Entries Tagged Literacy

I’m thinking about the client-side interface to our Big Words project with the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies. Rebecca is making good progress on the server-side logic for the games, the instructive feedback machinery that is the essence of this approach. But we need a good looking user interface to keep kids coming back.

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Tricia from Texas wrote to say:

Who would benefit? students with visual impairment – and students that need more cuing than they get from visual supports on the printed page

Use vibration feedback in TTS, screen readers, digital auditory text

• To cue for bold text, boxed info, important information
• Software could “read” the text/page and insert vibration to cue the student

But more importantly, to allow the student to tag the auditory text – when they “re-read” the text, the tags trigger vibration. Use different types of vibration (intensity, pattern, etc) for different types of tags.

• Tag as a highlighter, tag a phrase or a paragraph
• Tag specific info they need to capture (main characters, literary action)
• Tag for references
• Tag as notetaking – retrieve only tagged information for later?

Karen suggested long ago and I failed to blog about it, that the WiiMote could be useful for “keeping beat with reading. Kid reads along with program, keeps beat. Shakes the controller on the key words. That way you know the kid is reading.”

Seems to me there is great synergy between these ideas. This would make a great student research project.

Paul posted a really nice video about using Tar Heel Reader over at YouTube. The puppet and the stop motion self assembly of the switch interface are great! Check out Reading with Franz.

I saw iDaft today and think it rocks! You play the samples by typing the corresponding keys on your keyboard. Not surprising technically, its just Flash. But it makes me think about combining fun, music, and literacy. What could we do with music and samples like this to make fun and even educational games for kids with disabilities?

How about putting the samples on the 16 pads you get with 2 DDR pads? Then we could have a game that was something like Guitar Hero where you put the samples in the right places. DJ Hero? Or maybe DJ Revolution? I think our blind visitors would have a ton of fun on Maze Day trying to “sing” along with Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by stepping on the DDR pads. Think Daft Hands or Daft Bodies on the DDR pad.

Or how about making an AAC device more fun by changing the pitch of the voice like this? Or somehow linking a “word wall” to music so when you put words together in appropriate ways they go with the music?

Suppose you could provide a list of words or word combinations to a web site and it would automagically assign them musical pitches like this. What cool games could we make where students play with words while making music? How could we integrate reading into it? Perhaps the “score” (the words to be spoken) is presented something like the Guitar Hero notes so you have to at least recognize the words to know which to play.

How do we make such a game switch accessible?

I’m thinking out loud here. Help me out folks, some of you have to be more musical and creative than I am. Post a comment.

This is a follow up to my post about Accessible Math Ideas from over a year ago. I finally got a smart high school student, William Condon from the NC School of Science and Math, to implement word prediction with built-in math.

Check out CalcuType online and let us know what you think.

You can type using the virtual keyboard, the standard keyboard, or a mouse. The “mover” and “chooser” keys are adjustable and William included a 3rd “completer” key for quick access to completions. However you’re typing the program will suggest completions much like many other available tools. The key difference is when you type a mathematical expression it will suggest the answer as a completion. So if you type (3+5)*2 it will suggest =16. It handles complicated mathematical expressions including square root and trig functions.

One other neat feature William implemented is the ability to write on a worksheet represented as an HTML form.

It still needs work but we’re at the stage where we need feedback from users who need such a tool.

Tar Heel Reader is a web site designed to help teachers make easy-to-read books for children with disabilities. It has a growing selection of books to read and a simple process for creating new books using pictures found on Flickr.
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Notes from a conversation with Karen. Always great fun.
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Take pictures of the book during group reading (teacher is displaying it to the rest of the class using a projector say). Make it available for self selected reading later. Perhaps create PowerPoint presentation with the pictures and easily recorded audio of someone reading the text for each page. Enable typing in the text so it can be read using TTS either continuously or one word at a time. Make it easy to share these on some closed site. What about the copyright provisions related to people with disabilities? Public Law 104-197 would allow us to do this in a “specialized format”. That says to me it couldn’t be PowerPoint but that is not problem, we’d just have a specialized player. Very simple to show pictures and play speech. Might even be browser based. Could the whole thing be easily made browser based? Should it be?

Literacy Bridge, a $5 digital audio player and distribution system for electronic books sounds like a great idea.

Pete sent some interesting links about capabilities of the OLPC. This is going to be a great platform for accessible games and literacy tools.

Software specs
Developer LiveCD
Hardware specs