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Assistive Technology
In the coming months we will be listing some of the assistive technology that is currently available in the Sharon public school system that may be helpful for your child to use.
Per the recommendation of Steve Kaplan and with some of the Stimulus funding, the District has purchased additional assistive technology computer programs. These software programs assist with writing on the computer from start to finish. They also include a read out loud and a write out loud component as well as some core content material and a "draft builder." Staff training will take place on October 7th. These software programs will be available throughout the Sharon public school system. Ask for this technology for your child!
Don Johnston Assistive Technology Software Presentation
Thank you to Steve Kaplan and several teachers for their presentation in the use of the new Don Johnston assistive technology software on Thursday evening, December 3rd.
This software is targeted to be available to all students after the Holiday vacation. There was a problem with the new software working on the school district's network which is being corrected. The software is currently loaded onto to laptops that are in use in the Academic Labs. The software will also be available on cd for students to install it for use on their computer at home.
There are 4 main components to this new version 6 software. These are:
Read:OutLoud
Write:OutLoud
Co:Writer and
Draft:Builder
These components are connected so that any work that your child may do in the Read OutLoud can be merged into the Write OutLoud and/or Draft Builder components.
This software can provide benefits to all students - not just those with special needs. It uses digitized text to help with reading, writing and creation of reports.
The Read OutLoud component allows the student to highlight a sentence, paragraph or section of digitized text such as an article on the web and it highlights each word as it reads each word out loud. Using the dictionary function a student may add definitions and notes to a sticky tab window. This article and the notes can then be merged into the Write OutLoud and/or Draft Builder component.
Using the Write OutLoud component, a student can proceed to write an assignment. With the Co Writer component used in the Write OutLoud component the student can use the software to help them with grammar and spelling. A younger beginning writer or a student who has difficulty physically typing can type numbers representing the words they wish to use in their sentence. This is a much more advanced (and grammatically correct) version of for example what a google search engine does when it completes and suggests words based upon what you have typed. The Co Writer component will only work when there is a word type program open such as WordPad or Word.
The Draft Builder component helps the student to organize an outline and use the notes made in the other components. By clicking and dropping in notes that were created when reading digitized text, this prior work can be directly used in the student's report. This section also contains a bibliographer with sample bibliographic notes so that it does not create the bibliography for the student but shows them the correct notations based upon different types of entries.
There are short video tutorials available for you to view the software in use at the Don Johnston software site www.DonJohnston.com.
To view the tutorials on the Read OutLoud component click here Read OutLoud.
To view the tutorials on the Co Writer component Co Writer.
