Students in Ottawa public schools are now being taught reading and writing skills by using computer programs that were originally designed for children with learning disabilities.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board initiative permits all students to benefit from computer-assisted teaching tools and students with learning disabilities no longer need to be regularly pulled from their classrooms to work one-on-one with special education teachers.
Programs that teach reading and writing skills can be really helpful to any student, not just those with a learning disability, says Ruth Elias, a special education teacher who has worked with learning disabled children at Glashan Public School for 12 years.
“There is sometimes a lot of stigma attached to special education, but a more inclusive model of teaching allows special education teachers to come to students and help them in a natural classroom environment,” says Elias.
“While one-on-one teaching still happens when a difficult new topic is introduced, learning disabled students can now spend more time learning alongside their peers in the classroom.”
Text reading software designed to read the words on a computer screen aloud to kids who are blind or visually impaired is just one example of the type of technology now being used to help first-time readers as early as Grade 1, says Dave Miller, the school board’s manager of information technology.
“If there is a teacher who is helping a classroom full of kids to read for the first time and they can benefit from this program by following along on their computers while the program reads the words aloud, then that is fabulous,” says Miller.
Older students in Grade 7 and Grade 8 can also use the technology to their advantage when they are proofreading essays, says Elias.
“By listening to what they wrote, kids develop independence and an ability to self-correct sentences that don’t sound right. It really reduces a student’s reliance on teachers and prepares them for high school and university,” she says.
In the school board’s latest embrace of computer-assisted technology, students can even access teaching tools by logging on to school software from a home computer.
Premier AT Home, for instance, allows students to convert documents into audio files that can be played on MP3 players and iPods to help students prepare for tests.
As a result, technology once used only for special needs students is now taking the teaching process beyond the classroom and aiding any student who wants extra help after school hours, says Ian McVicar, the director of Premier Assistive Canada, a Nova Scotia-based company which designs interactive teaching tools.
“Students are only in school 162 days of the year, so a kid that needs literary help can now access it whenever they need it,” says McVicar.
“If it's summertime and a young boy wants to go on the TSN website and read the starting line up for his favourite baseball team, even if he is a beginner reader he will be able to teach himself difficult words.”
Because many learning disabilities aren't diagnosed until Grade 4, introducing the technology early helps to ensure that special needs students don’t get left out of the learning process, says McVicar.
The introduction of assistive technology is partially a response to a report by the Ontario Ministry of Education in 2003 called The Report of the Expert Panel on Early Reading in Ontario.
The report notes that special needs students who experience difficulty reading in Grade 3 “seldom catch up in later grades.”
By making this technology available to all students as they begin to read, students with undiagnosed learning disabilities will benefit, says McVicar.