When considering how we can best provide an optimal learning experience for all in our classrooms, it becomes clear that in any given classroom, there is a wide variation of strengths as well as needs. We encourage students to expand upon their strengths while we seek to find the best solutions to meeting their needs in their quest to achieving their educational goals. We are fortunate that in our 21st century classrooms, we have the advantage of accessing a gamut of increasingly improving technology like never before. Ipso facto, we have the advantage of providing compensatory strategies to help "level the playing field" for our students like never before.
Read&Write for Google Chrome is an example of advancing technology specifically aimed at students that need extra support for varying reasons to perform academically within the classroom. Read &Write for Google Chrome is an extension that is downloaded on the Chrome browser. The features of this program allow students to perform reading and writing tasks along side of their classmates, and because it is not device specific, they can do so using the same devices that their classmates may be using: special devices are not required, and therefore, is less likely to make a student feel as though they stand out among the crowd in the classroom. At the grade levels that I teach, students tend to feel particularly vulnerable and sensitive to standing out.
Read and Write provides a text to speech feature that will read selected text aloud for students. It also allows the user to to highlight passages in various colours, save highlighted text to a different document allowing the user to pull out key passages and gives users access to a dictionary and photo dictionary to help with particularly troubling words. It can create a vocabulary list and also users have the option to insert voice notes any section of the text: ideal for those using the text for test, quiz or project preparation. These features make this a game changing extension for any student who struggles with reading, including students with dyslexia.
In my own individual exploration of Read & Write, I found it to be very user friendly and the I found that the possibilities presented within the extension permits students to use as many or as few of the features as required to address a wide variety of needs and abilities. Even the ability to use a different colour of highlighter aids students in developing organizational skills in their reading.
I currently have a student using Read and Write for Google Chrome frequently in her classes. She enjoys using the extension and says it has been incredibly beneficial for her in her classwork. She has dyslexia which impedes her ability to absorb information as efficiently reading as she can auditorally and write as quickly as she can formulate ideas, or express her ideas as eloquently as she is able to do orally. There is a marked improvement in her writing with the use of Read and Write that I have noted since she has commenced using Read and Write in my class.
As of yet, the main concern for the use of Read and Write for Google in my classroom is language. Although Read and Write can be used in various other languages, including French, there are many words that Read and Write are as of yet, unable to identify. When this student uses Read and Write to complete writing assignments, there are many words that incorrect, as the program does not generate the word the student has spoken. However, as this extension is relatively new, I expect increased and improved languages functions are on the near horizon for Read and Write for Google.
Beth that is interesting what you note about the speech to text feature of R&W4G extension. As a side bar you could try the Add-on feature in google docs of speech to text. However it is not the technology often that is the problem but how well the voice is articularly (clarity) and I always say to the students "less is more". Keep your sentences simple, concise, and clear and your recognition rate will increase. It is only interpreting what it hears after all...it isn't reading our minds (fortunately:). So I also suggest practicing first with voice recording to enhance speech recognition with our Speech to Text engines.
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