How to raise Literacy Attainment at National 3 and 4
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 3rd March, 2014
Literacy is a mandatory Unit for all learners at National 3 and 4 and assessment covers the skills of reading, writing, talking and listening. Where reading is being explicitly assessed, the use of human reader is not permitted, and similarly, where writing is being assessed, a scribe cannot be used...
AAC Apps - Proloquo2Go is not the only app!
Posted by 14 on the 28th February, 2014
Had a great day yesterday on the CALL course 'iPads and Communication - fully featured AAC apps from symbols to text' . It can be hard work ploughing through a range of complex apps that all look somewhat similar but actually have a wide variety of different features, strengths and weak...
Further clarification that MiniReader CAN be installed on school computers
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 7th February, 2014
Text-to-speech is one of the most useful accessibility tools for learners with and also without literacy or access difficulties. Pupils with dyslexia or reading difficulties can use text-to-speech to access digital text; pupils with English as a second language, or with language or learning dif...
New Maths in Action Large Print Books on the Books for All Database
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 3rd February, 2014
Thanks to Marie Lawson from the Vision Service in Shetland for contributing a new 18 point Large Print copy of New Maths in Action S22. It's available as two parts and you can find them on the Database by clicking the links below: New Maths in Action S2-2 Part 1 New Maths in A...
National 5 Specimen papers with answer boxes are now available
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 6th January, 2014
The SQA Question Paper team have added 'answer boxes' to the National 5 specimen papers and these can be downloaded from the SQA Digital Question Paper pages. Feedback from students is that it is much easier to type in answers directly on the paper, than to use a separate digital answer book...
Reading PDFs and Digital Question Papers with Texthelp Read and Write Gold
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 19th December, 2013
Yesterday a teacher called to ask for advice about using Texthelp's Read and Write Gold with the SQA Digital Question Papers. She had two problems and the suggestions I made may be of interest to others who use Read and Write Gold: The first problem was that the PDF Aloud text-to-spee...
What\'s the sign for....?
Posted by 14 on the 13th December, 2013
Maybe others already know all about this already but I just stumbled upon a really useful online sign dictionary (search for videos of BSL signs). As both Makaton and Signalong are based on BSL, this site can offer rapid support to staff and family who may not have instant access to ...
You CAN run your favourite websites on iPad
Posted by 14 on the 12th December, 2013
Have you tried running your favourite websites on your iPad and then been devastated to find that they won't work? I did - HelpKidzLearn is a vital day by day necessity, as is Doorway Online. They don't run on iPad, seemingly because these are Flash based websites,...
The Scottish Voice: latest version available
Posted by Robert Stewart on the 10th December, 2013
The latest version (3.1) of the Scottish Voice is now available to download. It is available for both Windows and Mac (Intel). They will also work on the latest version of OS X (Maverick 10.9). Once installed on your computer, you can use Heather or Stuart with most 'text-to-speech' ...
Word prediction is confirmed as a reasonable adjustment for assessing writing in National Literacy
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 9th December, 2013
SQA have confirmed that word prediction software is a reasonable adjustment for learners with disabilities for the writing assessment of Literacy at National 3 or 4. Word predictors analyse text as it is typed on the computer, and try to ‘predict’ the words that the learner is m...
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