How Can Technology Be Used To Help Students With
Dyscalculia And Dyslexia Overcome Their Difficulties?
Dr Abi JamesProduct Manager
iANSYST Ltd
Introduction Why use technology
Reading and writing skills still needed in maths subjects
Technology is available & widely used in other areas Technology should save time and remove in-
authentic labour What is the problem?
Current technology solution not developed to cope with scientific notation
Existing solutions may need to be adapted or used taking a different approach
Problems experienced by dyslexic students
Problems experienced in mathematical subjects
Problems experienced by dyscalculic students
Problems experienced by students
Using technology to help with reports, assignments & exams
subject specific words will not be accepted by spell checkers
difficult to proof read scientific notation
speech recognition and concept mapping can help some students
Problems experienced by students
Note taking during lectures or seminars
Difficulties with accuracy and speed Limited technology to help with taking
down scientific notation quickly and accurately
Non-medical helpers for note taking rarely have a scientific background
Unable to use audio recordings to back up notes
Technology solutions:Subject specific Spell Checkers
Spellex adds subject specific terminology into MS Word’s spell checker (£82 + VAT for a single user). UK versions available for
medical, pharmaceutical, legal, biotech, botanical, technical, geographical
Various medical dictionaries available (e.g. Brody’s) but many are American.
Technology solutions: Word Prediction, Banks & Text Expansion
Word prediction can quickly learn terminology and phrases to be reproduced when needed. Read & Write and Penfriend also include text expansion tools
Words banks (Wordbar) can used to quickly enter phrases or keystrokes.
Technology solutions: OCR Software
OCR software is needed to convert scanned in images to editable text.
Packages can not convert equations into editable/readable text – they remain as images.
Abbyy FineReader can recognise some programming languages
Technology solutions:Text-to-speech
Speech engines will attempt to pronounce terminology using phonetic rules
Can not read-back equations represented as images or in PDF files
Limited read back of Equations - MathML & Math Player with Read & Write
Technology solutions:Talking calculators
Read & Write Gold and ClaroRead provide speech-enabled software-based calculators
Handheld talking calculators are available but expensive : £200+ Designed for visually impaired
Technology solutions:Speech Recognition
MathTalk with Dragon NaturallySpeaking enables scientific notation to be dictated. Good for writing reports but not note taking User needs to be fluent in terminology and
symbols Suits auditory learners and disadvantages
visual learners MathTalk demos
Technology solutions:Concept mapping
Used to explain concept and plan reports or projects.
Good for overcoming sequencing & organisation difficulties
Inspiration includes basic maths symbols but aimed a secondary level.
More advanced drawing packages can provide equation builders but more difficult to make maps – SmartDraw; Visio
Lagrangian Equation example in Inspiration
Quicklink Pen Elite & SuperPen Professional
Scan a word or line of text and hear it.
See the definition of the word.
QL Elite Transfer text and images to PC
SuperPen Professional: Comes with dictionaries
covering medicine, finance, computing, geography, science & a thesaurus.
New solutions for note-taking:Digital Pen
IO Pen saves an image of pages written in a special notebook to a PC.
Can use handwriting recognition but problems with:
Spelling errors Terminology & equations
But could be used be a note-taker or for saving notes as an image.
New solutions for note-taking:Graphics Tablet
A graphics tablet can be used to enter diagrams or equations graphically alongside a PC.
But requires good co-ordination skills.
Still slower than writing by hand
New solutions for note-taking:Adapted word banks
Project to develop a method of creating equations quickly in Word by Developing word banks to control the equation
editor or maths word processor Provide shortcut to symbol tools within Word.
Question & Answer session
What solutions are you using with your students?
What works? What do your students need?
Dr Abi JamesProduct ManageriANSYST Ltd
Fen HouseFen RoadCambridgeCB4 1UN
01223 420 101
www.dyslexic.com
www.iansyst.co.uk