eTrekker: A Web Learning and Productivity Software Tool

The World Wide Web is a rich educational resource, providing a wealth of current and frequently updated information. But the very richness and complexity of this vehicle for learning presents significant challenges for the many students who use it to conduct research for homework assignments or to learn about a favorite topic. Heavy emphasis on text, poorly organized and vast resources, and visual and audio distractions turn a powerful learning environment into one that is fraught with barriers for even the most skilled Web user.

To find needed information, students must first know how to conduct an effective search. Even when they are successful in entering appropriate key words into a search engine, search results often yield an overwhelming list of Web sites that may or may not be relevant to the topic they are researching. Moreover, the readability level of much of the information students locate on the Web is inappropriately high.

While these challenges present difficulties for many students, they are especially daunting to students with learning disabilities. For example, search engines are unforgiving of spelling errors and vocabulary deficits, and even "help screens" are often too text-dense to be comprehended by students with reading difficulties.

The Project

To address these limitations and to help students increase their skills in using the Web as an educational resource, CAST has created eTrekker, a Web-based learning and productivity software tool that helps students with learning disabilities plan and conduct information searches on the Web and evaluate and organize the information they find.

Etrekker can be used students from middle school to the post-secondary level, and also by adult learners. This "all in one" tool is built on the CAST eReader™, which provides reading supports for all types of electronic text, including the Web. To create eTrekker, CAST has developed new functionality and integrated the most appropriate commercial desktop and Web technologies into the environment provided by eReader.

Objectives

The objectives of the eTrekker initiative are to:

• Identify and analyze the barriers to and solutions for effective Web use by students with learning disabilities.
• Develop eTrekker, an integrated Web productivity tool that incorporates these solutions.
• Distribute eTrekker broadly to students with learning disabilities.

Current and Future Activities

The initial two-year research and development phase (1998-2000) has resulted in a working prototype of eTrekker, which provides:

• Planning support -- to help students identify major tasks, prioritize them, and plan a timeline for the completion of assignments.
• Search support -- to help students identify appropriate key words, verify spelling, narrow their Web search, categorize, and rank search results.
• Reading support -- to help students read information from the Web, as well as navigate and use links to other resources, with reading supports such as text-to-speech and synchronized highlighting.
• Information organizing support -- to help students organize information they find on the Web so that it is useful to them. eTrekker will help students mark sections of text, whole documents, images, graphics, or charts and save that information in a graphic organizer. Further, the tool will help students take notes and attach the notes directly to the text that they have selected.

During the present development phase, CAST continues to refine its understanding of how to support learners as they search, plan, organize and present information from the Web. Activities during this phase include:

• Trekking the Web, an Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)-funded research study to better understand the Internet inquiry processes of middle school students with and without learning disabilities and to develop software tools and instructional strategies to support students' Internet learning.
• Broad dissemination of eTrekker through major distribution channels.

Funding

The eTrekker initiative has received generous support from the following foundations and trusts:

• LD ACCESS Foundation, Inc.
• The Peabody Foundation
• Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
• Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Foundation
• Arthur K. Watson Charitable Trust