How Can Technology Be Used To Help Students With

Dyscalculia And Dyslexia Overcome Their Difficulties?  

Dr Abi JamesProduct Manager

iANSYST Ltd

Introduction Why use technology

Reading and writing skills still needed in maths subjects

Technology is available & widely used in other areas Technology should save time and remove in-

authentic labour What is the problem?

Current technology solution not developed to cope with scientific notation

Existing solutions may need to be adapted or used taking a different approach

Problems experienced by dyslexic students

Problems experienced in mathematical subjects

Problems experienced by dyscalculic students

Problems experienced by students

Using technology to help with reports, assignments & exams

subject specific words will not be accepted by spell checkers

difficult to proof read scientific notation

speech recognition and concept mapping can help some students

Problems experienced by students

Note taking during lectures or seminars

Difficulties with accuracy and speed Limited technology to help with taking

down scientific notation quickly and accurately

Non-medical helpers for note taking rarely have a scientific background

Unable to use audio recordings to back up notes

Technology solutions:Subject specific Spell Checkers

Spellex adds subject specific terminology into MS Word’s spell checker (£82 + VAT for a single user). UK versions available for

medical, pharmaceutical, legal, biotech, botanical, technical, geographical

Various medical dictionaries available (e.g. Brody’s) but many are American.

Technology solutions: Word Prediction, Banks & Text Expansion

Word prediction can quickly learn terminology and phrases to be reproduced when needed. Read & Write and Penfriend also include text expansion tools

Words banks (Wordbar) can used to quickly enter phrases or keystrokes.

Technology solutions: OCR Software

OCR software is needed to convert scanned in images to editable text.

Packages can not convert equations into editable/readable text – they remain as images.

Abbyy FineReader can recognise some programming languages

Technology solutions:Text-to-speech

Speech engines will attempt to pronounce terminology using phonetic rules

Can not read-back equations represented as images or in PDF files

Limited read back of Equations - MathML & Math Player with Read & Write

Technology solutions:Talking calculators

Read & Write Gold and ClaroRead provide speech-enabled software-based calculators

Handheld talking calculators are available but expensive : £200+ Designed for visually impaired

Technology solutions:Speech Recognition

MathTalk with Dragon NaturallySpeaking enables scientific notation to be dictated. Good for writing reports but not note taking User needs to be fluent in terminology and

symbols Suits auditory learners and disadvantages

visual learners MathTalk demos

Technology solutions:Concept mapping

Used to explain concept and plan reports or projects.

Good for overcoming sequencing & organisation difficulties

Inspiration includes basic maths symbols but aimed a secondary level.

More advanced drawing packages can provide equation builders but more difficult to make maps – SmartDraw; Visio

Lagrangian Equation example in Inspiration

Quicklink Pen Elite & SuperPen Professional

Scan a word or line of text and hear it.

See the definition of the word.

QL Elite Transfer text and images to PC

SuperPen Professional: Comes with dictionaries

covering medicine, finance, computing, geography, science & a thesaurus.

New solutions for note-taking:Digital Pen

IO Pen saves an image of pages written in a special notebook to a PC.

Can use handwriting recognition but problems with:

Spelling errors Terminology & equations

But could be used be a note-taker or for saving notes as an image.

New solutions for note-taking:Graphics Tablet

A graphics tablet can be used to enter diagrams or equations graphically alongside a PC.

But requires good co-ordination skills.

Still slower than writing by hand

New solutions for note-taking:Adapted word banks

Project to develop a method of creating equations quickly in Word by Developing word banks to control the equation

editor or maths word processor Provide shortcut to symbol tools within Word.

Question & Answer session

What solutions are you using with your students?

What works? What do your students need?

Dr Abi JamesProduct ManageriANSYST Ltd

Fen HouseFen RoadCambridgeCB4 1UN

01223 420 101

www.dyslexic.com

www.iansyst.co.uk

abi@dyslexic.com