Webinar: Assistive Technology for Reading

This will be my last post on this section. Today I watched a webinar on Assistive Technology for Reading. Below are a few things that I have learned to help me with my teaching. 

• Modifying and chunking the text is very important when teaching students with reading disabilities. This spaces the reading of the text to separate lines to allow the student to build on the skill of meta cognition and the thought process that good readers have. 
• It is very important to choose the right voice for the student that is hearing the text. 

There is another product that is made by the same creators of Co:Writer (my last post). It is called Read:OutLoud. In this webinar, they talk about how it is important to note if the toolbar should be continually altered for the students or not. It depends if the students can accept the change or not. 

I have taken a lot from this webinar. It drilled into my head that even though these programs are altered to help students with disabilities, you have to alter them for the student also. Every student is different and you should alter their assistive technology.

References:

Gatfl.gatech.edu (2013). Webinar Archives - Tools For Life. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.gatfl.gatech.edu/tflwiki/index.php?title=Webinar_Archives [Accessed: 6 Nov 2013].