The first "topic" for ETNI's chat was assistive technology with guest moderator, Ellen Hoffenberg-Serfaty, Technology Coordinator at the Learning Center for the Blind, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus. This is a summary of the chat session with some resources that participants asked for.

Introduction

And what, some of you may ask, is assistive technology?

The official definition:
Assistive technology is "any item, piece of equipment or system that helps bypass, work around, or compensate for learning difficulties."

And in plain language?

For our purposes, it is any piece of software or web application that helps our students do the tasks that we require them to do with English, or helps them learn. You are probably most interested in text-to-speech applications, or "text readers"--software or web browsers that will read the text for your students. Or on-line dictionaries, like Babylon. But there's much more:-)

Over the last 18 months, our work at the Learning Center for the Blind has made extensive use of assistive technology--or AT--so that many blind, visually impaired, but especially learning disabled students can became proficient enough in English to take their bagrut exams, the "key" for their entrance into university. Without tapes! Without human readers! They do it "on their own" with AT and computers.

Interested?

See you Thursday, Jan 24, 2002 in the ETNI Chat Room:
http://www.etni.org/chat.htm
The "moadon" opens at 9:00 PM, and I'll be there at 9:30 PM to start talking about AT, and answering your questions.

If you want to find our more before we meet, see:
http://www.alehblind.org.il/ellen/introAT.html
and take a peak into our "mechina":
http://www.alehblind.org.il/englishtech/
http://www.alehblind.org.il/bagrut2001.html

Summary of chat and resources

Ellen's Introduction to the chat

I said in my introductory note that assistive tech or AT is any program or device or even a whole system that helps us remediate or bypass a problem.

I wanted to clarify that AT is different from CD Rom learning programs that teaches a curriculum or other educational software—that is different.

AT can be hardware, software, equipment or a whole system!

I also wanted to start off by saying that AT is only a partial solution to the problems of disabled people who work on computers and/or want to use the web.

You absolutely have to have material in a format that is accessible.

What does that mean?

That's the subject of its own chat—or even a whole course, just to get into the basics.

But basically—if you want your student to read something with an AT device, not only do you need the AT, but what you want them to read has to be in a readable form, and has to be "built" or formatted in an accessible way.

The best example is web pages: 99% of the web pages in Israel are inaccessible! that is right! Blind and other disabled folks have a very hard time using them.

Obvisouly a book is inaccessible—it might have to be scanned for print or screen readout; or for a fascinating piece of AT that we have at the Center that scans and reads with the press of one button:-)

There are a set of international rules that we are trying to implement in Israel on how to build accessible web pages. Snunit was the first big educational network to get on the bandwagon, and I work with those folks to help them make Making Waves accessible as well as usable for special needs kids. They are doing a great job. Matach is on the way, as well.

Another big problem: AT is a piece of equipment or software, usually. It has to be designed so that it works on accessible pages! Also according to international guidelines. And that isn't always done.

With that preface, there is still lots and lots of good news here in Israel, already. And we are just starting to explore the options.

Tonight, I'd like to limit our chat to talking just about AT—what it is, how do you test it with your kids, how do you get ahold of it, what are good and bad features, some resources. That is a big enough subject...

Who should AT be used for during tests?

One participant stated that her school had applied for permission to use computers and AT for testing during the Bagrut. But the Ministry of Education representative said that this was not appropriate--that computers and AT are only used for blind or visually impaired.

This is not the case, in fact. It may be true that the Ministry has decided to only let blind and visually impaired use computers and AT for the bagrut, but in many other countries, learning disabled students are permitted to do so as well. A good source for information about what is happening in the US and other countries is:
Wrightslaw. They also have a free newsletter.

Not ALL students at the Learning Center who take exams are not all visually impaired to such a degree that warrants magnification--many have severe learning disabilities that require the use of various AT in order for them to be able to access testing material and produce answers. Take a look:
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Computerized Bagrut 2001--the Nation's First!

