ATIA 2009: My session this year at ATIA was my first national session in a Mac computer lab, which I found to be a great experience! The session went very well and I learned a few things from some members of the audience. I also learned a lot from the many sessions I participated in as an attendee. I’ll share a few of those today and more next week.
Text-To-Speech Recommendations: At the ATIA conference this past week, several recommendations were given with regard to text to speech and reading trends in general. Some I thought were good general rules to keep in mind and some were simply wake up calls! I wanted to share just a few that struck me:
- Over the last 2 decades reading achievement scores nationwide have hardly improved at all. The ‘pressure’ around test scores have changed, BUT the scores themselves have not! This speaks loud and clear to me. The way we’ve always taught hasn’t and isn’t working. It’s time for the traditional classroom to be more universally accessible, which might mean that today’s classroom looks drastically different than what traditional educators are used to in the way instruction is presented, responses are accepted, students are engaged AND the tools we allow our students to bring into the classroom, leave turned on and actually use.
- According to the 2007 Nations Report Card, 1/3 of students aren’t proficient readers and 44% of 4th graders have a reading difficulty. This is NOT just a special ed issue and again this screams out for a universally designed classroom experience.
- The discrepancy model or ‘waiting for failure’ no longer applies. After 2nd grade, it is MUCH more difficult (if possible at all) to bring struggling readers back up to grade level. Reading accommodations are needed even at early grade levels to circumvent the lack of reading fluency.
- Good readers read more and get better. Poor readers struggle, get frustrated, read less and fall further behind.
- TIME SPENT READING IS THE GREATEST PREDICTOR OF READING GROWTH!
- Knowing that struggling readers need help: Digital text is dynamic, flexible, portable, malleable, non-linear, interactive, muli-media and able to be searched.
- When using Text To Speech with students AND having them watch the text on screen, a general rule of thumb regarding the rate is that it should be about 35% faster than that student’s oral reading rate.
Picasa For Mac! Many of us have at least a familiarity with Google’s free Picasa software for editing, organizing and displaying digital images. Picasa has been around and heavily used by PC users for quite some time now. Well, Google has recently announced a free Mac version of the popular Picasa! Give it a try here: http://picasa.google.com/mac/. There’s also a video of how it works on the Mac HERE.
Dogs As A.T. When I was teaching, one of my absolute favorite activities was when Caring Paws Therapy dogs would come to my classroom to work with my students. The benefits were incredible, ranging from improved social skills and confidence to improved reading fluency! This morning I saw this article in SmartBrief and wanted to share: Smartbrief Article. If we consider a broad enough definition of Assistive Technology to be ‘anything’ that helps ‘anyone’ do something they couldn’t do otherwise and/or perform more efficiently, reading dogs might be a powerful tool!
More next week from ATIA and TRLD on 3D immersive worlds, reading research, switch access, etc.
Don’t Forget to Register…perfect time to learn about instructional technology and meet vendors
PATINS TECH EXPO 2009
April 16, 2009
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Junior Achievement Building
of Central IN, Inc.
7435 North Keystone Ave.
Indianapolis, IN 46240
No Cost to attend! Door Prizes
To Register:
http://patinsproject.com/training.html
