Jay: Good afternoon everyone! Welcome to another Toolkit Tuesday. Today it's really exciting I get to talk to some of my favorite people today. So you are here to learn about Assistive Technology, UDL and Multi-Tiered Support systems in a Large Urban School District. Today is October 25th so we're happy to have you here with us today. So just really quickly as we get everybody logged in and settled in for the day, Adam can you make sure that we have the waiting room open or just make sure that people are getting admitted.
All right so just a quick thing if you're not familiar with Knowbility, we are a non-profit based in Texas in Austin. I'm actually coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama so we really work around the world, around the country, but HQ is over in Austin, Texas.
As I said before we are a non-profit organization. Toolkit Tuesday is one of our Community Programs and really we our work is through donations, through supporters like you. So we do encourage you to visit knowbility.org/donate. And then this is just a highlight of some of those Community Programs that we provide including Toolkit Tuesday of course which is today. The K12 Access Toolkit which is a revamping and reutilization of some tools that we've already had such as our ATSTAR. Our ATSTAR program, so that is our very large module course that walks you through AT evaluation and consideration processes, but then also combining you know updating that but then also looking at bringing additional materials and resources, such as these Toolkit Tuesday recordings, our K12 Access Summit. So definitely want to check those out in the future.
We also have our Be a Digital Ally that is a monthly web series that we do talking about good accessibility practices for content creators of any level, so if you're somebody who's just doing social media or you're just getting started in the field of accessibility or maybe you kind of know some stuff about alt text but you're really not sure what's going on when you're talking about descriptive links. So we really try to cover the basics and give you some good foundations in digital design.
And then of course AccessU which is our annual conference coming up in May. We're really excited, you should be seeing some stuff on the website soon for that. And then of course our Accessibility Internet Rally which is our competition looking at web-based design. So putting teams with non-profits and other clients to design beautiful websites for them that are accessible. And that's again all through the support of you.
Okay so why you're here today, what is today's session? So what we're going to be showing you is just an excerpt from one of our sessions from our K12 Access Summit that we had this past summer. If you are interested in getting all of the content from the K12 Access Summit, which I highly recommend, it was a great Summit this year. That can be to you for free and we'll have a link later for you to get to that.
For today, if you want the handout and I'll make sure that the link goes up before right when the video gets started so that way you can follow along on the slides. We'll have that handout for you it is a bitly link. It's bit.ly and then slash and all capital letters so K the number 12 and then A T U D L M T S S. And we'll get that in the chat for you here and then I always throw it up early just in case people have to leave early, we do appreciate your feedback so we do have a survey for you as well and again we'll put that in the chat for you.
All right so our presenters today is the Assistive Technology Specialists from Austin ISD. So this is Carye Edelman, Shira Goldberg and NeCol Roager. I've worked with them for a couple years now, they're always a delight, always bringing something new. You know, I've been in the field of assistive technology and education for several years, but it's always good to have those peers that can talk about the same subject as you but bring a new spin on it, bring their perspective of their schools and working with their teachers. So I really think you're going to enjoy today's session. All right so with that I'm going to get this video started
Carye: And the agenda for today basically is we're going to start by talking a little bit about accessibility. We'll go into talking about universal design for learning, which is a term that's been around for a long time, but in actuality, it seems to just now in a lot of larger school districts being talked about a little bit more. Talk about the technology, so with a focus on assistive technology, but also focusing on some just instructional technology as well. And then we're going to end with a little student scenario, where we'll give you kind of a student that we've made up, and then with all of these constructs that we talk about, UDL, and the technology, and the accessibility, kind of try to figure out where would this student fit? What are some things we might want to do with this student as we move forward? So getting into the session.
So when we talk about accessibility, accessibility is shaped by what we need to do, our interactions with the environment, and our personal preferences. Educational materials are accessible to students with disabilities if they are able to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a student without disabilities. So contrary to assumption, digital does not mean accessible.
So just because something is in a digital format doesn't mean that it's accessible or available. So if I'm a student that uses a screen reader, if I'm a student that needs access to text to speech, just because there's text on the screen, it doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to hear or have that text read to me. So then we talk about defining what accessibility is, a person with a disability can.
So here are the things we need to think about when we're talking about accessible. Is acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, enjoy the same services as a person without a disability, the key being that it's in an equally effective, equally integrated manner, and substantially equivalent ease of use. So to me, that's the key. That's where we really have to look at and think about, is that it's acquiring the information, it's engaging in the information, and it's enjoying the same services. But it's also that it's in an equally effective manner, and equally integrated.
