Dr. Lisa Dieker, a professor at the University of Kansas in the Department of Special Education, and Dr. Rebecca Hines, a professor at the University of Central Florida in the College of Community Innovation and Education, have worked with schools and parents across the country. Dr. Dieker directs a center in the Achievement and Assessment Institute called Flexible Learning through Innovations in Technology in Education (FLITE) and Dr. Hines directs several doctoral grants and the teacher preparation program. In this podcast, they take a fun and informal look at "practical" solutions from teachers, parents, and people with disabilities. The approach in this podcast is to provide fast, flexible thinking about "real" life problems. This podcast is not about the "legal" approach but their best advice from personal and professional experience.
Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF faculty, share their thoughts on when to introduce tech or use text. How as parents or teachers do you decide when to move to more technology. This episode provides ideas as to when and how to best use technology to help fill gaps, address stress, and to reduce learning gaps. We look forward to receiving your questions on Twitter @accesspratical
Lisa Dieker:
Welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker.
Rebecca Hines:
And I'm Rebecca Hines. And Lisa, what's our topic for this episode?
Lisa Dieker:
Well, we got a question. I'm gonna let you start this one, because I don't think it's an easy one. But it's a great one. Tech versus text. When and how do I decide as a teacher to make the move or as a parent, from Tech to text, or text to
Unknown:
tech?
Rebecca Hines:
Well, I will first interpret that question to be when do I decide to start focusing more on finding tech tools to support writing specifically? And I began reading, which is funny. Okay, well, good. So talk about writing, and you can talk them up reading? And I think they are, the answers may be similar, and I'll be curious to see what you think. But my first thought is a simple even if it's a pretty young child. One caveat to that is that when it comes to voice recognition, as you know, very young kids don't produce words that are as easily recognized sometimes. So I think that's for right now, one natural way to not, you know, wouldn't be necessarily very young kids. But I think that it's it's case by case, but I would not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't base it on an age, I
Lisa Dieker:
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's really easy to think about writing, if I can't write you, of course, give me technology. If my mind doesn't produce writing, but my hands are capable, we aren't so quick to jump there. And so I think I'm a big believer that, you know, especially after what we've been through in this whole pandemic, any tool somebody has, why would we say, Oh, I'm access to students, anybody who wants to use like READ WRITE gold, those kinds of programs, Bookshare, all those things that are out there, but even your basic accessibility features. So I much like you don't think there's an age, I think when there's a need. And I think that need for technology should be when we see stress, because you and I both know, when the brain is stressed the efficacy of
Rebecca Hines:
Well, you mentioned self efficacy. And I think that's the direction that I'm thinking as well. You know, I think one of the biggest problems to kids, they take that that first spelling test, in school and up until they take that test. They they that I'm speaking now, you know, particularly kids with learning disabilities, for example. And they, they're cognitively just like their
Lisa Dieker:
it for you. That's pretty good, just as amazing.
Rebecca Hines:
So I just begin very early on to think that I'm not smart. And I always believed that I wasn't now. So when I compare myself to the students sitting next to me, and I'm like, Lisa doesn't even know very much, how can she get better than this test? And I do think that, you know, at a young age words, reading and writing them in particular, for kids with learning disabilities who example, Becky, come
Lisa Dieker:
on, you're pretty well downloaded?
Rebecca Hines:
Look, I've done a lot of things, but I try not to do that one, Lisa. Yeah. But it does, you know, I don't, it doesn't mean that I, I, I enjoy the book more because I heard it. And in fact, I prefer to read it because there's other things that I can derive, you know, in my mind, and I can invent the characters in my mind and even the narrator's voice in my mind, but I access to
Lisa Dieker:
well. And I think it's filling the gap. And then I'm going to go to one that I know, you and I both have personal experience with and one that we both know, the research really supports. And, you know, as we talk to parents and teachers, especially young teachers, you know, not young and aged, but young grade level, kindergarten, preschool, first grade, you got to think hard about the
Rebecca Hines:
In my case, my son actually loved and still loves to read. He's actually a fantastic writer, but his handwriting was so bad when he was young. And he would get such bad grades not because of the quality of his work, but because of his handwriting that he just quit. Yeah, so I think you know, you're right, there's different, there's different things affecting, you know,
Lisa Dieker:
Yeah, and I guess I just don't want us also to forget those kids that are the margins. So those kiddos that have limited hand movement, limited eye gaze, you know, don't be shy and reaching out to your accessibility and your accessibility centers in your communities, or reaching out to those in your schools and finding out what assistive tech is out there. Because I think it is
Rebecca Hines:
I did I did want to share since you mentioned those kids with other, more significant possibly disabilities, whether they're using eye gaze whether they have very limited mobility. Dragon Dictation is you know, that is an app that is super simple to use. It's literally one one big button to push. So, I agree 100% that if your student can't, doesn't have the fine motor skills to
Lisa Dieker:
All right, well, so those are our thoughts. Keep sending us questions @accesspractical on Twitter. Thank you.
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