Don shares some new ideas in assistive technology

I read an interesting article on www.smartplanet.com that talks about a new "app" that can be used on an iPad called AppWriter. This "app" assists students who struggle with speech and language to read and write better in the classroom. The software features Dyslexie, a font designed to help dyslexics read and write, as well as text-to-speech optical character recognition.  This is yet another feature designed to help users who have learning disabilities or visual limitations. The software can read all button and menu items aloud. The cool part about this "app" is that you take a picture of any handout, photocopy, textbook page, or whatever and the software syncs the document into the iPad and can actually read through the entire document. For users with learning disabilities, AppWriter offers a word prediction feature designed to help users construct sentences and make fewer grammatical errors. The Dyslexie font may help users to differentiate letters that look similar, making words and sounds easier to comprehend. The demand for assistive technology is growing fast among educators.

I want to know what you think about this article and how you can see programs like AppWriter being used in schools today.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/design-architecture/appwriter-brings-dyslexie-font-other-assistive-tech-to-ipad/5153

Elsie is pondering the Dharun Ravi decision

This week, a New Jersey jury handed down its decision in the Tyler Clementi invasion of privacy, bullying, harassment case.    The case again Dharun Ravi, Clementi’s roommate,  has been in the news for several months.  Ravi was found guilty by a jury of his peers on all but one of the counts against him.   He is awaiting sentencing that will take place next month.   According to New Jersey law,  Ravi could possibly receive  a ten-year prison sentence.   Some believe that this decision by the jury was an  important one for young people.   Ravi videotaped his roommate in an intimate encounter with another man and then posted that video on a Facebook page, urging his friends to look at it.   Was this an anti-gay act?  

A number of people agreed with the jury’s verdict and felt that the "kids will be kids" defense put forth by Ravi’s lawyer should not be accepted.   It has also been stated by some that “if the verdict had been different, young adults in this country would have gotten the signal that they can hire fancy high-paid lawyers to argue” that  their clients were “just being kids and didn't know what they were doing.”  Some feel that this defense, if accepted would have given young people “a  loophole out of every anti-bullying  law in the country."  Ravi’s attorney has stated that he plans to appeal the jury’s decision.   

What is your opinion on this issue?    Did the jury render the correct verdict in this case?  Or, is this a case of not one life being ruined, but rather two young lives being ruined?   Why do you feel as you do on this issue?      

John is linking math and music. What do you think?

Math and Music: Are They Connected?

            I found an interesting article online from The Washington Post written by Michael Chandler and found it to be very interesting.  It asks if music and math are connected and does it help students excel in math having a music background.

On one side, the article states after an interview with Frances Rauscher, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, she found that math test scores for preschool-age students rose for those who received instruction in piano, rhythm or singing.  The students who studied rhythm had the biggest gains, and she said she was not surprised. Rhythm is, after all, "the subdivision of a beat," she said. It's about ratios and proportions, the relationship between a part and a whole -- all material from math classes. 

On the other side, Michael interviewed Wayne D. Parker, director of research and evaluation at Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust.  He has researched music instruction and math performance and found a negligible connection. He said he's not compelled by arguments that people should invest in music for the sake of math or reading. "You don't hear math people saying you should study calculus because it will help you be better at the violin," he said.

I personally feel that music has many benefits and everyone should be exposed to music  at some point.  I did a paper for my music history class relating music in schools to an increase in student development, their overall cognitive development (knowledge through experience and the senses), as well as an increase in their spatial temporal reasoning (logical thinking) and that is why I side with Frances Rauscher.  What do you think class? 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/x-equals-why/2008/11/math_and_music.html