So if I'm in a classroom with students that are all watching a video on the screen, and I'm hard of hearing, have difficulty hearing something that's on a screen, I may be able to see it, I'm in the environment, I have access to it. The video is there. But without captioning, it's not equivalent. It's not an equivalent ease of use for me. I'm not hearing everything that the video is displaying, so it's not effective for me. It's not accessible for me, so just some things to think about when we talk about accessibility and what it means.
So things to think about when you think about AT and accessibility, digital accessibility features are built in now to a lot of the devices, and many of our school districts have gone to a one to one technology initiative. I know in our school district, all of our K2 students are one to one with iPads, and all of our 3 through 12 students are one to one with Chromebooks. A lot of that came out of what happened when we were in COVID.
Students needed access to technology in order to be able to access their curriculum virtually. So there are a lot of accessible features that are built into provided devices that can be considered assistive technology and will support students. However, for lot of students, even those things that are built in might need to be customized, or we might need to look at a different kind of device, or a different program that might need to be added so that those students can continue to interact successfully with digital instructional materials. And in a perfect world, those digital instructional materials have also been created with accessibility in mind, so that our assistive technologies can work because not all digital materials will work even with our best assistive technologies.
But if we're designing our curriculum and our materials at the get go, and thinking about accessibility and those kids that we have in our classroom that may be needing or using assistive technology to have text read to them, to be able to use their voice to express their comprehension, those kinds of things, then that makes those assistive technologies even that much more effective for us. If we're thinking about accessibility when we create the materials, then the assistive technologies have a better chance of working.
And so next thing we have to talk about is removing barriers. So how do we start to remove some of those barriers that we find when we're talking about things that are accessible and students that are using technology or assistive technology? Some of the things to start thinking about are: What are the specific tasks that the student struggles with that don't reflect his or her abilities? So what we see so much of in our school district are of course students that are struggling with reading and with writing tasks. And that is where the technology can really support and benefit those students.
But we have to narrow those tasks down, we have to really look at what are the specific tasks. Just to say reading is a task, there's so many components of a reading task, we really need to think about: What are the areas specifically? Is it fluency? Is it decoding? Is it comprehension? Is it all three? But what are those areas where students are struggling? And the same thing when you talk about writing. What are those specific areas that they're struggling with? Is it mechanics? Is it just making something legible on a piece of paper? Or is it beyond that? Is it not only legibility, but also the structure and the composition of writing and putting sentences together, and spelling? So it can be a combination of things. It can be one or two things, or it can be many things.
And then you look at what are your accommodations. So how are you accommodating the student in class? What are the things that you're doing to differentiate the learning in the classroom that are maybe supporting some of those areas where students are struggling? How are we kind of looking at those kids as individuals and then going, "Okay, I see you're struggling with this component. Here are some things we can do to either build up your skills or to help you compensate for those areas of weakness." And are some of those accommodations, assistive technology, keeping in mind that assistive technology doesn't always mean it's a device or a thing. Sometimes it's just an accommodation that a student has to have. But if we remove that accommodation, they would no longer be able to be successful with that task.
So from there, you jump into: What are the technologies? So we've tried some accommodations. We've tried some instructional things to support these students. So now maybe we start to look at the technology a little bit more. So are there technology tools that can bridge that gap for those students between where they're struggling and their capabilities, what they're actually able to do?
And then least restrictive environment is huge. Of course, that's the big thing, is we want kids to be in the general ed curriculum as much as possible. We want them to have access to the same materials, curriculum materials, curriculum information, as any student has. So least restrictive environment becomes very important in this, and will, if we remove these barriers, if we look at those tasks, if we look at those accommodations that we're providing, if we consider the technology that might be available, does that help that student then become or have the ability to be in that least restrictive environment? Are we leveling the playing field? Are we removing those barriers for those students?
So that leads us right into talking about least restrictive environment. One of the things that we talk about a lot when we're talking about students and through years of working with students is that not only does it need to be in the least restrictive environment, but when you look at the student as an individual, we have to think about what's least intrusive to the student. So it's least restrictive environment, but it's also at the student level. What is it we can do that makes them as typical as they can be? When you talk to a lot of students, one of the things that has happened in the past, especially when we didn't have one to one initiatives and we didn't have all students using technology is, many times the kids with disabilities were the ones that used the technology. They might be the only ones in the class that had a computer or had some sort of a device. And it made them stand out. It made them different. And that is something that students have ... it's very much a part of who they are as kids, is they want to be like everybody else. They don't want to be singled out.
