The ‘Just Ask’ campaign from the Scottish Government urges parents to ask for help for their children ‘to help them navigate their way through issues affecting them’: these issues include dyslexia.

The advert in the local paper declares: ‘Support can be provided in many different ways and is entirely individualised to the child. For example, a pupil with dyslexia may benefit from use of voice recognition software’.

Oh dear. While I am in compete agreement that young people with dyslexia need a ‘plan to ensure success’, to be so specific about such a very difficult area as speech to text software is going to cause all sorts of genuine problems for us in schools. I can hear the parents bashing my door down as I write.

I have not used voice recognition software myself nor have I seen it in action. There are mostly good reviews here  but none focus on its deployment in schools.

The only review I can find that specifically mentions voice recognition software and young people was last updated in December 2006. There may, of course, have been considerable changes for the better since then. I’d be grateful if anyone with knowledge and experience in this area would join the discussion.

 I have tried to summarise the major points in that review as far as they relate to enabling youngsters to circumvent the barrier of writing. The article does state that: ‘where spelling, handwriting and composing are major problems, then Speech Recognition can be hugely liberating and allow children to express their ideas on paper fluently for the first time in their lives’. Studies have shown that students with learning difficulties who use speech recognition:

•  Use longer and richer words
• Write more creatively
• Organise work better
• Complete more work
• Improve reading
• Improve spelling
• and produce better hand-written work’.

‘A ‘normally clear speaker [and here they are referring to adult users], using a recent computer with a decent microphone and with a little experience should get very good recognition results and gain real productivity benefits’. (My emphasis).

However, there are also many caveats, summarized thus:

• Motivation is a key component. It would be impossible for children to learn dictation at the same time as learning the basics of computing, of Windows and of word processing. This all adds up to considerable information overload and time implications. On the whole children don’t produce masses of written work, so are less likely to have the motivation to persevere with speech recognition. If it’s not used often the child will need to relearn it each time; and is likely to stop bothering.
• Patience and accuracy are needed. Time training the software to recognise the voice is necessary. [And in young people, especially boys, the voice can change, requiring frequent up-dates]. Accuracy is hugely important. Each ‘mistake’ [or misinterpretation by the computer] made takes many times longer to correct compared with dictating a word correctly. [Children with 'regional accents' - i.e. accents from areas outside the south of England - are likely to find training the software to recognise their voices even more difficult]. Fluent speakers with a wide vocabulary are most successful at using speech recognition software. [Not all learners with dyslexia fall into this category].
• Good, fast word retrieval, finding the words needed easily to express ideas, is essential. Multi-tasking - using the software whilst composing text – is also likely to be hard for many children with dyslexia. [Slow processing speed and poor automaticity are very common characteristics].
• An understanding of word processing & punctuation is crucial. [No comment necessary].
• A quiet, relatively private environment for confident dictation for training and using the software [is not always available in busy classrooms]. 
• Proof reading is particularly difficult for dyslexic people. They are liable to have more difficulty finding and correcting an error than somebody who reads and spells well. Even the best dictation system, after you have spent a long time training it and working with it, will make recognition mistakes.
• Ongoing support is essential and this has implications for training for those who work with the child. For somebody new to dictation there are a lot of things to get right: diction style, microphone adjustment and positioning, making corrections, punctuation and the voice commands. Modifications to speech style (pace, clarity, particularly of unstressed words, evenness of volume) make a big difference.

The review stresses that, while a helpful resource in many instances, Speech Recognition software ‘can still lead to frustration and a lack of success. The main reasons for this will be human, not technical’. However, there are inevitably technical issues that would need to be addressed if adoption of the software is to be effective:

• [The microphone that comes with the software is universally derided]. A better microphone than that supplied in the box may make the difference between success and failure. In addition, it is absolutely critical to have the microphone properly adjusted, and the authors of the review suspect that this is the single most likely cause of frustration and failure at dictation.
• It is generally the case that a laptop computer will be slower and noisier than a desktop machine of the same specification although both might be so slow as to be virtually unusable. It follows that it is all the more important (and, consequently all the more expensive) to have more than the minimum spec if you want a computer to perform well. It is safer to choose a machine that has been certified for use with speech recognition. [In an ideal world schools would up-date their hardware to demand but this is unfeasible].

This makes for depressing reading. We would all dearly love to find the miracle solution to the problem so beautifully described by one girl I know: ‘I can write 3 sentences, but speak 3 pages’. Alas, it seems that voice recognition software is not the panacea claimed in the adverts.

I feel that the ’Just Ask’ team has performed a severe disservice to schools and parents in promoting this as a ‘support’ so thoughtlessly.

(I was also somewhat bewildered by the case study of a boy with dyslexia on the Just Ask site. It stated, ‘Jamie was offered a place at a literacy unit’. Do any of these exist nowadays? What about the philosophy of Inclusion and Equality? I feel another post coming on.)

An Online ‘Assessing Dyslexia Toolkit’ has been launched. (This notice is somewhat belated. Apologies).

Dr Margaret Crombie, whose teacher’s guide to specific learning difficulties is a classic, has chaired a group which has produced this very useful resource.

Funded by the Scottish Government, the toolkit should help all teachers to identify literacy difficulties and dyslexia. The toolkit will be piloted over the next few months as part of a wider dissemination process.

This is a superb resource - check it out.

 Seventeen people attended the Clicker 5 training session at Dunbar Primary School on Friday afternoon.  It was a valuable hands on session, professionally delivered by Eleri Hanley from Cricksoft.  From overheard discussions and evaluation form feedback, there was an overwheming feeling of  ‘Ah that’s what I wanted to do!’ and ‘I knew there had to be a way to do that!’

