Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 16th April, 2014
A new graphic novel based on the life of John Muir, the Scottish pioneering conservationist was launched by the Scottish Book Trust earlier this month. The novel is written by award-winning author Julia Bertagna and illustrated by Glasgow-based artist William Goldsmith, and free copies are being...
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 2nd April, 2014
Recently there has been renewed interest in the potential of speech recognition for learners with writing and literacy difficulties (partly as a result of the restriction on use of a scribe for assessing writing at National 3/4 Literacy). Dragon NaturallySpeaking is we think the best speech recognit...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 2nd December, 2013
Staff often ask whether to use standalone or networked computers in exams, and so we have written a quick guide (below) and also available for download.
Exam Profiles for Digital Question Papers
In an exam you can either use standalone computers, or you can use machines attached to your school...
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 2nd December, 2013
We have added some notes on using ICT to support learners with additional support needs in National 3 and 4 assessment of writing. As you probably know, human scribes are not regarded as a reasonable adjustment when assessing writing for National 3 and 4 Literacy qualifications, but l...
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