So when we look at accommodations and we look at technology supports, we have to consider: How intrusive are we being to that student and that student's environment? So yes, we may be providing him something that gives him equal access to that curriculum that really does level the playing field, but if he stands out so much from everyone else, and he's not as accepting or not as willing to participate with the device, we kind of have to take a step back and see what we can do and kind of honor that. So stepping from low to high tech, don't immediately go to the thing that's the most intrusive. Are there things that are built in? So on a Chromebook, there are accessibility features. Is that something that could be used? Which is something that's very personal, very private for him. So needs to be the most appropriate, student needs definitely drive these decisions. But we need to consider that as part of the least restrictive environment, is being as unintrusive into the student's world as we can as well, but at the same time, making sure that we're trying to meet their needs.
Shira: Now we're going to talk about something called universal design for learning, which you may have or may have not heard about. So let's just define universal design for learning from the very beginning. The basic premise of universal design is when we're talking about designing products and built environments so that they are aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent by everyone, regardless of ability or age.
So basically, a good example of that would be something like building a building or a structure that maybe it has steps in front of it, so that's just the basic, backing up, that's the basic premise of universal design. If it does have steps because it requires to be elevated, building a ramp that would be useful for someone who maybe is in a wheelchair or power wheelchair. That actual ramp is going to also be useful for people who maybe they have a baby in a stroller and they want to go up the ramp, or maybe it's just someone who prefers walking up a ramp as opposed to going up steps. That would be a universally designed structure.
So when we talk about universal design for learning, we're applying that same approach to teaching and learning in the classroom. So the definition of UDL, as we're going to call it going forward, is an approach to teaching that works to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners, and works to eliminate unnecessary barriers in the learning process.
So this is going to get into great detail, and we're going to use a lot of resources from the UDL, the CAST Center on UDL. It's cast.org, and you can see it down there in the resources. The three learning guidelines for UDL are engagement, including the affective networks for the why of learning.
So engagement includes affect, which represents a crucial element to learning, so that would be their feelings, students' thoughts. Learners differ markedly in the ways that they can be engaged or motivated to learn. There are a variety of sources that can influence individual variation in affect, including neurology, culture, personal relevance, subjectivity, background knowledge, a ton of other factors that are related to affect, and psychology of each student. And in addition, in terms of affect, some learners are highly engaged by spontaneity and novelty, if you show something and surprise a group of students with something, and some other students or learners are frightened or really disengaged by spontaneity and they prefer a strict routine. So basically, in reality, there is not one mean of engagement that will be optimal for all learners in all contexts. And we need to provide multiple options for engagement for all learners.
The second principle and learning guideline for UDL is representation. So this represents the what of learning. And in terms of details for this, representation for us and UDL means learners differ in the way that they perceive and comprehend information that's presented to them. So a student or learner with a sensory disability like blindness or deafness, a student or learner with learning disabilities, or language or cultural differences, they all require different ways of approaching the material and approaching the content. So some students will grasp information quicker or more efficiently through visual representations. Some require means of auditory representations rather than printed text. And it really needs to be different and multiple for all the students and learners in our classrooms. And so really in summary, there's not one means of representation, or not one means of having the what that is optimal for all learners, and we must provide options for representation or the what of learning for all of our learners in our classroom.
The last principle of UDL for learning is the action and expression, so the how of learning. Learners differ in ways that they can navigate a learning environment and express what they know. So students with significant movement impairments, like a student who might have cerebral palsy, they would require assistive technology to be able to express what they know and have the action of learning be accessible to them. A student who has organizational impairments, or executive functioning difficulties, or a student with a language barrier, they're going to approach their learning all very differently. And in short, and in reality, we really need to provide multiple means, just like the other two, of action and expression, and that will be optimal for all learners, providing options.
This is the CAST Center for UDL's graphic of what they use to get into more details for the engagement, representation, and action and expression. So we're going to go through some of the details of this. And what I want you to know is that UDL is a concept that contains an XY axis. It's basically a graph with so many different points, so many details, and it's a total continuum. So within, if you go to the CAST website and you can click within any of these different little tiers, there's so much information. So if you take anything away from this presentation, go into the CAST website and their UDL page, and explore this information.
For our purposes, we're just going to do a high level overview of this concept of ADL, and then we're going to talk about how AT fits into UDL in the classroom. So there's these three pillars that we have of UDL in the classroom. We've got engagement, as I said, and then representation and action and expression. The X axis at the bottom includes the goals. That is achieving learners who are purposeful, motivated, resourceful, and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal directed.
