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Immersive Reader
This is of immense value in both the mainstream and SET room .
You can increase text size and spacing. You can focus in one one paragraph or sentence to highlight a specific passage. I can see it being of help to EAL pupils when it can be translated. It can also be of help to Dyslexia pupils, where there is the ability to read text out loud. It is also easily accessible from anywhere including home and school. It would also assist pupils to get their ideas down on paper and negate issues with grammar and spelling.
Dictate:
This will be of benefit to pupils with Dyslexia, dysgraphia, OT issues and a myriad of other reasons that writing may be difficult.
It will allow a user to generate text from a recorded voice instead of using a pen or keyboard. This would improve speed, legibility, confidence and a sense of satisfaction through the completion of a task.
Sharepoint
This can be of great use to teacher(and students and pareùnts) who want to share resources online. It can allow a user to start from scratch or use a template. You can also tie a shareooint to the school’s hopepage.
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Hi Catherine,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on these applications, which can assist those with SEN. The ‘Immersive Reader’ programme is something that all teachers would benefit from using. The functionality allows for so much differentiation to occur and can be used to feed into UDL principles. My school uses ‘Google Workspace’ and as such the Immersive Reader was not available until recently. A new Chrome extension called ‘Helperbird’ now offers this within the browser. The picture dictionary and translate tool have been great in developing the language of our new Ukrainian students and helping them to build vocabulary, whilst also enhancing their understanding of class content and instructions.
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<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 12pt; margin-bottom: 12pt;”><span style=”font-size: 12pt; font-family: ‘Comic Sans MS’; color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>I suppose the starting point for using Immersive Reader, Dictate and Share point as an At for inclusion in any classroom is the needs of the pupils.Teachers should start with the pupil’s support file and work from there. I am very interested in learning about immersive reader as an AT for my classroom as I teach a lot of children with Dyslexia. I have some visual learners so this might help them. I hadn’t realised that it was built into Microsoft Teams. Dictate in word is a very useful tool, especially for dyslexic children to write creatively, we used it this year in conjunction with our class novels and it opened up lots of new possibilities. I love the idea of using Share point as a way for the children to recap what they have learned. Embedding links to youtube videos, or images brings the learning to life for children and would I believe appeal to the children with SEN so much more than just a page of text ever could. </span></p>
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Hi Kathleen,
You raise a very pertinent point regarding the importance of keeping the child at the centre of all decisions around assistive technology – what works for one child may not work for the one in your class.
Immersive Reader generally provides excellent support to pupils with the dyslexia. Changing the background colour of the page to yellow, increasing the size and the font and creating larger spaces between lines of text are some things that often work well.
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Immersive Reader would open up opportunities for children with S.E.N. to participate more in lessons. The line focus would assist numerous pupils with visual impairments and tracking difficulties. It is most certainly supportive to children with dyslexia and dysgraphia. The picture dictionary will benefit many visual learners with an S.E.N. I look forward to using this tool
Dictate converts spoken words into text. It would assist pupils with dysgraphia and fine motor skills difficulty where dictation is used to talk instead of type. It would take the challenge away from writing for pupils by just speaking in the mic. This would transform learning and school work for children. It even has an option to translate a selection of words or the full document of the content on Dictate. It even includes Irish.
Sharepoint is a really useful platform to create your own content for students. It could be used to help children to review the work covered by the teacher and recap on what was taught. It takes away the stress of trying to write down all the notes during the lesson. The content can contain text, pictures, videos and links from the internet. It can contain a number of pages on various different topics. It is really beneficial for students that may have struggled with the content of the lesson.
These A.T allows education and learning to be more accessible for children with S.E.N at home and in our schools.
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Hi Grace,
Immersive reader can help build confidence for emerging readers learning to read at higher levels, and offer text decoding solutions for students with learning differences such as dyslexia. Like you also mentioned the picture dictionary will benefit many children especially those with SEN.
You have mentioned many advantages of Dictate and also the fact that it includes Irish.
I have to say I really like sharepoint and like you mentioned it can help children recap on a lesson.
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<p class=”MsoNormal”><span lang=”EN-GB” style=”mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;”>This is my first time to come across Immersive reader, in our school we previously used very expensive software such as Read and Write Gold. It was expensive and had a limitation on what it could do for our students. </span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”><span lang=”EN-GB” style=”mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;”>Going forward I can immediately see in my school the students who would benefit from immersive reader, it would make them more independent in their learning, less reliant on scribes as they could use the Dictation feature. In the community, using an I pad or phone we could download Office Lens which again gives the struggling teenage reader or junior more opportunities when out and about to be independent reading menus, newspapers, signs etc.</span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”><span lang=”EN-GB” style=”mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;”>As a post holder for IT in the school, to show other members of staff immersive reader and the other functions would be important as they may like me be unaware of how students can access the curriculum using Microsoft 365 and some of its accessible features.</span></p> -
Immersive reader combined with lens could be a game-changer for some pupils. I have one pupil in particular at the moment who is autistic and has ADHD (and possibly dyslexia).
