Please excuse the cross post. Although this has been a recent topic, I am
also recovering from a major hard drive crash and would appreciate it if
someone can point me in the right direction. I need as much info as I can
gather before next Wednesday for a CSE meeting, which will be attended by
parent (who's on the fence), a case worker and most likely an advocate. He
has 2 1/2 more months of school left before aging out.
RE: Read&Write, Kurzweil 3000, ZoomText; reading
21 year old student CP quad with fragile self esteem - poor reader (K-1),
visual tracking problems, good head control, good verbal skills - just
can't read and write though he has a lot to say. (yup - same student I've
mentioned before). He is making progress with mousing skills but they are
still weak.
1st AT assess recommended Screen Reader from Lorien - because it required
less mousing with the "read everything" button and requires less mousing
skills. We are currently working on getting this for the network because
of it's versatility.
Student expressed interest in surfing the net - knowing what the printed
word said.
2nd (recent) AT assess for educational purposes at another facility
recommended Kurzweil and ZoomText for the following reasons: the ability to
change color in background for better visibility, the ability to chunk
highlighted words. And Zoom Text for enlarging as needed.
Question: Can Read & Write change the color of the background of the
clipboard/text window? I do know that I can change the font color. I do
know that font size can be changed? I don't think it chunks words.
The intent of the 2nd AT assess is for software that will help him read.
However, he still isn't that comfortable using the computer for extended
periods of time, and although the recommendations were that he could
repeatedly highlight words to help him hear and learn words to read, I find
it hard to believe this student is willing to do this, based and present
performance in other tasks. He also has stated to his teacher that he's
tried different ways of learning to read, but the words just don't stick.
Yes, he knows most of his phonetic sounds.
(They also recommended IntelliKeys over the onscreen keyboard which he is
currently using. Yet, I see that changing overlays would make him more
dependent than independent). With the proper support, I hope that one day
he could use voice recognition with play back - or use the help of a
trained volunteer to help him learn voice dictaiton over the course of
time. Considering his discouraging experiences with reading, I see
compensating for his poor reading skills more valuable with the hope that
it might reinforce what literacy skills he has, vs. focusing on "teaching
him to read."
Sorry this is long. Thanks for listening. Feel free to respond to me
privately.
Nina
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