Today at the Center, we match students with a very wide range of disabilities, that include visual, physical and learning problems. There are so many AT programs that can help these students reach a higher level of proficiency. And AT has many advantages over the present "hatemot" for Bagrut tests:

We have found that "human" readers are not the best option for blind, visually impaired and learning disabled students and have discontinued their use in English. When people read to our students, it is difficut to determine what the student understands, and how much additional information is being conveyed to the student about the text. But most important, students have to rely on someone else to be there to help them negotiate their material--this is not a good practice at all! Students should learn to deal with their limitations, and computers and AT offer that option. They select AT to help them with problems they cannot overcome, and they are in control. They become very active in the problem-solving and learning process. And they are independent.

A few participants asked if students would have the right to pursue or sue in order to use assistive tech. Based on my knowlege of what is happening around the world, the answer is definitely yes! But before thinking about suing, it is important to raise awareness and educate.

When I started working in this field a few years ago, I didn't know anyone here in Israel who "spoke the same language" about AT and adaptive techniques. So I learned from colleagues in other countries--from the web, on-line courses, e-mail lists and correspondence, as well as lots and lots of testing. Now AT is becoming more common and more teachers know about it here in Israel, but this is clearly a "grassroots" effort. So it is up to teachers to educate coordinators, principals, inspectors, Ministry officials, testing services, etc. And the time is ripe!

Some people think that using AT is cheating. I really can't understand this viewpoint--anyone who has ever watched a student who doesn't know good basic EFL skills try to do a bagrut with just a dictionary knows that it is impossible. And anyone who has ever watched a visually impaired or learning disabled student try to find words in a regular dictionary--painstakingly, slowly, despite lots of training--knows that this is punishment, and not education. Helping students to take control of their learning, admit their problems, and take charge of trying to find their own solutions is not cheating. It is education. Once again, we have a problem of awareness and understanding.

Finally, to those teachers who have problems getting AT purchases approved prior to getting approval for using it on bagrut exams: I know these programs are expensive, and it is time-consuming to start a program. But it is worth it, regardless of whether students use AT on exams. I can say with 100% assurance that AT helps students learn better and become more confident and more proficient students. Many students who start out using text-to-speech for example repeatedly to do tasks, often do without after a few months. So investing in AT for a whole year is a worthwhile investment--the bagrut exam is only a few hours of their lives. AT is a lifetime investment.

Tips for Formatting Material

Several teachers asked for advice on how to format material so that students can easily adapt it. The following link is a list of tips that we have been developing over the last year that remove formatting problems in scanned documents that are used primarily in Word documents.
Formatting Tips in Word

Word Prediction

Alot of participants asked questions about Word Prediction programs.

Word Prediction is a very powerful form of "spell check" but starts at the right point! Let me explain:
Spell check programs usually require the students to have some idea of what they are writing and how to spell it. Some students wait until they are finished with their writing, and then begin the process of trying to correct their work. But we know that spell checks have limitations: they offer words and spelling that are often out of context for the sentence; they don't contain all the words that we need, etc. And if students are using spell check while they write, they often lose their train of thought. All in all, for more than mildly disabled students, it is a very frustrating process.

Word prediction works while the students write. The student begins a sentence and as they type, a list of words pop up at the beginning of each new word that the student begins, offering the student the option to hear and select the correct spelling. What I like about this program is that students HAVE to mediate their spelling with the program--they have to try to remember some basic decoding and spelling rules to get the right list of words. If, for example, they want to spell the word "recieve" and they begin with "ri" instead of "re", then they will not get the correct list of words.

In addition, teachers and students can add to word lists and create their own. This is especially helpful if you are working on a particular subject.

Finally, students make tremendous progress in their spelling and writing in a very short time of using Word Prediction. My students report that the program "teaches" them how to pronounce and spell words--and I have clearly seen the results!

Last year, I had several very talented students who were so severely learning disabled, that I was sure that unless someone would rewrite what they wrote on the essay for their bagrut exam, they would not be able to do a 5 pt. test...what a shame! After experimenting with over ten word prediction programs, we selected one, called "Word Q", and my students are working very well with it. Even a severely LD, and almost blind student has been able to manage the program without assistance and learn to write for the first time.

