Computers as Scaffolds

Frequently students with diagnosed learning disabilities are assigned an abridged version of the class' text, because of reading difficulties. Their written efforts to answer are far less comprehensive than their oral answers to the same questions. With the proper computer technology to scaffold learning, these students could use the same edition of Treasure Island as the rest of the class, and their written answers could be commensurate with their oral ability. Scaffolding means providing necessary support to enable a person to reach his or her potential. Just as painters must use scaffolding to reach a high point on a building, computer scaffolds can help a child work to a higher level than they could unassisted.

Supporting Reading

Computer scaffolds are no substitute for teaching, always at the center of the educational enterprise. But instruction and scaffolding are two interwoven and complimentary processes, a coordinated effort to teach children using the best techniques, combined with technologies providing children the fullest possible access to the entire curriculum, despite individual learning differences. A combination of skillful instruction and appropriate technology can alleviate many of the problems associated with dyslexia and other learning differences. With scaffolds, many children with learning difficulties can complete work appropriate for their age and cognitive level. Here we focus upon computer scaffolds in three critical areas: reading, organizing ideas, and writing. We will then address the important issue of portability.

Abridged versions of texts may be appropriate in some circumstances. But most students with weak reading skills can appreciate the nuances of the unabridged version. To limit their exposure because of difficulties with reading mechanics is to deny them an important learning opportunity. To gain access to the full text, a child with a reading disability could use the support of a scaffolding program such as a word processor that reads text aloud, such as ClarisWorks™, a widely available word processing/draw/spreadsheet/data base program for the Macintosh. This inexpensive and commonly available program can be configured to read text aloud without the purchase of additional software or hardware. Ultimate Reader™ 2.0, a text reading support program available for both Windows and Macintosh, highlights text as it is being read, allows children to set the pace of reading, gives access to a variety of computer voices, and provides other powerful features. Were the text of the full version of Treasure Island placed in a text reading program for them, students with limited reading skills could more fully appreciate it as a work of literature and so experience the book as deeply as their peers. Of course, text reading scaffolds are appropriate when the lesson goals are comprehension and composition; when decoding is the focus, such scaffolds would defeat the learning purpose by "doing the work" for students.

Reliable, fully functional programs that can support reading are available, and can greatly improve access to curricular materials. The most serious impediment to successful use of these scaffolds is the limited availability of text in electronic form. The texts of many literary classics are available in electronic form through the Internet and from other sources, in many cases because of expired copyrights. A large number of digitizing projects are putting library collections into digital form and making them available on line. The Internet also offers reference materials and sites devoted to myriad useful and interesting topics. In the resource list at the end of this article we list several excellent Internet sites which offer many "books" in digital form.

More recent works, including textbooks, are not commonly available in electronic form. However, if a copy is purchased for the child's use it is permissible under the doctrine of fair use to convert the paper text into electronic form. This is accomplished using a device called a scanner and optical character recognition, or OCR, software that will convert graphic letters into electronic text. The PaperPort™ from Visioneer is a relatively inexpensive and highly effective scanner for producing electronic text for use with software that will read it aloud. While conversion times vary, 1-2 minutes per page is a reasonable estimate. This assumes individual pages or photocopies rather than a bound book, as each page must be fed individually into the scanner. Flatbed scanners, such as those offered by mail order hardware and software vendors in our resource list, can be used for scanning bound materials directly if they are equipped with an OCR program such as TextBridge™ (Xerox).

This relatively time intensive task can be performed by parents, trained volunteers, aides, or the children themselves. Once produced, this electronic text can be saved for use by others, as long as individual bound copies are purchased for each user if more than one individual is to use the electronic text at the same time.

The World Wide Web is rapidly becoming a key information source, for students and adults alike. The Internet savvy version of Cast's Ultimate Reader™ 2.0 (Universal Learning Technology) supports the reading of text and viewing of graphics in a live web connection. Thus students with reading difficulties who require access to Internet based information can find the support they need to acquire and read whatever they wish.

Supporting Organization

Students with learning disabilities often have difficulty gathering and organizing information for a paper or an exam. Computers offer effective scaffolds to support organizational difficulties.

