TRLD Conference

This is an excerpt from an excellent speaker who will be presenting at the annual TRLD conference in San Francisco in January. This is an outstanding conference for anyone interested in technology for reading and learning disabilities. I highly recommend it. And Edyburn is an excellent researcher in the field. You may find this of interest. It points to the importance of accommodations.

Accessing Textbooks

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“Learning to read is a developmental milestone celebrated by hundreds of thousands of young children every school year. However, what happens to students that fail to break the code?”

Accessing Textbooks*

By Dave Edyburn

For most literate individuals, the challenges of struggling readers are incomprehensible. As fluent readers, typically little cognitive energy is required to recognize and understand the meaning of a given text. It is difficult to imagine the frustration, embarrassment, and difficulty associated with every encounter with text. Multiply these feelings several times within each class period, by the number of hours spent each day in school, over the number of years spent in K-12 education, and it is easy to begin to understand the eroded self-concept and associated personal costs that result from not being able to read.

While inclusion has facilitated physical access to the general education classroom, little evidence suggests that the general education curriculum is cognitively accessible. What should be done when a student fails to learn necessary information because he can’t read the instructional materials? Several strategies have been identified in the literature:

Guide Reading — Provide access to resources that support readers’ efforts to comprehend the literature they are reading: SparkNotes (http://www.sparknotes.com).

Organize Reading with Graphic Organizers — Use products like DraftBuilder (http://www.donjohnston.com) and Inspiration (http://www.inspiration.com) to create concept maps and other graphic organizers about the relationships among key ideas in a textbook chapter.

Support Reading — Provide access to multimedia resources that facilitate vocabulary and comprehension: Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com).

Decrease Reading — Some students can comprehend just fine but get bogged down in the decoding process of reading. In these cases, it is useful to decrease the amount or level of the reading material. Example of this strategy can include tiered reading materials: Windows to the Universe (http://www.windows.ucar.edu) and Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government (http://bensguide.gpo.gov).

Bypass Reading — Part of the attraction of the term “print disability” involves clarity that suggests interventions that simply bypass reading. Among the tools for employing this strategy are talking word processors (such as Write:OutLoud, http://www.donjohnston.com), text to speech software (such as ReadPlease, http://www.readplease.com), and comprehensive scan and speak systems (such as Kuzweil 3000 (http://kurzweiledu.com), TextHelp (http://www.texthelp.com), and WYNN (http://www.freedomscientific.com/WYNN).”

*References:

Dyck, N., & Pemberton, J.B. (2002). A model for making decisions about text adaptations. Intevention in School and Clinic, 38(1), 28-35.

Edyburn, D. (2003) Learning from text. Special Education Technology Practice. 5(2), 16 - 27. http://www.uwm.edu/~edyburn/LearningfromText.pdf

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Dave L. Edyburn, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Exceptional Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Edyburn’s teaching and research interests focus on the use of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and performance. He is among the many speakers scheduled to present at this year’s Technology, Reading and Learning Difficulties (TRLD) Conference.

The purpose of this brief annotated article has been to highlight issues associated with reading deficiencies within the general education classroom and spotlight specific ways in which technology can facilitate learning from text and subsequently enhance learning. Participants in Dr. Edyburn’s TRLD workshop will learn systemic decision-making skills about the types of instructional and assistive technology interventions that make it possible for students to learn from text when the intrinsic nature of their disability impacts negatively their decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills.