A few years ago a friend of mine was teaching a Grade 5 class. One of her students had recently been diagnosed with a writing disability and was struggling to get a lot of his work completed. Even though he had the use of a computer, he would often sit in front of the computer, just staring at the screen not knowing where to begin. He often used a scribe to do his work but this often depended on the availability of the classroom teacher or the SERT.
She asked the Special Education Resource Teacher if the school had Dragon Naturally Speaking and they did. When asked if the student would be trained on this program the SERT explained that it would be great but he did not know how to work the program. It was his lucky day as my friend knew that I had been using Dragon Naturally Speaking for years and I would be willing to train students on assistive software like Dragon http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm. She called me that night to set-up a time for me to come meet the student and start training.
A few days later I went to the school and met with the student and the SERT to begin training. This student was ideal candidate for using Dragon Training. We went through the training quite quickly and by the next session he was ready to test it out using some work he had to do for class. After just two sessions he was ready begin using Dragon on his own.
The student continued to progress using Dragon and his marks were reflecting this progress. Now when he was given a writing assignment to do he was given the option of having a scribe or using Dragon. The more the year went on he chose Dragon more as he became more comfortable with the program.
I feel that this great example of a students' use of Dragon Naturally Speaking, speaks to how a student with a disability benefit from assistive technology like Dragon Naturally Speaking. For teachers, I would recommend asking around to see if there are people available to train students on the software if your SERT and/or school board do not offer training. If my friend did not have this student in her class and did not know that I was willing to train, this student could have been still waiting for training, thus continuing to struggle academically with writing assignments.
Thank you for sharing this story. It really speaks to the importance of teachers having access to information about assistive technology and even the opportunity to have some training. The fact that the special educators are not even sure what software is available that would benefit which kids is yet another major barrier for students with learning disabilities. This speaks to the gaps that exist here- we have software that is already there (in the school and school board) but it's not being used or accessed because we don't know how to use it or for whom it would be beneficial. I hope the student will continue to have access to the support he is entitled!!
ReplyDelete