LD Tech

Kurzweil - $1000 per student signing in – think of the iPads that could be purchased! Cost doesn’t exactly match the belief behind UDL.

Have to have a diagnosed LD or visual impairment to have it recommended. Interesting because the article we read discussed how it could be used for whole class instruction and with most students. Stupid Halifax.

Magnifying increases font size for visual impairment or for reluctant readers so that it doesn’t look like as much reading.

Text to speech - on the reading toolbar you can increase or decrease the rate of speech. Slower for auditory processing (Drew!!).  Can change the voice as well. Highlights as you read – both full sentence and in sentence. Good for attention span and comprehension. All areas can be repeated as many times as necessary without having to ask. Take a lot of energy to repeat when reading on your own.  Promotes engagement in the document. If you change the reading mode to self-paced you have to keep clicking to get to next sentence, or you can set the reading unit to line/phrase/etc. So many settings can be adjusted to support various students.

Vocabulary support – prior knowledge and vocab may affect their comprehension. Supports this by offering definitions for words (click in front of the word and select definition, synonym, how to pronounce, etc.) Can even change the default dictionary (under reference) which is great because finding a definition with words you don’t understand doesn’t help at all! Can even look up a definition within the definition.  Another option is that you can click on a word and as for an image to come up. You can also create a picture dictionary.  

This would be awesome for EAL students – can they use it in Halifax? Can we sneak it?

Saving – can be saved in other formats so that kids can read it on computers without Kurzweil. You could use it for other students on Natural Reader for example (RTF ).

Study Skills – Highlight key words/phrases. Can use it as a teacher to demonstrate study skills/key points, etc. Can add sticky notes for reminders/text connections, etc. You can add sticky notes for kids with instructions.  Bubble notes – assess comprehension, connect to text, engagement, chunk assignments, pre-reading/inferring/predicting skills, promotes attention, independence, etc. You can also add a voice note (the teacher or student could). Can be placed throughout the document – for directions, questions, encouragement, kids could use them as a response opportunity.

ReadPlease and Natural Reader are options as well, and free. They have more limited options (voice and study skills), but are feasible options.

 UDL tools

Storyline Online Stories read by celebrities. Even gave a warning about the fact that a story on the tooth fairy is “revealing”. Kids may not recognize celebs.

Scholastic Interactives - Character Scrapbook  Love this! Can analyze a character on a number of levels, with prompts. Asks good questions about personality, challenges, etc. that would apply to grade 8 level questioning.  I can definitely use this in my classroom in September.

Project Based Learning Checklists Use to create personalized checklists. This would be great to create checklists for assignments for full class or individualized ones. Can collaborate with kids to create checklists for their work as well.

ReadWritetThink Student Interactives This website has a variety of interactive templates related to reading and writing. I took a look at the story plot one because I use that in my classroom each year. I think it would be an engaging way to get kids to think about the elements of plot. You can customize it to say things like “beginning/middle/end” rather than “exposition/climax/resolution” to match learners.

iStudiez Lite – An app that provides a more grown up version of a visual schedule. I like this because my experiences with junior high kids tell me that they would appreciate something that looks more grown up. Connects to your calendar and alerts you as well to upcoming items. It can develop a schedule by class that tells you how much time is left and what is coming up next.