. We have embedded short YouTube videos or links which provide a little more information and a more in-depth look at what these apps, software, tools and strategies look like in use.
As you read the descriptions, keep in mind these descriptions of low, medium and high tech
Low-tech
solutions:
These may be all a student needs or they may be part
of the solution for handwriting.
They have no mechanical, electrical or computer
components, and can be made from dollar store items (ie: pencil grips, slant
boards, felt tip markers)
Mid-tech
solutions:
These are for students whose learning disabilities
interfere with their handwriting, and are often portable word processing
devices ( keyboarding, fusion, writer). Students do need to develop keyboarding
skills to quickly locate the keys they need.
High-tech
solutions:
These are computer software applications that give
students who have difficulty with handwriting, word processing programs or
speech recognition software. (ie: Dragon Naturally Speaking, Co:Writer)
Fluid 2 This app is a virtual pond
with music that allows students to interact and receive sensory feedback. It
prepares students mentally and emotionally to begin the writing process. This
app is especially beneficial for those students on the Autism spectrum who
benefit from sensory redirection to prepare for changes or transitions in
subject or activity. This is a high tech assistive technology that would help
prepare for attention to task. If students get overwhelmed, this app may be a
nice break to help deal with the stress of writing. Fluid2 is a high tech
strategy that is both compensatory and remedial. It compensates for students’ inability to regulate themselves yet at
the same time it remediates as it
teaches students an independent strategy to control emotion and sustain attention. Fuid2 would fit into the preparation for task aspect of the writing process. It could
be used before writing to prepare a student for writing or as a break from
writing if a student started to become overwhelmed. More specifically, it encompasses self regulation and other executive functions, emotion/motivation, sensorimotor, visual, auditory and proprioception.
Sound Curtain
Sound Curtain is a very simple noise masking app that works on the iPhone
when you're wearing a set of mic-enabled headphones. It performs much better
than its $0.99 price would imply. There are three options: White noise,
rainfall and harmonic tones. The white noise is decent if you've been using a
white noise machine for a while, but the rainfall and harmonic tones can
actually relax you in addition to its noise masking properties. This high-tech
app would allow writers to have distracting background noise eliminated. It
would allow students to attend to the task of writing. Sound Curtain
obviously then, fits into the attention to task domain which is present throughout the writing process.It helps with proprioception, self regulation, auditory filtration and sustaining focus. This is a compensatory app because it compensates for the student’s inability
to sustain focus and attend to task.
Pen
and pencil grips are low tech assistive technologies that have many purposes.
They can:
• Relieve writing
pain and discomfort
• Teach children the proper way to write
• Provide writing control for people with poor fine motor skills
• Smooth shaky writing
• Provide added weight, reducing the amount of finger pressure
needed to write
Pencil grips can be remediation or compensatory. They are remedial in that they teach proper grip
but in all other ways they are compensatory
because they compensate for the negative factors of writing mentioned above.
Pencil grips fit into the pencil grasp stage in the lower level mechanical
skills area of the writing process. Specifically, pencil grips help with fine motor control, pressure control, efficient graphomotor skills and proprioception.
In addition to pen and pencil grips, there are other writing implements that help students with gasp and control. Some of these implements would include felted markers, shorter pencils and tricondera pencils to encourage the tripod grip. Slant boards are also used to help students who need there hands supported or repositioned as it encourages wrist extension
Graphic organizers
Graphic organizers are a low-tech assistive technology. Graphic
Organizers fit into the lower level content skills area because they allow
students to brainstorm and organize basic ideas before writing. The specific areas that it targets are organizing ideas, mental planning, sequential processing and vocabulary retrieval. Graphic
organizers can be constructed ahead of time for students for various purposes
or students can create their own. Graphic organizers can become high tech when you
use software such as Inspiration and
Kidspiration to create them. Graphic organizers teach students how to
organize thoughts so they are remediation
strategies. But they also compensate for a student’s weakness in organizing
their thoughts and ideas. In this way, graphic organizers are compensatory strategies. Below is an example of a low-tech graphic organizer that a student could use to organize information before writing about a story they read.
Click the link below to download Kidspiration and Inspiration
Handwriting Without Tearsis a simple, developmentally based curriculum for writing
readiness and printing. The multi-sensory lessons teach to all learning styles
- visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic. The unique materials help to
address letter formation, reversals, legibility and sentence spacing. The goal
of the program is to make handwriting available for all children as an
automatic and natural skill. It is definitely a remediation strategy and it is low-tech. It utilizes
chalk/chalkboard, wood pieces and pencil/paper. The Handwriting Without
Tears programfits in to the lower level mechanical skills section of
the writing process. It helps students develop efficient graphomotor skills, pressure and control, fine motor control, directionality and motor planning skills. It is a foundation on which to build higher level
writing skills. This video gives a quick overview of different steps in the program.
Language, Question or
Sentence builder- (Sentence Builder)
This $5.99 app teaches students to build sentences with words using proper
grammar and syntax. Students move the reels of words to form sentences that
match a picture. The settings can be changed for different levels. There is
corrective feedback, should you choose. The program also keeps stats on student
performance so their progress can be monitored. This app definitelyfits in to the sentence structure and syntax
part of the writing process but also helps to develop writing vocabulary, organization, auditory and visual memory, sequencing, phonological processing, prior knowledge, memory, syntax, grammar and semantics.
