We are getting a laptop for my son, who will be entering 4th grade. He will be using it at school and at home. We are also getting speech-text software for him to use for homework. I’m looking for suggestions. What has worked for you to help use it in the classroom or at home? What do you wish had been or could be done differently? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Cathy
Re: Getting new computer
Cathy,
I have a 4th grade daughter who we are seriously considering getting a laptop for school. We haven’t needed a speech to text format as yet, but we are looking into writing/spelling software. She currently uses draft builder and co-writer; however, co-writer has become too slow for her. Please post here and tell us what you find out an decide upon. BTW, how do the teachers feel about his use of the laptop? Thanks.
Re: Getting new computer
Thanks for the input. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. I have researched the difficulties and I’ve used speech-text with one of my students. I have had the opportunity to experience the frustration first hand, and I was still willing to try! Thanks for information about TextHelp!. I am not familiar with them, but will look into them.
Re: Getting new computer
Leah,
Sorry for my delay in responding. We purchased a laptop and L&H VoiceXpress voice-text software. He’s been training with it for 5 days and it’s working! I can’t tell you how excited I am. He’s loving it, too. My son has a nonverbal learning disability and has difficulty writing. However, he excels verbally, so this system plays right to his strengths. I think he will only be using the VoiceXpress for homework, because these systems are difficult to use in the classroom due to background noise and the dictating being distracting to classmates. My son doesn’t keyboard that fast yet, and that’s part of why we decided to go ahead with this. It will be interesting to see if he chooses to use the laptop or write in the classroom.
As to the teachers, time will tell. They been receptive so far. I just spoke with his new teacher for this year and she didn’t seem opposed. We’ve been very fortunate to be in a school where the teachers have been very cooperative with us, but this will be the first truly obvious accomodation. We’ll see what happens.
Does your daughter use draft builder and Co:Writer at school? How does she feel about it? My son is concerned about what his classmates are going to say, but I think he knows how much it will help. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll choose the computer over peer pressure!
Re: Getting new computer
My daughter got an AlphaSmart from the school in 2nd grade - thus began our trek. She carried it into the gifted resource room and said “I have trouble writing and copying from the board. “If you have trouble the school will give you one of these, if you don’t, they won’t”. Her teacher thought it was priceless!
She then graduated to the use of a computer (personally donated from the home of the AT specialist for the county). She took to it like a fish to water. Even wrote a research paper in 3rd grade and used biblography printed off the computer (her writing was so bad) with Word, and co-writer.
In the meantime we have provided private OT and the school has provided OT as well. Her handwriting has improved as far as legibility, but still slow and laborious. She also has trouble copying from the board - although it’s better since OT. She currently uses paper and pencil in gen ed class w/the use of a computer for longer written assignments.
We were going to buy her a laptop for this year, but the AT specialist discouraged it. She wants her to try the new Dana first. (see post) The problem now is there is NO computer in her 4th grade gifted resource room b/c the 3rd grade teacher (different one) kept it. The school has suggested we put one of our OWN private computers in. I have written (now 3) letters to the local school board and principal stating that I believe under FAPE that the school is responsible to provide the computer. We have, however, offered to send in our home computer so she won’t falter academically before this “difference of opinion :-) can be addressed.
Our concern with the laptop at school is someone stealing it. - Especially in middle school. Plus, a light weight one is about $1,800.00 and if it got stolen that would be a blow.
Please continue to post and tell us how your son is doing. Funny, my daughter doesn’t care one whit about peer pressure at this point - thanks goodness. She found out very young (end of 1st grade) about her LD and I think she was so relieved it really has been a problem.
Sorry for the length of the post - maybe I gave you more info than you wanted :-).
Re: Getting new computer
Thanks for all the information. I shared it with my son and he liked what your daughter said to her class, too. My son is also in a gifted resource room, and I am most interested to see how his laptop is received there. Twice exceptional still seems to be a mystery. I read your Dana posts. How frustrating it must be when the school district is fighting so hard. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the Dana. School starts for us on Monday, so wish us luck.
TextHelp! has good text-speech and writing support software.
I trust you’ve researched the speech-text issues — it’s got its ups and downs. Our local college had a great workshop for training the software so we were talked through the whole process, which really helped — and it also meant that nobody had to buy the stuff before trying it. Frankly, for me, if I were going to use it I”d start the training over so I didn’t make the mistakes I made the first time. Forget what you may have heard, the training is rigorous and takes a lot of patience and intense focus… for people *without* language disabilities. However, it can be really worth it. I think with my fingers so talking instead of typing annoys me :-)