Usually, when giving him work, I only give him very pared-down worksheets, often designed by me. Anything with a lot of text or visual information makes him feel overwhelmed, and he will balk immediately.
If I could get a good work-flow going where I can teach him to photograph his text books on a tablet and then use immersive reader to simplify, add a yellow background etc. it could be a massive boost for him. I think that he would really enjoy the process, and it could be very empowering.
My only issue is that my school doesn’t use Microsoft. I tried to do the small task assigned in this module, where we were asked to use Lens to photograph a page of the Inclusive Education Framework and have Immersive Reader read it back to us. Once I tried to activate Immersive Reader, it asked me to sign in to my Office account, and wouldn’t accept my personal account (work and school accounts only). Is there any workaround for this?
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<p lang=”en-IE” style=”caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in; font-family: Cambria;”>My initial impression of Immersive Reader is the ease of accessibility of the AT tool. The number of programs that it is built into means that almost all school laptops will have it readily available for children to use. While the picture dictionary, translate options and the line focus options mean that it’s an AT tool that benefits a range of SEN. In my current SET role, I support a lot of children with dyslexia diagnosis and I can instantly how Immersive reader would be a game changer for immersive inclusion in the classroom. The nature of reading challenges associated with dyslexia very often means the written form of language that children with dyslexia are presented with, is not always consistent with the curriculum level that they are working at for e.g. other SESE subjects. This presents difficulties in vocabulary knowledge for the children when they are engaging with text in the classroom, the picture dictionary provides an instant visual for the children. This visual is particularly supportive for children with dyslexia as many of them have strengths in visual learning, the opposite of searing through a hard copy dictionary which requires a range of cognitive tasks to be completed in order to find the word!</p>
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<p lang=”en-IE” style=”caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in; font-family: Cambria;”>A major benefit of Dictate that I can envisage is the removal of spelling barriers for children with dyslexia. I have worked with children with dyslexia whose oral language and vocabulary were fantastic but when it came to writing, regardless of the encouragement given, they would only write what they felt they could spell and this definitely impacts the quality of writing they presents. Using Dictate would eliminate this barrier for the children. This reminds me of the benefit of using the ‘task’ table – detailed in the SETT framework in module one and the importance of being able to identify the <span style=”font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;”>key</span> barrier to children’s learning rather than choosing an AT tool for the sake of it!</p>
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<p lang=”en-IE” style=”caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in; font-family: Cambria;”>We are very fortunate in our school to have a very good working relationship with our student’s parents and we very much have an open door policy where our SET team liaison frequently with parents and parents wish to reinforce the work at home. Sharepoint offers great opportunities for teachers to show parents the work children have been completing in class. From a primary school perspective, this would be particularly helpful for Maths, where the feedback is very often “s/he won’t let me help because I don’t do it the same way as the teacher”. Sharepoint would provide the child with the opportunity to rewatch the teachers method at home when engaging with homework, while also showing the parents the way the computations are being worked out in class.</p>
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<p lang=”en-IE” style=”caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in; font-family: Cambria;”>While my focus has been on using the tools to support children with dyslexia, there are a vast number of benefits for children with EAL that extend across all the areas I mentioned, from in class immersive inclusion to home-school communications and reinforcements</p> -
This was a highly enlightening module as I have never before encountered any of these tools! Its great how much is available and how much of it is free and simple to use as well.
The Immersive reader in particular seems like a fantastic tool that I will definitely be using in the classroom. Some of my pupils are only beginning to read and others struggle with large amount of text. The ability to focus in on smaller areas of text is super and obviously also the read aloud. I also have a pupil for whom English is a second language so the translate function is great. I also love the picture dictionary for the more visual learners and the younger pupils especially.
Dictate appears to be a very simple tool to use and I would use it in my classroom for some reluctant writers. I think they wouldn’t see it as so much work if they didn’t have to write or type! I would definitely have to check accuracy though so it would be very much up to the individual and their learning style and abilities. Sharepoint looks very comprehensive but is perhaps beyond the pupils in my class but one to keep in mind for the future.
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After viewing this module, I have gained valuable knowledge that Microsoft 365 has to offer. As an SET teacher, I have a good handful of students with dyslexia and/or dysgraphia. All of these tools will be useful for them in the classroom and in the SET room this coming school year.
