Chapter 10 had a lot of useful and new information for me including different assistive technologies, and traditional helpful technological tools. A word cloud was something I had recognized from this class, but I did not know that it was used as an analysis tool. I had always assumed it was used for attention grabbing purposes. The book says that word clouds take counts of words used most frequently in a text without using words such as and, it and has. Because of this, the word cloud is able to grab main points and ideas from documents. Word clouds are great for students that prefer a visual representation. It would be neat to show a word cloud before assigning text to infer and predict what the reading will be about.
Speech recognition softwares had always seemed like a good idea to me, but the book illustrates a problem I had not considered. A typical first grader does not have the formal speaking skills that a book or document would possess. So, when a child is speaking to the software, it will pick up words like "uh" or "yeah". Editing these would take up a lot of time, and that would essentially change everything about what the student was trying to get across.
Interactive storybooks were always my favorite as a child. The narrator would have many different accents and personalities for the characters, and it would really engage me. I was able to feel like I was in the story! Also, children are almost forced to pay attention to the books because they need to click next, or click a certain object when prompted. I would encourage all students to use an interactive story book, with or without a disability.
References
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Novak, B (2016, Oct 16) Tech created with Piktochart https://magic.piktochart.com/
What is AT? - Assistive Technology Industry Association. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2016, from https://www.atia.org/at-resources/what-is-at/
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