Most popular word processing programs, including ClarisWorks™ and Microsoft Word™, have electronic outlining capabilities built into them. Using these outliners, students can generate ideas in any order, then use the outliner to move them about, trying them in different relationships with each other, until a traditional hierarchical outline is created and both order and coherence achieved. Outlining tools enable children to experiment with order of ideas, groupings, and levels of importance without laborious copying or other mechanical skills being required. Speech capacities in ClarisWorks further scaffold organization by enabling students to "step back" and hear their ideas read aloud in different orders and arrangements, facilitating self-assessment.

A program called Inspiration™ (Inspiration Software) offers both a visual "bubble chart" or "idea web" approach and a traditional hierarchical outline to scaffold the organization of ideas. Users can generate a traditional outline and manipulate their ideas in that form, or they can generate lists of ideas or concepts in "bubbles", then drag the "bubbles" into related groups with the mouse. Then users can change the shapes of the "bubbles", perhaps into icons representing aspects of their ideas and finally draw lines that reflect relationships between individual "bubbles", icons, or groups. This approach, which is much more visually based than outlining appeals strongly to many children, and is highly effective in scaffolding organization.

Supporting Writing

Once ideas are organized and the composition planned, students confront the task of committing words to the page.

One of the most powerful scaffolds for writing is the word processor, not to be overlooked just because it is commonplace. Errors and omissions can be corrected without recopying the writing. Writers simply move the cursor to the area of the error and change, add or delete text. Blocks of text can be moved, edited, copied and saved for future efforts. The simple malleability of text can be a major liberating factor. Students become less anxious about writing knowing that mistakes can easily be corrected, and that recopying is a thing of the past.

With word processors and outlining programs, students are generally able to create sufficient written output to serve as a draft that can be edited, expanded, amplified, and polished. Often, once twenty five thoughtful words are written the battle is more than half won.

Many children with more severe expressive or motor difficulties may find it impossible to generate enough text to serve as a rough draft, even with the support of a word processor. For these children, "word prediction" programs such as Co:Writer™ (Don Johnston),used in tandem with a word processor, can be very powerful. With word prediction turned on, the child types the first letters of words. As a child types, the word prediction program presents them with a list of words likely to contain the word that the child wishes to write. Predictions are based upon syntax, semantics, common language patterns, and prior experience with this student's writing, as the program actually learns a little about individual users. When the child sees the word he wants in the list, he selects the word and it is inserted, correctly spelled, into his writing. If he has difficulty reading the list presented to him, CO:Writer™ will "read" the words in a synthetic voice.

Most individuals with learning disabilities, spell poorly. All modern word processors have the capacity to scan users' writing, detect misspelled words, and offer a range of potentially correct alternatives. A problem for children with learning disabilities is that traditional spell checkers simply provide a list of alternative spellings that can be as bewildering as was the initial word, if they cannot accurately read the suggestions. One word processor, Write:OutLoud™ (Don Johnston) also "reads" these alternatives using speech to text technologies, so supporting writers in determining which was the word they sought.

Students with learning disabilities often wish for a computer that they can dictate into and have the actual typing of words done for them. Technologies that actually do this, called "voice recognition" systems, are becoming rapidly more affordable and more effective.

Today, the best system available appears to be IBM's ViaVoice. It is relatively inexpensive ($100), and while imperfect it does offer sufficient speed, power, and flexibility to significantly benefit many students with Learning Disabilities. Users report that it can handle connected speech dictation, not just individually spoken words, at rates up to approximately 100 words per minute, and type the words with about 90% accuracy. It is generally not affected by ambient sounds other than loud speech from nearby individuals, but its utility in situations where many people are talking, as in a lab equipped with 25 students using it on individual machines running it is uncertain.

This program runs only on Windows machines, and requires a computer running at no less than 166Mhz with MMX and 32 megabytes of RAM under Windows 95/NT. Some "training" of the program to accurately understand the user's voice is required. A set of 232 training sentences is provided, and if all are spoken into the program maximum accuracy will be achieved. However, several users have reported acceptable functioning after reading in as few as 75 of these sentences. This product, even considering the relatively powerful computer needed to run it and the training required, represents a significant step forward and does offer significant benefits to many individuals both with and without learning disabilities.

