FREE February / March 2023, Closing The Gap Resource Dir…

Dyslexia & Extra Time,There’s no such thing as extra time... only best use of time. Read about dyslexia and extra time.

— Reading on the fly had always been an obstacle - consent forms at the doctor’s office, placards and articles beside photographs in a museum, instructions on a medicine, bottle, etc. But now, if we can see print, we can point our phone at that print and hear it read aloud. For example, I recently visited the LBJ Museum in Austin, Texas, and read articles and placard’s under photographs. In the past, all this print material was not accessible unless in an audiobook, on a webpage, etc., but now, when I’m perusing through the LBJ library, I have two or three tools on my phone, which will voice any text that I can see. I settle on using SeeingAI, point my phone at an old news article, held it to my ear like I’m talking with a friend, and hear the article read from start to finish. I go from one photograph description to another, sometimes going back and reading a second time. It’s unobtrusive, it’s fast, it’s flexible, it’s free, it’s astonishing! This is just one of the tools students can use in the classroom. — Writing has changed for me because of “dictation with typing echo,” a feature, free on my Mac. I’m using it right now. With the screen reader, VoiceOver, running at the same time, I dictate a sentence, see my sentence typed, and immediately hear my sentence read back to me. I hit an up arrow and quickly hear my previous sentence read back to me, or go up and read an entire passage from the beginning, or read worded a time. This lets me and students do proofreading, editing, and good composition like our non-dyslexic peers do, quickly and effortlessly. THE WAVE 12 years ago, the technology was not where it is today. We didn’t have voice recognition for writing by speaking. However, now we are in the first wave of a revolution in how students sound out and spell words. Eventually, the reading by listening

Freeing your students with dyslexia by unleashing their innate talent for reading. Read about how a person with third-grade visual reading skills can read and write voraciously.

won’t matter much that they are poor visual readers and poor spellers, e.g., if they were getting A’s in social studies, and science, if they were the smartest kid in the room and showing it with written work, their poor visual reading and poor spelling would become insignificant. We would not have to tell them that they’re smart. They would know it. Their different way of reading, would rank down there with eye-color, and whether or not they wear glasses. THE TECHNOLOGIES WE HAVE TODAY The current reading by listening and writing by speaking technology gives students with dyslexia full access to print during class lessons, and since most of the technology is on their phone and tablet, their access to print for reading and writing is with them 24/7. A full list of my favorite reading by listening and writing by speaking tools can be found here (http://dyslexiatech.com/gadgets/tool-kit). Here are a few stories that illustrate how far we’ve come and how any print can be read by listening, in or out of the classroom. — At the end of a Zoom meeting where someone had read a quote that I liked from a book, Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, before getting out of my chair, I went to BookShare.org on my phone, downloaded the book to Voice Dream Reader, did a quick search of the book and found the quote in mere minutes. This is like a superpower that students could be using from their desks.

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