When I was teaching I came across a few students who were diagnosed with Dyslexia. Teaching students with this diagnosis can be very difficult because the students struggle tremendously with reading and writing, thus greatly affecting their literacy.
According to Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz (2003), Dyslexia is a specific learning disability where difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language including secondary consequences that may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.
For students with Dyslexia, technology opens doors and allows them to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that were unimaginable in the past (The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, 2016). The challenge is really being about to fund technology for students of this caliber to better suit them in succeeding in the classroom. I see it as an investment in the students overall literary success.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to a tool that allows students to take notes in a much more efficient way. This tool is called Livescribe Echo Smartpen. This pen enables students who struggle with note taking and/or processing information from oral lectures or discussion to be able to have more information when they go back to review those notes. The Echo Smartpen not only records the written notes that are being taken, but it records all of the audio that is being spoken at the same time. This allows students to be able to go back and review their notes to the audio and make sure that they did not miss any information and even edit those notes to make them more effective for studying.
The other great feature of this tool is that it allows students to download the notes and audio to a computer where the students can organize their notes and files and even combine notes of similar topics or lessons together. There is even an additional feature to create dynamic PDF files to share with classmates, teachers or others. This is a great tool for struggling note takers, slow processors, students with poor hand writing or listening skills. It is even a great tool for every student–to be honest. There have been times where I have wanted to recall information or a lecture topic later on because I did not have it in my notes.
This tool is not FREE, but it should be an effective literacy tool for any student. I would have liked to have demonstrated this tool out with a few of my students, but the school that I worked at did not have access to these pens. I highly recommend checking out this tool for your students, especially if you have a few that are diagnosed with Dyslexia. Encourage your school or district to order these pens for your struggling students.
My Screencast of the Livescribe Echo Smartpen
REFERENCES
Lyon, G., Shaywitz, S., & Shaywitz, B. (2003). A Definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 53(1), 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23764731
Technology. (2016). In The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. Retrieved from http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Technology.html
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