Supporting Students on the Move

As students move into junior high school a stationary computer system, situated in a single classroom, will not meet their needs for a tool that is available to them at all times in all classes. They need portable computers. These can be divided into two types, relatively inexpensive "smart keyboards" and laptop computers. Given the stresses that portables encounter in schools, "smart keyboards", which typically cost between $200 and $300 offer several advantages. They are quite rugged, and while they cannot run most of the specialized scaffold programs discussed above, they are highly functional word processors. Most have spelling checkers, they can be connected to a classroom printer to print directly or coupled to either a Macintosh or Windows based desktop computer and text transferred to the desktop environment where the additional scaffold tools are available.

Cast's favorite is the AlphaSmart 2000, a 1.3 pound unit costing about $230 and capable of running approximately 150 hours on two penlight batteries. Students carry a machine like this from class to class and, depending upon the circumstances, use it to take notes, list homework assignments, begin writing projects to be completed at home, or organize thoughts for a paper or lab report. The AlphaSmart 2000 is simple to operate, even by children as young as 7 or 8, and while it does not offer as many features as full-blown laptop computers or even some other smart keyboards, we find that for most students simplicity of operation is more important than features that they may never use and certainly make the machine more complex and harder to understand.

Another alternative is a true portable computer, a laptop machine running either the Windows or Macintosh operating system. These machines will do virtually everything a desktop unit will do, and are relatively portable. However for most school environments, these machines may not be practical. They are relatively expensive, bulky, fragile, and they generally suffer from extremely short battery life. Still, particularly for older students who may require specialized software and can care for a relatively fragile machine, a laptop may be a better choice than a smart keyboard.

Drill and Practice Software

Initially, the personal computer was seen largely as a machine for presenting specific factual information and giving students opportunities to learn this information through repetition, drill, and practice. In general, we believe that drill and practice designed to teach children specific facts is not the most potent use of computers. However, used appropriately and in the context of other applications and combination tools, programs supporting practice can help students learn certain skills.

An example is learning keyboarding skills. Adequate keyboarding skills are critical for children to gain the most benefit from the computer as a scaffold, because without them, the mental energy spent finding the key one wants to strike is unavailable for more important tasks, such as composing a story. Because of this, both direct instruction and use of a drill and practice program targeting keyboarding are appropriate. We suggest that children receive keyboarding instruction from a skilled teacher, preferably as a part of the regular curriculum in school. Then, on a semi-independent basis, they should be provided with opportunities to develop their keyboarding skills both with a program designed to provide structured practice, and as they use word processors and other computer scaffolds to complete regular in-class and homework assignments. Access to broader uses of computers such as word processing should not be delayed while children develop keyboarding proficiency. We believe that children should have access to computer scaffolds early, and that the necessary skills should be taught as the students become familiar with the machines, appropriate scaffolding software, and the writing task itself.

We believe that the selection and effective use of drill and practice software can be guided by six principles. 1) Don't expect the computer to "teach" your child anything. Teaching is best left to teachers or other knowledgeable adults; computers are best used to provide practice on material that has already been taught. 2) Select software carefully. Determine which specific skills need practice, then insure that the software chosen targets these skills in ways that are both interesting and educationally sound. Whenever possible, get advice from an educator who has experience in this area, NOT a hardware or software salesperson, to help you choose. 3) Limit the amount of time for which your child is expected to use the software. Exclusive of set-up time, it is generally advisable to limit practice sessions 10 to 15 minutes. This is about as long as even the most motivated children can maintain an appropriate degree of attention to the task, and frequent short sessions result in far more learning than longer, infrequent, experiences. 4) From time to time, unobtrusively observe the child at work. Monitor attention to the task and gently refocus him or her if you notice attention wandering. 5) Support, encourage, and praise at every opportunity. Make every effort to "catch him or her being good"; clearly notice successes, not just failures. 6) Develop charts or graphs to show progress visually. Some programs generate such charts in printable form. This can be extremely helpful for motivation and the development of self-esteem. This principle is not limited to computer-related work, but applies broadly to the teaching and learning of relatively clearly defined bodies of knowledge.