Placing Reading Power in Students’ Hands
All students deserve an equal education, but sometimes language barriers or learning disabilities leave some students lagging behind and struggling to understand words or concepts.
Fortunately, technology can help level the reading comprehension playing field. Innovative new advances give students tools such as reading pens with built-in dictionaries, translators, and pronunciation applications to help them read on the fly—and reading software that has a built-in assessment component lets educators track student progress and adjust their instruction accordingly. In short, there are many options to help turn struggling students into competent and confident readers.
With the generous support of WizCom Technologies, we’ve compiled this collection of stories from our archives to help you and your staff identify the reading solutions that are best for you and your students.
–The Editors
What educators can learn from brain research
As technology advances, new discoveries based on brain mapping are helping researchers understand how students learn. And those discoveries, in turn, are enriching and informing classroom practices in…
NCTI funds research on assistive technologies
A handful of research projects now under way will gauge the effectiveness of new learning and assistive technologies for students with disabilities, such as a non-visual web browser…
Reading, math scores show mixed results
United States students are improving in reading across the board and in math at the lower age levels, with low-achieving students making the biggest gains. But high school…
Teacher gets creative with technology grant
Eastmont Middle School special-education teacher Jennifer Heaney has received a $1,674 grant from the Qwest Foundation to order five optical scanners that translate the written word into spoken…
Technology helps shatter limits of disability
A web site with information on learning disabilities, a national research center for studying advanced technologies, and a web site for those who are dealing with traumatic brain…
Cell phones tackle reading, language barriers
New technologies that enable cell phones to translate speech on the fly and read documents for the visually impaired could have important implications for both educators and students.…
Today’s reading programs also strong on science
At the 2008 Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) in Orlando, Vanderbilt University professor Ted Hasselbring discussed what researchers have discovered about the science of learning--and how software providers…
Reading expert: Don’t forget fluency
In an interview with eSchool News, noted reading expert Jon Bower, CEO of Soliloquy Learning, says 100-percent reading proficiency for all students is the key to global competitiveness--and…