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Paul Nisbet

Learners with Physical Support Needs

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 18th May, 2017

In today's blog for National Digital Learning Week 2017 we are thinking about learners with physical support needs. Assistive Technology has opened up a world of opportunities for people with physical support needs. Electronic assistive technologies are also becoming much more readily avail...

Pupil Equity Fund, Assistive Technology and impact on attainment

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 22nd March, 2017

The Pupil Equity Fund is worth £120 million which will be directly allocated to schools to help reduce the poverty attainment gap. In a previous blog I suggested that it could be appropriate to use PEF to invest in Assistive Technology. So is there evidence that Assistive Technology does impac...

John Swinney and Sir Jackie Stewart launch the revised Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 10th March, 2017

On Wednesday March 8th, we were honoured to host the launch of the revised Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit, by John Swinney, Deputy First Minister, and Sir Jackie Stewart, president of Dyslexia Scotland. The event was chaired by Professor Charlie Jeffrey, Senior Vice-Principal of the University of Edinb...

How to teach your Dragon

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 10th March, 2017

Many learners with additional support needs struggle to write, spell and therefore to produce high quality written work. Feedback from teachers and learners, and our recent Talking in Exams Project, suggests that modern speech recognition software has considerable potential to help learners with wri...

Stop the Clicker stutter

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 22nd February, 2017

Last week I was working with a learner in primary 4 who has recently started using Clicker for writing and recording. He accesses the on-screen keyboard with a joystick to control the mouse pointer, and a separate switch to click the mouse button. But there's a big problem - when he activates th...

Attainment, ASN, technology and the Pupil Equity Fund

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 20th February, 2017

Scottish Government recently announced the new Pupil Equity Funding scheme which will provide £120 million direct to 2,300 schools across Scotland. The funding is based on the number of learners who are eligible and registered for free school meals and will be around £1200 per pupil. Sho...

Raising attainment through Assistive Technology

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 24th November, 2016

The vision for education in Scotland described in the National Improvement Framework is: Excellence through raising attainment: ensuring that every child achieves the highest standards in literacy and numeracy, set out within Curriculum for Excellence levels, and the right range of skills, qualifi...

Nae mair sair heids with head switches

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 10th November, 2016

On Wednesday I was in a school setting up some head switches with a learner, for driving a Smart Wheelchair on loan. Since most switches are made of hard plastic, over the years my practice has always been to glue some foam or Evazote on top of the switch to make it more comfortable - it's no fu...

iPad or Windows tablet for AAC?

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 19th May, 2016

For Digital Learning Week, we're looking at some examples of Assistive and Communication Technology and today I'm going to offer some reflections on voice output communication aids. In particular, we'll consider some pros and cons of using an iPad for communication, versus a Windows tabl...

Technology to Access the Curriculum - a case study for Digital Learning Week

Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 16th May, 2016

Today is the start of Digital Learning Week, and during the week the CALL team are going to post blogs about how digital technology can be of benefit to learners with additional support needs. In this post, we're going to look at an example of using technology to address physical challenges to a...

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