Experimentation is very important. And not just teacher experimentation. I always offer my students a few different demo programs and watch and listen to them carefully before making a purchase decision.

In order to find the best program for you, you can try what others have used, but also do your own homework. Here is a good place to start, and in general ATRC has wonderful resource information:
Technical Glossary--Word Prediction

Here are two programs that I found to be pretty useful, but there are many more:
Word Q
Penfriend

Both of these programs offer an evaluation version. But I have found that most software companies will provide a demo version for a program while you are testing it. Since purchase usually involves multi-computer licenses, it is worth it.

How to prepare activities

Several teachers who have started using computers and AT as a regular feature of their lessons commented that they are concerned about how the activities are prepared. This is a VERY important part of working with student with AT.

First of all, it is extremely important that students begin learning about computers by understanding that they are responsible and must take control of how their computers look and work.

Here is a bit of training information about this subject from a course that ORT teachers did with me on-line last year:
Teaching Students with special educational needs
and information about Taking Control.
You will note that "taking control" is part of the concept of "scaffolding" or breaking down material and skills into small, manageable pieces, providing extra support along the way for students until they master the skills and knowlege necessary to do it on their own.

Every teacher scaffolds--we are just using a new "term" for an old concept, one that has been used in special ed and occupational therapy instruction for many years.

Here are a few others sites to learn more about this:
Computer Assisted Text Scaffolding for Curriculum Access and Language Learning/Acquisition
Scaffolding Children’s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education
Schools, Skills and Scaffolding on the Web
and here's a link if you just want to "get your toes wet" and begin to learn about scaffolding--easy to read and understand.
Scaffolding for Success.

There is a great deal of information on this whole area of how to work activities with students, the subject of a whole course, really, but here are a few pointers:

• Be prepared to work at the students' pace, not the teachers'
• Carefully document where your student is beginning in terms of knowlege and skills for tech and the subject matter, and track and change your plan accordingly.
• Look at everything you do with a "different" eye. I call this my "stand back, squint and outline" viewpoint: Each new program, each new text, each new skill is really a series of small steps put together in a new combination. Find those small steps, identify and "label" them, and you will see that the students have learned many of them before. You just have to make up a new "dance".
• Reflection! For you and your students. You as well as your students have to start each new step with a thinking exercise: where are you starting, what do you hope to accomplish and why? And record what your problems and progress were, what you want to remember, and what the next step is. This meta-cognitive or "internal chat" is critical for learning for these students, and also helps them understand that their frustrations are the normal ingredient for learning and solving their own problems.
• Admit when you have taken a wrong path and backtrack. I admit I have made a mistake very often, and encourage my students to do so...that this is also part of learning.
• Practice and review each new skill learned...many times!
• There are many ways to do things on a computer--and the best way is the one that the student, not the teacher, chooses.

Using Laptops

A few teachers commented that students are starting to use laptops in class or for their studies. This is great! I bring my own laptop everyday to my lessons, and hook up to the Center network--my own computer has my own settings, and all my lessons...I feel at "home". And I am helping some of my students and the other teachers at the Center who are beginning to use tech to purchase and outfit their laptops. The obvious benefit is that students have their settings defined and are ready to start their lesson right away, and also can do their homework with ease (assuming, as is the case for our students, that they do not have a computer at home or in their dorm room).

But laptops are not the only solution. There are many small AT, handheld and other devices that help students record lectures, take notes, organize information, jot down vocabulary, etc. We are just beginning to see this happen in Israel, but in many other countries, on some campuses that facilitate this process, it has become a fact of educational life.

Who is AT for?

The answer is easy---EVERYONE!

I always issue a challenge to teachers that I train, and to my students--find a task that you think that you don't need a computer and AT for, and I will find you an easier way to do it with a computer and AT. And I am serious.