Going over back to engagement at the beginning, engagement includes recruiting interest. So we need to be sparking excitement and curiosity for learning. That includes providing choice, autonomy, and opportunities for authenticity for our learners. We also want to make sure that we're sustaining effort. We want to heighten relevance of the information for our learners and provide opportunities for self regulation, so we're trying to harness the power of their emotions and trying to engage their motivation and their learning.
So when it comes to representation, we start with perception, having ways to interact with flexible content that doesn't depend on a single sense, so not just a page of text that has to be read, and no other way to interact with it. We need to be able to provide other ways to interact with the content and the information, whether it's auditory, or whether it's tactile in some way, or kinetic, even. Language and symbols is another important part of representation. We need to be able to communicate to our students and our learners through languages that create a shared understanding. So we need to provide definitions, be very clear about what it is we're asking them in terms of the content of the learning, a translation if that's needed, even examples if that's needed for students, and picture representations as well, so symbols and language.
And then the last part of representation is comprehension, constructing meaning and generating new understandings for comprehension. So we need to provide background knowledge. We need to provide generalizations, whatever multiple means students and learners require to be able to comprehend, and then to express their learning in our last and final little pillar of UDL is multiple means of action and expression. Physical action to express what we know, so optimizing access to maybe assistive technology, or providing ways for learners to interact with accessible materials, so action in being able to use a joystick to access a computer, or an alternative keyboard, or something that might work better for one learner, but then having an option for another learner, who might want to use just a regular keyboard, or whatever the case may be.
Expression and communication for action and expression, so multiple means of composing and sharing ideas that use tools to help attain learning goals, so multiple means of being able to communicate what they know, whether you're voice recording what you know or what you comprehended from the lesson, or whether you're writing something down because that is as a learner what works better for you to be able to express your learning. And then executive functions, which we know and we've seen a ton all over the district and all over all of our students, which is just guiding goal setting and developing and helping act on plans to make the most out of learning.
So it's going to differ from learner to learner how they need their executive function to be enhanced, and we need to provide multiple means of being able to do that for our learners. UDL in the classroom looks a lot of different ways. It could be just generally instead of just focusing on the students, the actual physical environment of the classroom. You can have the lesson goals posted and alternative assignments, so multiple ways for students to be able to turn things in, which we talked a little about in action and expression
But one of the ones I want to highlight that we've seen on this team in multiple campuses in Austin in ISD is this workspaces that are flexible. So flexible seating is I think the common term, having rolling chairs for students, having seats on the floor, having pillows, having tall stools, or short chairs, or short tables. And it really provides students with autonomy and choice, and they can express where they want to sit that day. You can provide them with headphones to be able to possibly listen to music or even block out extra noise if they need to concentrate, and then just have them in large and small group settings, whatever will work, and to be open and flexible to what will work for those learners.
Having frequent and meaningful feedback, I think every educator knows how important that is, and then just having the ability for those learning materials to be open and accessible. They need to be able to interact with the materials, with text to speech, the videos need to have captions. So maybe you have video as a multiple means and choice of getting the information, but they need to have captions as well in case captions can be useful for a student or two. And then audiobooks, digital books, those are some really good examples of how it might look in the actual classroom.
NeCol: UDL and MTSS is a multi-tiered system of support that are on a continuum of positive behavior supports and academic supports. Our focus is going to be on the academic supports for MTSS and how UDL continues to be blended into each tier. Universal design for learning is proactive, iterative, intentional lesson design. This gives us a great visual of how multi-tiered systems of support go from least intrusive to most intrusive. And as Carye had mentioned earlier, we always want to explore least intrusive first in our least restrictive environment.
So for most students, 88% to 85%, they're able to achieve with universally designed instruction and differentiation by the classroom teacher. Ideally, every teacher's classroom would be universally designed and every teacher's toolbox would include strategies and interventions and tools to differentiate the core curriculum throughout the year.
In tier two, we see that some students, 10% to 15% of students may need to be targeted to support in the universally designed environment. If we are designing our learning and lessons with UDL concepts, we will find that in tier two, we are fine tuning the tools that are available by customizing features. Some specialized staff like a counselor or a literacy coach may provide full out or pushed in support for a small group of students. Curriculum interventions may be implemented and progress should always be monitored.
When we get to tier three, this would be more intrusive, and it's a very small amount of students, 1% to 3% of students who would need universally designed supports that are more intensive, specialized, and customized to meet their individual needs. Specialized staff may provide individualized pull out or pushed in support, curriculum interventions supports would become more intensive and customized. The progress monitoring should continue.
Throughout this process, it may be determined at any time that the student needs to be evaluated for special education services. We have covered the concepts and we've skipped over the specific tools and how to use these tools with these concepts. So now we're going to get into the actual technology tools.