You could use this app for a student who has a weak or delayed vocabulary to
teach words but more likely for a student who has trouble with patterns of
sentence structure. This would be a high tech remediationstrategy as
it teaches grammar and sentence structure and does not compensate for it.
ABC Pocket Phonics This $2.99 app is designed
for iPhone and iPad. It also has a free light version. It is for pre-school to age seven. It can start at the basic level of letter formation, letter
sounds, vowels, blends and digraphs. The activities help students develop
orthographic processing, phonological awareness and fine motor skills. ABC Pocket Phonics
fits under phonological processing,specifically letter recognition, sound/
letter association and phonemic awareness. We could match this app with any
student with difficulty encoding words while writing, as well as those
requiring instruction and practice with letter formation. ABC Pocket Phonics
is a high tech remediation strategy that would also fit into both the lower
level mechanical skills (for the letter formation, fine motor aspect, directionality and automatic motor memory) and in
the upper level mechanical skills, in particular the spelling stage (phonemic
awareness and phonological processing).
Co:Writer
Co:Writer is a software program that works in conjunction
with any application you write in like MS Word, Online, Blogs, Email, etc. As
you type, Co:Writer interprets spelling and grammar mistakes and offers word
suggestions in real time. It has word prediction software with flex spelling,
which means that it recognizes most attempts at a word as long as it is
somewhat phonetically correct. It also has the capability to import words from
a topic dictionary, which will make selecting the desired word much more
efficient. Watch this 5 minute video demonstration to see what this software can do!
Co-Writer is a high tech tool which would fit into all
mechanical and content areas of the writing process and the integration of all writing skills. It is compensatory for the lower level
mechanical skills as it takes the pencil out of the hand but it also is remedial as it teaches/encourages
spelling, punctuation, capitals, proper syntax and develops word vocabulary. It
also increases the speed of motor response and allows students to get more
writing done in less time.
Dragon Dictation
Dragon Dictation for iPad™, iPhone™ and iPod touch™ is an
easy-to-use voice recognition application that allows you to quickly speak and
instantly see your text or email messages (up to five times faster than typing
on the keyboard). It is a high tech compensatory
strategy that compensates for all of the lower level mechanical skills needed in the
writing process including fine motor control, graphomotor, directionality, pressure control, automatic letter formation, punctuation, spelling, mental image of the letter and the spatial placement of letters.
Pictello
Pictello is an app that provides asimple
way to create talking photo
albums and talking books on ipod/ipad. Pictello is a high tech tool for
students experiencing difficulty with handwriting as it utilizes speech
recognition software. It is a high tech compensatory
strategy that compensates for all of the lower level mechanical skills needed in the
writing process including fine motor control, graphomotor,
directionality, pressure control, automatic letter formation,
punctuation, spelling, mental image of the letter and the spatial
placement of letters.
Writer and Fusion
The writer and Fusion are mid tech tools to help students with written output who have trouble with fine motor, graphomotor and spelling. They are portable word processing devices that include a spell check and vocabulary and spelling programs. Theses devices are compensatory as they compensate for weak lower and upper level mechanical skills including fine motor control, graphomotor, directionality, pressure control,
automatic letter formation, punctuation, spelling and the spatial placement of letters.
Typing and keyboarding software is a high tech compensatory tool which supports students who have difficulty with the all mechanical and content areasincluding fine motor control, graphomotor, directionality, pressure control,
automatic letter formation, punctuation, spelling and the spatial placement of letters.It removes the stress associated with the handwriting process and uses the computer to generate and manipulate text.
Top 5 Typing programs for kids:
1.Typing Instructor for Kids- $19.99
2.Ultrakey- $ 39.95
3.Typing Quick and Easy- $ 19.99
4.Tux typing
5.Ainsworth Keyboard Trainer- $48.00
Bugs and Buttons
Bugs, Buttons, Pinch and
Grab- ($2.99) allows students to practice pinching ( thumb and index finger) control. It is great for hand- eye coordination as well which will develop lower level mechanical skillssuch as pressure control, fine motor control, pencil grasp, visual motor skills and automatic motor memory. This is a remediation strategy as it allows students to develop these skills. Bugs and Buttons is a very motivating app; therefore, it helps with attention to task.
Aesop's Quest
Aesop’s Quest is a free educational app which develops working memory,
comprehension strategies, reading and focus. This app develops upper level content skills including working memory, real and retrieval, prior knowledge, comprehension, sequencing and other metacognitive skills. It is a remediation tool that helps students practice and develop their skills in these areas.
Click below for a link with more information about this app.
Kurzweil is a UDL assistive technology tool that provides literacy support to students with the cognitive ability but not the literacy skills to learn any grade level. This is a good fit for students with SLD, physical challenges or any students experiencing writing difficulties. This software promotes independence by individualizing instruction. It supports fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, study skills and test taking. Kurzweil is a high tech software program that is compensatory and remedial. It compensates for all mechanical skillsincluding fine motor control, graphomotor, directionality, pressure
control, automatic letter formation, punctuation, spelling, mental image
of the letter and the spatial placement of letters.
Below is an example of what a text could look like after a student hasused Kurzweil to help them read and comprehend the passage. It includes highlighted text and bubble notes.
Below is a video that shows the power of Kurzweil:
