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Dr Abi James Product Manager iANSYST Ltd

How Can Technology Be Used To Help Students With Dyscalculia And Dyslexia Overcome Their Difficulties?  . Dr Abi James Product Manager iANSYST Ltd. Introduction. Why use technology Reading and writing skills still needed in maths subjects Technology is available & widely used in other areas

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Dr Abi James Product Manager iANSYST Ltd

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  1. How Can Technology Be Used To Help Students With Dyscalculia And Dyslexia Overcome Their Difficulties?   Dr Abi James Product Manager iANSYST Ltd

  2. Introduction • Why use technology • Reading and writing skills still needed in maths subjects • Technology is available & widely used in other areas • Technology should save time and remove in-authentic labour • What is the problem? • Current technology solution not developed to cope with scientific notation • Existing solutions may need to be adapted or used taking a different approach

  3. Problems experienced by dyslexic students Problems experienced in mathematical subjects Problems experienced by dyscalculic students

  4. Problems experienced by students Using technology to help with reports, assignments & exams • subject specific words will not be accepted by spell checkers • difficult to proof read scientific notation • speech recognition and concept mapping can help some students

  5. Problems experienced by students Note taking during lectures or seminars • Difficulties with accuracy and speed • Limited technology to help with taking down scientific notation quickly and accurately • Non-medical helpers for note taking rarely have a scientific background • Unable to use audio recordings to back up notes

  6. Technology solutions:Subject specific Spell Checkers • Spellex adds subject specific terminology into MS Word’s spell checker (£82 + VAT for a single user). • UK versions available for medical, pharmaceutical, legal, biotech, botanical, technical, geographical • Various medical dictionaries available (e.g. Brody’s) but many are American.

  7. Technology solutions:Word Prediction, Banks & Text Expansion • Word prediction can quickly learn terminology and phrases to be reproduced when needed. • Read & Write and Penfriend also include text expansion tools • Words banks (Wordbar) can used to quickly enter phrases or keystrokes.

  8. Technology solutions:OCR Software • OCR software is needed to convert scanned in images to editable text. • Packages can not convert equations into editable/readable text – they remain as images. • Abbyy FineReader can recognise some programming languages

  9. Technology solutions:Text-to-speech • Speech engines will attempt to pronounce terminology using phonetic rules • Can not read-back equations represented as images or in PDF files • Limited read back of Equations - MathML & Math Player with Read & Write

  10. Technology solutions:Talking calculators • Read & Write Gold and ClaroRead provide speech-enabled software-based calculators • Handheld talking calculators are available but expensive : £200+ • Designed for visually impaired

  11. Technology solutions:Speech Recognition • MathTalk with Dragon NaturallySpeaking enables scientific notation to be dictated. • Good for writing reports but not note taking • User needs to be fluent in terminology and symbols • Suits auditory learners and disadvantages visual learners • MathTalk demos

  12. Technology solutions:Concept mapping • Used to explain concept and plan reports or projects. • Good for overcoming sequencing & organisation difficulties • Inspiration includes basic maths symbols but aimed a secondary level. • More advanced drawing packages can provide equation builders but more difficult to make maps – • SmartDraw; Visio

  13. Lagrangian Equation example in Inspiration

  14. Quicklink Pen Elite & SuperPen Professional • Scan a word or line of text and hear it. • See the definition of the word. • QL Elite • Transfer text and images to PC • SuperPen Professional: • Comes with dictionaries covering medicine, finance, computing, geography, science & a thesaurus.

  15. New solutions for note-taking:Digital Pen • IO Pen saves an image of pages written in a special notebook to a PC. • Can use handwriting recognition but problems with: • Spelling errors • Terminology & equations • But could be used be a note-taker or for saving notes as an image.

  16. New solutions for note-taking:Graphics Tablet A graphics tablet can be used to enter diagrams or equations graphically alongside a PC. • But requires good co-ordination skills. • Still slower than writing by hand

  17. New solutions for note-taking:Adapted word banks • Project to develop a method of creating equations quickly in Word by • Developing word banks to control the equation editor or maths word processor • Provide shortcut to symbol tools within Word.

  18. Question & Answer session • What solutions are you using with your students? • What works? • What do your students need?

  19. Dr Abi JamesProduct ManageriANSYST Ltd Fen House Fen Road Cambridge CB4 1UN 01223 420 101 www.dyslexic.com www.iansyst.co.uk abi@dyslexic.com

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