Carye: And I'm going to add in to what NeCol said. So just to kind of bring this together before we get into the tools, when we're talking about MTSS, it's important to understand that MTSS is a construct that is focused on students in general education. So MTSS is not a construct that is applied to students that are in special education or 504. So it's kind of like: Why do we want to talk about MTSS along with UDL, and then talk about assistive technology?
And I think the reason we brought these together is that so many of the technology tools that we talk about that can support students that are struggling, and we have students that are not identified in any way, but still struggle with a lot of the same things that our students that are identified with disabilities are struggling with. A lot of the technologies are built in. Now that technology is so much more mainstream than it's ever been before, so much accessibility is built into the devices. So students that are in those tiers one, two, and three, that are in general education, are being supported by all kinds of programming, specialists, services that are provided, pull-out services, like NeCol said, some push-in kinds of services. But sometimes I think we need to remember that there are also those technology devices that are sitting there.
And in the same way that we apply assistive technology to our students with disabilities, we can also kind of apply those technologies in that construct of MTSS. So, can some of the technology that's built into the tools that our students are using, can it bridge that gap for that tier-two student? Can it become maybe that highly customized thing in that tier-three that supports that student? So it's kind of looking at how those constructs can work, and understanding that when we talk about accessibility, what's good for some is good for all, so everyone benefits.
When Shira gave the example of the ramp, that benefits all people. As an elderly person myself, I would choose to take the ramp over the stairs as well. I don't need it, it's not necessary, but it's something that I can benefit from. So UDL built into MTSS is making things work for all students, so it's taking into consideration the needs of all students, not just the ones that are identified and become special ed or spiel in there about that, and now we're going to move on to those technology tools and kind of talk about what is available, what's out there.
So in AISD, we are mostly a Chromebook and iPad district, so like I had said at the beginning. So the first thing we look at with Chromebooks is: What are the accessibility things? What's built into a Chromebook that I can use with students? So built into a Chromebook is text-to-speech. 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we were adding text-to-speech through a program or through some other process, because it wasn't built into everything. It is now.
So there is a screen reader built into your Chromebook. Now, for a blind person, that screen reader probably is not going to be the one they would choose because there are some that are built specifically for them that would do much better, but I have the ability to have any text that's on my screen read to me. Everything can be read to me. And for our students that are struggling, select and speak is a very simple thing to turn on. It allows me to grab a chunk of text anywhere on my screen, and it is read to me out loud. That's a wonderful thing for a lot of kids. And when you look at UDL, it fits into a whole lot of the areas of UDL.
Speech-to-text is also now built into most of our devices. In the Chromebook, we have speech-to-text built into the accessibility features, so I can turn that on, drops a microphone in the bottom of my taskbar. All I have to do is click that microphone, and anywhere, anywhere where I could input text, I can use my voice. On screen keyboard, so most of our devices are touchscreen, so we can flip them over and use them as a tablet. So I have the ability to have handwriting recognition on my Chromebook. I also have word prediction built into my Chromebook. So if I struggle a little bit with spelling, if spelling is what keeps me from maybe using my authentic voice, I tend to choose words that are easier for me to spell than the word I might be thinking, maybe a word prediction program, if I see the word I want, maybe I'll choose it and use it, which is more authentic for me than if I change it to something that's more simple.
Visual, contrast, screen magnification, the screen reader is built in, so I can change a lot of that on my screen. The mouse and the touchpad, I can change the pointer size, so I can make that pointer bigger, so that I can see it as it moves. And then I can determine the speed of activation, so on my touchpad, on my touchscreen, I can determine how I can interact with that. And then of course, live captions, you have the ability, that's built in now to the Chromebook accessibility, so I can actually turn that on in my Chromebook and it will have live captioning happen. And I can determine the font, the size, the color, and the opacity of that live captioning. So some really cool things that are built in, that are not just for kids with disabilities, but can be used for all of our students to support them.
Shira: So Google Workspace is what we used to call G Suite or Google Suite, and they changed it and Google changed it to be Google Workspace. And that includes Google Docs, Google Slides that we're using right now, Google Sheets, all those different tools. We also use Google Sites here in AISD and it works really well. Google Workspace has a lot of different accessibility features that allow your classroom or your environment to be universally designed, so all those tools that I talked about in the UDL section, they are built into the Google Workspace environment.
