July 17th Part 2

Before making our iMovie trailer, we had a chance to play around with Clicker and CoWriter.  Clicker is an app that I would use with some of my IPP students, who typically participate in the class with the help of an E.A.  They do some of the same written activities as the rest of the students, but in a highly modified manner, relying heavily on their E.A.'s for writing out the words and directing them where to put them.  What I like about Clicker is that it helps create the so-important element of independence for these students.  Once the app is set up, the student can create his project more or less independently!  I like the fact that I can slowly add more complexity to the tasks, encouraging these emergent literacy skills while including the special needs child in the regular classroom.

CoWriter is more for my students with suspected or diagnosed learning disabilities who are capable of the same degree of thought and description as their peers, but who struggle particularly with writing.  They need to  have prerequisite skills.  They need to have the vocabulary in their heads that they want to use, and they need the rudimentary spelling skills to prompt the app to bring up those words.  CoWriter provides advance word prediction - using topic dictionaries that you can build yourself or get the app to build - so that students can type their thoughts fluently.

Christie and I were wondering whether using CoWriter would discourage a child from ever learning to write.  Two responses to this.  First, If CoWriter allows struggling writers to get their thoughts on paper freely, without all of the frustrations of pen-and-paper, they will end up having far more practice with the writing process - with fleshing out ideas, organizing, revising - than they would ever have had without it.  So they will actually become better writers because of this.   And second, once these students start using it, they will have access to CoWriter or a similar technology for the rest of their lives.  There is no teacher, parent or administrator who would deny a child access to this technology after seeing the child herself use it fluently. And as an adult, the student will be able to use whatever technology she wants to make her work easier.  So lets make sure she learns to write well with technology - to have the same degree of expressive clarity that we expect from all good writers.