ICT in special education
Most pupils start school and learn to read and write without any problems. But an estimated 15-20% of the pupils experience difficulties with text. These pupils need support and help to “break the reading code”.
Some children are slow at learning how to read and write. This may be due to several reasons, for example low maturity level, difficulties with concentration, or specific reading and writing difficulties that is, so called developmental reading and writing difficulties or dyslexia. The most common way to deal with this kind of difficulties have within the school system traditionally been to let the child practice the parts that the child experience difficulties with. Despite intensive training, for some pupils the difficulties will not abate, and therefore the pupil may get tired and give up, with a feeling of failure and low self image as a consequence.
The special education teachers saw already early in the eighties, the possibilities with the computer and how it could be used to effectively train pupils with different kinds of learning difficulties. Also, it was within special education that the computer first started to be used as an assistive device to compensate for reading and writing difficulties. Unfortunately, this compensative tool is still used only very moderately (Jacobson & Svensson, 2006). The computer, together with other digital technology used to compensate for different difficulties, have still not reached the classroom to the full extent.
The longitudinal research project Läsutveckling Kronoberg (LUK), started in 1989 with a large group of children with reading and writing difficulties from grade 2 and has followed them all the way through high school up to adult age. The project result showed that, in spite of extensive special education measures, many pupils with reading and writing difficulties did not manage to reach sufficient reading skills and their school grades stayed below expected levels in the core subjects, especially in English. Our opinion is that if, among other things, assistive technology had been used more systematically already from the lower grades, more pupils with reading and writing difficulties should have done better at school.
The purpose with our thematic group is to let pupils with reading and writing difficulties try assistive technology in school, with special emphasis on English.
The used assistive devices may be divided into three groups,
- Assist to read in English. For example, by using a scanner to scan a printed text and to listen to the text in the computer through a speech synthesizer.
- Assist to write in English. For example, the computer program Spellright.
- Assist to translate to and from English, for example with a handheld scanner pen.
In the initial stage, the special teacher got instruction in how to use the assistive tools. Even the principal was involved in order to become aware of the rational behind the use of compensative tools and to get an understanding of how the tools worked. Further, the teacher got guidance and support from the project concerning the pupil's specific difficulties and the equipment that that pupil used.
To conclude the work of this thematic group on ICT in special education, there will be a web based information material published within the scope of the project Ung kommunikation. We have chosen to name this web site Ung Kompensation (Young Compensation). The web site will inform through films, animation, text, etc. about how to use assistive or compensative tools for individuals with reading and writing difficulties, in school or at home, to facilitate reading, writing, translation and to support studying.