Google Docs, we use all the time with our kids who do have Chromebooks. It has auto spell correct, auto capitalization, as we know. It does have a feature that will grammar check a student's writing, so it actually underlines grammar mistakes in a different color, I believe it's purple or blue. Then it would underline for a spell mistake. And students will pick up on that because if they make a grammar mistake, say they used the work "there," they're, their, there, the Google Doc tool will underline it. And then all the student has to do is click on that little line or that error, and it provides a suggestion to correct their writing right above that mistake. They click on that correction and they are good to go.
Another way they can use that in tandem is to use what we're going to talk about next, which is Google Chrome Extensions, which can provide text-to-speech and have that read aloud. Google Docs also provides a dictionary support within the document, and also on the toolbar on the side, the right side of the document, which you can probably customize. Voice typing is Google Docs' answer to speech-to-text, so having your voice talk into a computer and have text appear on the screen is called voice typing, and it's under the tools menu of Google Docs. And then smart compose is something we use all the time with students in AISD, as well. They figure it out on their own. I mean, what it does is, it provides text suggestions in light gray letters when they're typing, and students can click on the tab or click on the document and have all those words filled in for them.
Again, using a text-to-speech Chrome extension for some of those kids might be so super helpful, and that is how that's universally designed. I just give props to Google for doing that because it provides different ways and different options for students to be able to not only have their text filled in, but also maybe read aloud to have an extension from a third party.
And then having a word count can be very motivating for some writers, if they do use word count in that tool menu. They can, if they're getting discouraged in their [inaudible] executive functioning: Look at how many words you've written! You have written 450 words. It may only look like two paragraphs, but look how many you can write. I bet you can get more out, that kind of thing.
And then when it comes to presentations, if you do have a UDL classroom environment and you're providing a way for a student to express their learning through Google Slides as opposed to maybe just a written essay or a Google Doc, then you can have a bunch of different accessible tools available to that student in Google Slides. There are spelling and grammar check again, which I talked about in Google Docs. Dictionary's also available in Slides. All those cool features, capitalization, smart compose, and then with voice typing, speech-to-text, AKA, speech to text, you can only use it in the speaker notes, so that is a little bit of a limitation I think.
And then Google Sheets, these are just for math and Excel basically, spelling and grammar does work. They don't have all the other accessibility features in Google Sheets, but I'm hopeful that they will one day. We'll see.
Google Chrome Extensions, as I mentioned, we have so many options in the Google Chrome store. Some of the ones we use in AISD that I can speak to are Read&Write by a company called Text Help. It is a little toolbar that when you click the purple puzzle piece, that is the extension button, a toolbar comes up at the top of the screen within the Google environment. It provides this long list of features that you see here on the left. It's speech-to-text, text-to-speech. It has a very smart grammar check that's called Check It, that goes along with Google, but it is a ... The reason why it's so great for kids who may or may not have disabilities, or students who may be in some of those tiers, maybe a tier-two or tier-three student, is that it's going to be smarter word prediction, smarter grammar check developed specifically for those kiddos who have reading, writing, any of those different issues.
It also has study tools including highlighting and also screen masks, so helping students maybe with dyslexia or reading differences focus on the text that they are reading aloud at that time. Study tools for highlighting, including collecting highlights on a separate document, and then reviewing those. It also does that with vocabulary. It can create a vocabulary list for students and put that on a separate document from a Google Doc, with definitions, with picture support. It's very universally designed. It's very accessible. We use it all the time.
OrbitNote comes along with Read&Write. I believe it's a separate addition if you are looking at paying for something like this. It will allow PDFs to be OCRed, which is not really a word, but it's called OCR optical character recognition. It allows PDFs to be interacted with by a computer and have text-to-speech, so having that PDF be read aloud if it's a picture of text, and then also allowing other things to interact in the tools for the computer with that text. So, having masking to highlight the words you're reading, and then taking a snapshot of text.
The answer on the other side, there's another company called Don Johnston, so their answer to OrbitNote is Snap and Read. It provides all those features that I was talking about in terms of PDF accessibility, so text-to-speech for PDFs. Also, it provides text leveling, so that might be if there's a complicated word, instead of using for example, the word "complicated," it would use "simple," and it would translate that word for that student to make it more accessible for that learner. CoWriter Universal is also from Don Johnston, and it provides very, very, very smart word prediction for students. It can be added as a Chrome extension with topic dictionaries that are very smart. Basically, if you turn on a dictionary about dolphins, it will predict words about dolphins in that word prediction, and you can turn it back off. And then Grammarly is very commonly used for spelling and grammar correction, and Kami provides PDF annotation, making notes on those PDF documents, which is really helpful for students.