There are many useful tools within Clicker 5 and I think we are just scratching the surface.  Register for free at www.learninggrids.com ( this website appears when you open Clicker 5 under ‘Other Places’)  and you will be able to use - and adapt - hundreds of ready made grids.  If you get stuck with anything press F1 and Clicker 5 help appears.  Like all ICT things it takes a bit of practice to improve your skills.  Don’t stay stuck for long  - we now have a direct email support contact in Eleri so if you have any questions,  you can contact her on Eleri.Hanley@cricksoft.com 

If you are experiencing problems opening up Clicker 5 then you need to email ithelpdesk@eastlothian.gov.uk and ask for a free software upgrade.  As with all software (and hardware) get it reported and it will be fixed.

Good luck to all!

Adam Ingram MSP, Minister for Children and Early Years, launched the Explorer Backpack at a special event at North Berwick Community Centre, East Lothian on Wednesday 3 February 2010.

East Lothian Council and the Scottish Book Trust have created a free Explorer Backpack filled with goodies for four-year-old children to help them to move from nursery to primary with skills and confidence.  The packs are designed to encourage a love of reading in the children who receive them, and offer parents and carers lots of tips and advice about encouraging their children to read and learn at home. This is the first scheme of its kind anywhere in Scotland.

Family literacies learning describes work with parents to develop their own literacy and numeracy capabilities so that they can support their children’s learning. It builds on what parents and carers already do with their children, whether babies or teenagers. There is no one definition or way of delivering family literacies learning, and it may take place in a broader family learning context. It can involve working with parents alone, or with parents and children together.

“It is an overlooked fact that children get an hour less sleep every night than they did 30 years ago.”

says Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in “Nurtureshock: Why everything we Think about raising Our children is wrong”,Ebury,(publ.)

The Guardian (23/11/10) printed extracts from the book which raises questions for us as educators and parents.

“Children’s brains are a work in progress until the age of 21….much of that work is done while a child is asleep.”.so.”the lost hour seems to have an exponential impact on children that it simply doesn’t have on adults.”

“Some scientists theorise that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in the brain structure -damage that a child cannot sleep off.”

Dr Sadeh, clinical psychologist at Tel Aviv University, carried out a study on 77 children aged 9 and 11 and found that “a loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to the loss of 2 years of cognitive maturation and development.”

Even a shift in sleep patterns at weekends for under 5’s drew Dr Paul Suratt (University of Virginia) to the conclusion that ” Sleep disorders can impair children’s IQ as much as lead exposure.”

“Tired children can’t remember what they have just learned because neurons lose their plasticity and become incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode memory.”

“Tired people have difficulty with impulse control, and their abstract goals such as studying take a back seat to more entertaining diversions.”

“A tired brain gets stuck on a wrong answer and can’t come up with a more creative solution, repeatedly returning to the same answer it already knows is incorrect.”

“Sleep deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.”

Adolescents’ brains do not release melatonin until 90 minutes after everyone else so they fall asleep later and are sleepy at school in the morning. In Minnesota an hour’s delay in school start time resulted in a boost in Maths and verbal Sats scores and higher levels in motivation and lower levels of depression.

The Design Principles were approved by CfE Management Board on 15 December 2009 and are the blue print for developing National Literacy and Numeracy qualifications. They are also the basis for developing quality assurance and certification systems to support these new qualifications.

Adapted Digital Exams – East Lothian pilot

Candidates with additional support needs sitting SQA exams, currently have access to a variety of assessment arrangements which allow them to demonstrate their skills and knowledge e.g. reader, scribe or extra time.

A new assessment arrangement has recently become available. This gives candidates an opportunity to sit digitally adapted question papers provided by the SQA. Candidates with difficulty accessing a standard exam paper as a result of visual, physical, reading or writing difficulties, can now insert answers directly on to the question/answer paper on screen and use speech technology to have text read out.

East Lothian secondary schools are piloting adapted digital exams with a number of candidates this session.

CALL Scotland, SQA, East Lothian ICT officers and Inclusion & Equality section are supporting

this development. It is anticipated that Adapted Digital Exam formats will be available to increasing numbers of East Lothian SQA candidates in future.

For further information on Assessment Arrangements see the SQA site.

Thanks to Linda Gaughan (Inclusion and Equality Officer) writing in the ICT Education Newsletter.

“People see you differently,” says 15-year-old Beth Mackie. “The teachers who were there when it happened said it was really scary and they didn’t know what to do.

“I had a seizure in the hall and my teachers really panicked. It was chaos when I came round. The first time I woke up, I didn’t know what happened and there were people running around, people shouting.

An early guide to the condition was paid for by the then Scottish Executive in 2004 and later revised in line with the Education (Additional Support for Learning) Act 2004.

About 2,800 copies of the latest guide have gone to every primary and secondary in Scotland, and requests have been made for another 1,200 copies, including one from an epilepsy specialist nurse in Northern Ireland.

LTS is currently looking at how the accessibility of Glow can be improved, and a text-to-speech facility could be extremely useful. They are asking us to help to trial Browsealoud 6 within Glow. It will be ’speech- enabled’ until the end of January 2010. Trial it for yourselves and let them know what you think here.

I downloaded it easily on my work PC and will try it at home on my Mac. So far I find it very user friendly – though perhaps it delays access for a second or 2.
Have a shot!