In a previous post I wrote about the difficulties that many learners with dyslexia experience.
All learners have their own constellations of strengths and weaknesses and to focus exclusively upon characteristics that hinder learning under current school systems is not always helpful. For some 4 or 500 years, our schools have concentrated on the skills of the medieval clerk [...]
Teachmeet in East Lothian
What is TeachMeet?
Learn something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. This is an informal gathering of those curious about teaching and technology. Anyone can share great ideas they’ve trialled in their classrooms, ask important questions or simply sign up to take part in learning conversations. Would be good to see and hear both [...]
Wanted: ‘dyslexia friendly’ schools for £1,000 award
Calling all Sencos and teachers working with young dyslexic people. The Iansyst Dyslexia-Friendly Best Practice Awards 2009, created to recognise and celebrate “best practice for dyslexia provision in education”, have opened for nominations. The winner gets a laptop and appropriate software worth more than £1,000.
The theme this year is [...]
One of my personal development aims this session is to learn more about visual literacies. I am sure that texts in traditional print form will always be used to good effect, but I know that many learners – especially but not exclusively those with literacy difficulties – can also be engaged by [...]
iPod Can be Used to Help Reading – While they are mostly used to listen to music, your child’s iPod can also be used to listen to digitally recoded text. Memo microphones can be used to record speech, which can be used, for example, for learning facts for revision, reading a book while listening to [...]
I have been thinking about the different schools of thought about dyslexia evident in the literature and in practice. The most dominant is a deficit model wherein dyslexia is a disability. In fact severe dyslexia is covered under the Disability Discrimination Act:
The DDA defines a disabled person as someone with a physical or mental impairment [...]
I saw this abstract but have been unable to download the full report. However, I thought it was informative enough to flag up here. The paper seems to confirm what we knew already, which is comforting.
The objective of the research study was to understand what benefits the use of audiobooks (both school-books and books of [...]
I have only just discovered this lovely wee gadget.
This intuitive and robust digital voice recorder enables pupils to capture good quality voice/sound/music recordings on the move, enabling them to become roving reporters. The device includes a built-in microphone and speaker, with intuitive controls for recording, playing back, and skipping files. Recordings can be captured directly [...]
My last post was so long that I deceided to leave some conclusions until the next time. I wanted to add a bit more about Weinberger’s thoughts on the new digital disorder and the changing nature of authority in relation to non-traditional learners:
The ‘new order of digital disorder’ is not just changing our perceptions of how we think [...]