NeCol: And onto the iPad tools, so the iPad has many tools that are built in, just like the Chromebook does. The onscreen keyboard, a lot of students like to use for that word completion, auto spell check, text-to-speech and speech-to-text. On the iPad, the notes app is commonly used for that scanning and annotation, along with word processing. Google Docs is available for word processing. It has a lot of the same features that it would have on the Chromebook, the auto spell check, the select and speak. We also want to look at the Read&Write keyboard that's available on the iPad, just like it would be on the Chromebook. And then there's also a Read&Write Safari toolbar that has text-to-speech. The word prediction that is part of the iPad's operating system and the word prediction that's part of the Read&Write keyboard is structured a little bit differently, but works in a similar way.
One of my favorite tools that's available on the iPad is Guided Access. And Guided Access allows us to restrict access to just one app for a student at a time. And for some of our kiddos, that's a game changer. We can also block out desirable areas on the screen so that they're not able to select and move from one thing to another that they're not supposed to be into. And then we can limit time on the screen. So all those can be very, very helpful when trying to keep a student engaged and having them complete a task.
So we've talked a lot about the tiers. We've talked about UDL. And we talked what supports, when, where. And so we have a student scenario for you. So we're going to talk about Jenae. In third grade, she was doing really well, but she struggled with fluency when reading. She was able to understand what she read and always did well with comprehension questions, especially multiple choice. Now, after about six weeks in fourth grade, not only is she continuing to struggle with her reading fluency, demonstrating her comprehension of what she reads is difficult. Along with that, her writing has become a new struggle. Her handwriting is legible on paper, but she is struggling with responding to comprehension questions when asked to write a sentence or short paragraph answer. She struggles with spelling many words that she is able to read. She is starting to respond negatively to reading and writing tasks assigned in class. The teacher implements several supports to help her complete the reading and writing assignments. But what we want to think about now is what strategies and interventions could be considered.
Jay: There we go. Sorry, I was busy answering questions in the chat. So I'm going to put that screen back up because I want to make sure that we have a chance to look at that student scenario. Because with our remaining time we're going to get to questions, but also, I wanted everybody to get a chance to look at the student scenario, looking over the tools that we already talked about. What are your suggestions for this student?
So, I'm going to go ahead and make sure I think everybody's got the slides, but I'll go ahead and put them up one more time, so that way if you need to look at all the tools, they will be there. But if you have questions feel free to jump on the mic.
There's one about making a simple tool that they can use to create a PDF file for website visitors. That one I'm not sure about. I think that's going to have to be one of those things where the web developer on that site might need to do something. So like, if I'm going to like a lesson plan generating website, you know if I can just plug in all my stuff and, you know, print out a lesson plan. That one, I think, would have to be very careful to how it's coded to make sure that when it's generating that PDF, I don't know if there's a simple... I haven't heard of a simple way to make sure that that gets generated into a PDF, but if you need more info on that please email us at events@knowbility.org, and we can always chuck that over to our Accessibility Services team. They may have some more information on that specifically, if you're looking for the website to generate the PDF file like that so.
Well, Carrie and Shira you're here with us and I had a quick question for you while everybody was looking over their strategies. I think, for me, when I'm thinking about assistive technology and universal design for learning, and of course, multi-tiered support systems, what is your advice in terms of documenting for these students, because I think I know for me, when I was in classroom settings, you know we all have a Chromebook, or we all have an iPad, so then people forget to pay attention and document what's actually working for the student. So then that way, when they are going through these tiers, you know, our people paying attention to what's actually working for the students. I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that
Carye: Shira, do you?
Shira: There are a lot of different ways that it's really important to document some of these supports for students. Their individual education plan is one place to start. They definitely need to have it documented if they need specific supports in all the different areas that are required for, by law, that they have that documented. For example, the present levels of academic functioning section need to include any AT or accessibility supports that they may need to have. There's usually a specific assistive technology section and individual education plans, and then also in the deliberations, which is like a summary of everything that happened at, we call them ARD meetings in Texas, so at an IEP meeting, basically. And then, also perhaps, it might be necessary to put AT or any accessibility supports in goals. So, making sure that you mention in a goal: X student needs to use their XYZ AT support or XYZ tool to achieve this and this reading goal, you know, 7 out of 10 times, for example. Does that answer the question?
Jay: I think so. I think it was just one of those things where I think people forget to document, so I just... I think it was one of those I wanted to make sure that we remind people about those.
Shira: It's important, and especially if the student is starting here but maybe going to a different school, or maybe going to a different school district even, all that stuff needs to be well-documented so that everyone's well-informed about and nothing gets lost in translation between.
