Presenter: Neil Andrew
Time: Saturday, May 15th, 8:30
In this session, participants will discover meaningful ways to develop reading and writing skills using Clicker, Clicker Paint, and WriteOnline. The presentation will demonstrate how these innovative technologies incorporate Universal Design for Learning principles to target crucial literacy skills and address specific learning objectives across all areas of the curriculum.
Participants will also explore how Clicker, Clicker Paint, and WriteOnline’s highly flexible features provide personalized learning environments in order to engage and support students of all abilities, including learners using switch access.
Crick Software follows the principles of Universal Design for Learning by including learners with special needs from the beginning of the design process. The philosophy of inclusion results in software that helps learners of all abilities to achieve their full literacy potential. This presentation will demonstrate how Clicker, fully support struggling readers and writers, as well as learners with special educational needs.
Clicker’s http://www.cricksoft.com/us/products/clicker/ multimedia features enable teachers and students to create and use interactive teaching and learning materials such as sentence building activities, electronic books, and ‘hot spot’ visual screen displays. These resources can include text, images, sounds, and video, and the use of pop-up grids allows all users to add their own recorded sounds and narrations. Students can build sentences through word sequencing, or use more complex writing frames to scaffold extended writing. At all levels, students are supported by realistic speech, enabling them not only to hear what they have written, but also to listen to words before they select them.
The integration of Clicker Paint provides an additional visually-rich environment for students to develop their writing skills and to express creativity. Clicker Paint http://www.cricksoft.com/us/products/clickerpaint/ personalizes the learning experience and engages students fully in writing tasks.
WriteOnline http://www.cricksoft.com/us/products/WriteOnline/default.htm is an online word processor that boasts a range of support features that help struggling readers and writers to achieve rapid and permanent gains in their levels of reading, writing, and comprehension. High quality digital speech enables students to listen to the text on the page, encouraging them to review their own writing. Integrated phonetic word prediction helps students find the right words quickly, allowing them to focus on the writing task rather than which letter comes next. Students can extend their vocabulary through topic-specific Wordbars that are easily created and customized by teachers. Writing frames help students improve the structure and scope of their writing.
Teachers and students also benefit from WriteOnline’s analysis tools, such as Spelling Corrections. By viewing all the words where the spell checker was used, and seeing the student’s original spellings, it is easy to identify possible patterns, informing teaching in order to address specific spelling issues. The analysis tools also provide a complete history of the document and identify pasted text, allowing teachers to gain important insights into their student’s writing process. All of WriteOnline’s features can be customized to match the needs of the wide range of students in the classroom. The settings are saved with the student’s profile and are automatically set each time the student logs in, ensuring personalized learning for all students anywhere, anytime.
Clicker, Clicker Paint, and WriteOnline are all supported by hundreds of free resources from LearningGrids World (www.LearningGrids.com). These ready-made activities, along with your own resources, develop strong literacy skills across the curriculum and support the diverse learners in today’s inclusive classroom.