Let's not think that AT is just for "disabled" people--everyone can use AT at some point for one task or another, to make their work and learning lives more organized, to do things more quickly or easily. Mind mapping programs help us organize big projects and ideas with lots of little pieces of information. Voice recognition helps us dictate our mail when we are tired at the end of a day. Text-to-speech or text readers help us listen to long articles or books, or even let us type while we absorb, if we are multi-taskers. Magnification programs and special computer settings ease tired eyes, sore hands, clumsy fingers. And perhaps there is only 1 student out of 100 English students who doesn't need some help with their spelling!

I mentioned during the chat that we are starting to use AT for other subjects, besides English at the Center--math, literature, Hebrew, general learning skills. There are some new developments in improving Hebrew TTS or text-to-speech with Melingo, and Israel's Hebrew screen reader, Virgo, keeps improving. And we are the home of the famous Virtouch Braille Mouse that allows blind and visually impaired students to "read pictures" with an enlarged mouse. Anyone wanting info. about any of these developments, just get in touch with me.

Working with students who have no tech knowlege or "tech fear"

This is a very important subject--many disabled students have either not used a computer, or are afraid of them. At least 30% of every incoming class at the Center exhibits these problems in their total approach to tech, and almost everyone has some tech fear at some point. These are the students who say "I don't like computers", "I don't want to learn tech", "I can learn better this way...". I have found that many of these students have had bad experiences with technology in school, where an instructor did not scaffold the learning, and the student was frustrated or failed. Or the student knows that they cannot play computers games like their friends, and is embarassed. There are many reasons for this.

The answer? Go slow, and let them have fun! I always start out with very new and inexperienced students who have some vision with mouse pointer games...there are lots of free ones on the net. And typing games...there are some free ones, and some demos, but you usually have to purchase the good ones. To my amazement, students LOVE typing programs.

I also move them slowly into using very simple web pages with games or CD games, if necessary, where they can read simple things, or hear them read, and click to answer. This gives them confidence.

I mentioned that I use the Quia site with my students. Before we built our Center site, I used Quia as our temporary home--take a look:
Some games
Some temporary resource pages
I make up games for them, and eventually I teach them to make the games. I also use the ESL Cyber-Listening Lab because it often has written transcripts, and a dictionary, and students can answer by just pressing a button, and get immediate feedback.

Here are some links to the listening lab and some other favorites for my students--from beginning to advanced:
English As A Foreign Language and scroll down to "Internet!"

AT programs

People asked me for links for different programs to download--mostly free:-)

I started out looking for free programs...and soon realized that it is worth the administrative fight to pay for good programs. So if you ask me for "good" and free AT, that is a pretty difficult request.

But here are some programs you can look at:

Read Please has free and paid versions, with the latter being a little more powerful. I recommend it for my students for home use, but we rarely use it in class, because it is sometimes incompatible with documents we use, and it doesn't have enough flexibility for user interface, i.e. letting students change settings and controls to suit their needs.
Web Media Talking Browser is a pretty cool tool, but not for students with serious disabilities. There has been alot of controversy about this browser, because it doesn't always read web pages as designed, and many web designers simply don't design pages as they should.

Paid or free, Babylon is the number one place to start working with AT. Here is a lesson that I developed about Babylon...enjoy!
Easy AT--Babylon On-line Dictionary (or Great AT Tools in Disguise)

Here are some "free" programs that are great! And always will be...

Opera Browser is great for learning disabled or visually impaired, or just for students with less proficiency, since there are a wide range of choices for removing graphics and changing the interface with ease.

DocMorph is a great on-line application for converting many kinds of documents to TTS or text-to-speech.

Course on AT and visits to the Center

I'v been collecting names of teachers who want to visit us at the Center; and/or do an intensive on-line/hands-on course about AT. I haven't forgotten you...we are simply "blossoming" at the Center and as tech coordinator, I have my hands full. We are beginning to use AT in other subjects as well, especially math. But please send me a note (or reminder, if you sent one before). I have the syllabus ready--just need to find some time and a good "home" for the course:-)

Bye for now! Be in touch! And thanks so much for your enthusiasm.
Ellen