Jay: Exactly. All right, great! We've got some ideas generated on our meeting chat. There's a question about the slides. If you're having problems with it, we'll go ahead and make sure that we send you a copy directly on that if you're having some problems with the the download button. We have one that says audio use of books or to have audio books, speech-to-text. We have another one, CoWriter, right, which has the word prediction and the spell check. Snap and Read for the text-to-speech, since she can comprehend well when read aloud. Oh yeah, also another good one, read naturally live for the reading fluency, so great suggestion on that. Thanks.
Carye: Yeah, those are great ideas, and keeping in mind that those are all things that students can be independent with. So she can be kind of her own advocate for those things and because so much of that now, when you talk about UDL, it's there. It's built in. It's right there. All she has to do is turn those features on and she's in that, she has access to them. And then, she uses them when she feels like she needs them. You know, they become her tools as opposed to, and I think that's really important for kids, it doesn't always have to be something that we add. A lot of times, those built-in tools, especially for these kids that struggle with reading and writing, can be enough and can meet their needs.
The thing that we're finding, what I'm finding a lot that, since we're no longer in the COVID era of having to be sequestered and not at school, is I'm seeing teachers go back to more and more paper/pencil. And the computers now are not being used as often and that's very disappointing and hope that's not a trend everywhere. That maybe it's just a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction to being back in class and we're going to go back to that technology, because we've made some real strides for these kids that struggle, when we got those devices in those classrooms. So, hopefully we'll continue to see that improve.
Jay: Yeah well, and I think that goes back to, as well, that idea of how are we documenting that progress and growth, and are we attributing it to the right factors? And you know, maybe it's one of those things where once the teacher starts pushing paper and pencil within that first quarter, that first semester, if grades drop low enough for somebody to go, "Hey, wait a minute. What's, what changed? What isn't working? Why?" You know, what do we need to go back to?
Oh, we had another suggestion. Having her interactive both speech-text-speech to review understanding for comprehension. So again, another great idea there. So well, I could just have this conversation for forever with you ladies, but I'm gonna stop my share real quick, so I can swap over to our screen. But please, please feel free to add additional suggestions or ideas as we wrap up. If there's any other questions that's not necessarily what we're talking about in terms of our student scenario, either how training, or anything like that, that the team at Austin ISD had to put in place. Because I know just handing kids a Chromebook isn't necessarily going to be sufficient either.
So, feel free to drop your questions in. I'm going to run through the last couple of slides while y'all frantically type away. Oh yes, so just a reminder, this was a session that was recorded during our Access Summit this past summer. We have over 12 hours of content available, that is including two deep dives provided from CAST, who provided that lovely definition that we talked about earlier. They do some really nice discussions about, you know, accessible educational materials, but also a really good session on how to help your schools and your district systems work with each other. So it's not just SPED working by themselves, it's not just IT, it's how do you make sure everybody's on the same page together. We had some great national keynotes as well, and sessions like the one from Austin ISD. So, if you are interested in having access to those, those are all in our Learning Center. So you just need to send us a... or to complete our submission form, and it is: bit.ly slash K12 Access Summit Interest. And it's going to be a capital K, a capital A, capital S, capital I.
And I will go ahead and put all of that in the chat here for you. And then lastly, of course, we have our feedback for October. And just a heads up on this one, we're kind of playing around with our time slot here because we know sometimes lunch works for some people, but not everybody, and we have lots of time zones. So when is a good, when is lunch time for everybody here? What is an actual good time for people to meet? So, if you do complete the survey this month, we do have a question specifically asking what time would work best for you. Are you like me and if it's at 7am, great, I love it, or maybe you prefer to be a night owl, or maybe something in between. So we do recommend you give us that feedback on this month's survey.
And then lastly, just to let you know about our next upcoming session in November. I'm really excited about this one. We had to do a quick change of schedule this month, but that's okay because it worked out for us. This will be Ken Hawthorn, who works over at the ACE Academy, and he's a, I almost said space maker, but not quite. It's a maker space, there we go, over at ACE Academy. And he's been doing some great work with a STEM curriculum and STEM activities for the kids over at ACE, as well as working with the Texas School for the Blind, and making that those STEM curriculum more accessible for students with disabilities. So please, please check that out. The bit.ly will take you to the Humanitix, and so that is bit.ly slash toolkit November, and then it's capital T and a capital N.
And then ladies, was there anything else that we forgot to talk about? I'm not seeing any other questions in here, other than just, you know, people had a good time, as we anticipated and expected.
Carye: No, I just appreciate everybody's attendance and hope you got some good information. And Jessica knows how to get hold of us. If there are questions that come up afterward, let her know and we're happy to respond in any way we can.
Jay: All right. Well, thank you everyone.