Observations

Speech Recognition for Dyslexia in classrooms

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Students diagnosed with dyslexia and some ELL students often have trouble with putting their thoughts and ideas into writing. My class’s own dyslexic student has trouble (and by no fault of his) focusing and doing writing work because it is hard for him get started and he is always pages behind everyone else. It is also taxing on the teacher’s part to either coax the student to do work or to make a compromise adaptation every single time.

Technology has a possible solution through speech recognition software and the example we will look at is the Dragon speech recognition. This software turns a student’s voice into text thus eliminating the need to for spelling and writing. Students speak into a microphone and their voice appears as words on the screen. The technical requirement to run such a software are a Windows based computer, a proximity microphone (one that doesn’t pick up background noise) and a word processor such as Microsoft Word. In the video by Rhodders (2007), the software also has the function to read aloud to the user what was typed, making proofreading that much easier for students who has trouble reading text.

The downside of implementing this type of technology in the classroom is firstly the cost. The software is not cheap at over $100 per license, the laptop itself with the software will also likely be used by the dyslexic student only so that’s another cost in the school‘s budget. This software does require good speaking skills in order to work and students who had trouble to read in the first place will need a lot of help in training before they can comfortably take advantage of this. Rhodders’ video explained that the student’s dad had to read him a passage over and over again for him to repeat it into the computer.

I am curious and would love to further explore the potential of this software’s ability to potentially help dyslexic students for as long as cost can be kept low. I do not like the idea of having a laptop bound to a student without some level of expectation that it is a privilege and not a right. I also have a class that is very active and tends to be loud when working, I do not feel that it is a good community builder to have a student potentially leaving the room constantly to work somewhere quiet by himself.

 

Reference

Freedom of Speech Ltd. (2014, April 2). Helping Bethany’s dyslexia at school using Dragon speech recognition software [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj85zQT184o

Rhodders. (2007, April 23). Demonstration of speech recognition: For Westminster eForum [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXHawlHLmtI

Social media and portfolio for students

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Social media inside a classroom affords the sharing of both informal and formal communication between students as well as acting as a portfolio to track their progress in learning. Dabbagh & Kistsantas (2012) also mentioned that sharing discipline also serves as an opportunity for self-regulated learning and personalized learning for students deciding what is appropriate to share. From a higher perspective in terms of pedagogy, there is a lot going for having social media in a classroom but there are the actual benefits and disadvantages that should be further discussed

Information gathering communities on Twitter for example connects to other classes that do things different than us (tvoparents, 2013). The teacher in the video was able to tweet a class they corresponded with to ask about their safety because they were close to a flooded area in Brisbane, Australia. This connection for example is a great way to expand both the student and the teacher’s perspectives by comparing what others do differently. This also has the added benefit of learning from a global perspective traditionally done with pen pals. The cons to having student on Twitter is information control, the wide web has a lot of things we rather our students not know about and it’s tough to manage that filter without denying the students the access to a global perspective. At the same time there are information we don’t want our students to share too, information in and out of the classroom needs to be regulated.

Blogging is a good social media for students if they are to visit each other’s blogs and contribute to discussions. This from my experience even in university courses can be hard to manage and motivation is always lacking when there are 30 blogs in a class. What blogs do serve best is being a digital portfolio of a student’s learning progress. In tvoparents’ video (2013), students were able to hear how much their reading has improved since the beginning of the year and to be able to feel proud of it. The evidence of learning is important not only for students to see, but an asset for teachers to plan their teaching. Parents are also able to step in and give support as needed. Nothing gets parents more excited at their child’s success and improvement, having evidence of that easily accessible brings the parents into the conversation easily. It is almost unheard of as yet but if students were to keep a blog all through K-12 giving evidence to all their learning, the potential to improve education are vast in theory.

Distraction from learning always remains as a concern, in my observation class some students with the assistance of their parents have Google accounts and can work on Google Drive and its tools. Some students however, are not and there was a divide among the class who were part of an exclusive group chat on Google Hangout. I have seen it being useful when information related to learning was passed on, while idle chatter and whining of being left out serves as a source of distraction detrimental to learning.

Overall, how much control is needed to make social media an effective learning tool without the distraction in classroom community is something to further investigate. As it stands though, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages but the harm usually comes at a more personal level and is harder to observe and investigate.

 

 

Reference

tvoparents. (2013, May 21) Using Social Media in the Classroom [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The Internet and higher education, 15(1), 3-8.

 

Classroom Climate and observations

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Classroom setup with lighting, mats, groups all depends on the group but find the one that works and invest in it, it’ll pay off long term. Took years of different groups, age, to figure out, letting go and being COURAGEOUS goes a long way especially intermediate → primary

Mats strategy – inattentive ones up front, behaved in the middle, those who needs to move and will not disrupt others at the back. Middle ones are preferably smaller in stature

Lights: Lamps are very calming and most of all keeps the VOLUME DOWN. Mentioned that it’s at least 2 noise level plus when ceiling lights are on. Sounds like souls getting sucked out when flipped on at the end of the day.

Strategies, kids are anxious because they are competitive and wants to catch up if not be the best despite parents not applying pressure. Notice if anyone does that and alleviate that pressure as best as we can as teachers

Teach multiple strategies and MAKE SURE to teach them to throw a strategy away if it doesn’t work for them. Ex. You guys love this strategy? Well I hate it, didn’t even want to teach it. But see, that works for you, you should use it, even though it doesn’t work for me even if you explain it to me!

Music: in sketching activity, the silence was needed in order for them to think, music on later when they started working helped elevate their productivity, also provided a cover for kids to talk quietly among each other to support peer to peer learning. Although this ended up with some pairs of sketches that looked very similar to each other.

Teacher has this strategy where she just reads on her chair in the corner and reads. It becomes a sort of magnet and kids will gravitate over if they want to, it’s calming for the end of the day instead of the hustle we have, must observe its effects!