Immersive reader: What an easy and basic tool this can be for everyday reading in the classroom and at home! I was especially drawn to the office lens app, in particular for children to use at home on their phones or tablets. I can see this being used in particular for children who have larger amounts of reading to do and assisting them to break it down and look at only a few lines at a time. I will definitely be using this with my ESOL students this year. The translate button is a game changer again especially for larger amounts of reading they have to do in the classroom.
Dictate: What another wonderful and easy tool to use especially with children who find it difficult to get their ideas on the page. They have so many wonderful ideas to share and this tool allows them to do that. It’s also reinforces those conventions of writing by inserting punctuation when needed as well as rereading there thoughts. I will also be using this with my ESOL learners who would like to get ideas across in their own language.
Sharepoint: I liked this tool as well but I don’t see myself using it as much as I would being a mainstream teacher in upper primary grades or secondary schools. I would be open for ideas though in how to incorporate it into an SET primary classroom. I like how you can focus on the main points of the lesson without being too wordy. I also liked the feature of being able to dictate the content. It’s a wonderful way of presenting content in various different ways like videos, diagrams and key vocabulary words.
Thank you,
Lauren
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Immersive reader is certainly an excellent tool for pupils in the mainstream classroom and for S.E.N. pupils. It affords pupils the opportunity to access texts which previously they may have deemed too difficult and would have not been able to read them. It would certainly give pupils confidence and the skills to engage with various types of texts and feed the creativity of the pupils. This tool gives independence to pupils and is very user friendly.
Dictate would be very useful for S.E.N pupils or mainstream that previously found writing a challenging task. This could be due to e.g. dyslexia, dyspraxia or have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. Dictate would allow pupils the opportunity to keep their thoughts flowing without the challenge of writing.
Sharepoint is an excellent platform for pupils to be able to engage with content they have already covered in school with their teacher. It gives pupils the opportunity to review content presented by teachers at their own pace while accessing videos and audios recorded by their teachers.-
Hi Shane,
Welcome to the course. I agree, Immersive reader can be a very powerful literacy tool when used in SET and and mainstream. It enables all text to be accessible to all students and provides a scaffolding approach to learning. Functionality like the ability to adjust text size and spacing, break words into syllables and the talk to text features are the key parts of this scaffold. These tools as you’ve mooted, are great for improving student confidence and increasing their opportunities to work independently.
Dictate too is a great tool in 365, particularly for students who struggle with keyboard input.
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<p id=”docs-internal-guid-d2d6223b-7fff-0597-5d11-fd7e6ab63bd5″ dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>After having worked through module 2 I can appreciate how helpful and innovative these assistive tools could be in the mainstream class, in particular as aids for children who have learning difficulties. Immersive reader could improve inclusivity for a child with reading difficulties and also build self confidence and self esteem. I hope to use this tool with children I will be teaching in the coming year who have dyslexia and other learning difficulties. The advantage of being able to hear a text being read aloud, changing the background colour, enlarging the text size and spacing should help children to focus, understand and obtain greater enjoyment from what they are reading. Children who have difficulty tracking will be able to highlight a passage and focus better providing greater understanding of the text. The ability to translate a text will be of great benefit when teaching English as a second language to my students.</span></p>
<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>Dictate will also be of great benefit to these children as they can create a text from recording their voices without worrying about spelling or grammar.</span></p>
<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>Sharepoint is a useful tool for recapping on a topic for children who have difficulties understanding the topic being taught at a given time.</span></p>
<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>It can be used to help children review work already taught by the teacher and reduces the pressure on children with learning difficulties from trying to concentrate for lengthy periods.</span></p>
<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>The importance of selecting the correct assistive tool is paramount and must be carefully chosen for each individual pupil. </span></p>
<p dir=”ltr” style=”line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0.0pt; margin-bottom: 0.0pt;”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>I am aware of a circumstance where an AT was used within the classroom and had a negative impact on a child. It had the opposite effect intended as it caused embarrassment to the child who was in a senior class.I hope to use these assistive tools in my teaching going forward and will be selective when choosing the correct tool depending on the needs of each child.</span></p>
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I have learned a lot about these really accessible tools during module two and feel like they would be very easy to implement in my teaching next year. I will also be sharing these tools and the simple videos with my colleagues.
While sharepoint appears to be well laid out, easy to use and would provide great benefits to reinforce what has been taught at a pupils own pace I feel that it may be suited to an older class and I will be working primarily with infants next year. I can see how it would be successful for older students.
I think the Immersive reader would be a fantastic tool to use. I think the fact that it can translate texts will make some tasks much easier for some of our EAL students. I think for our early intervention literacy groups that the read aloud option will give confidence to some of our readers. It will also allow for more differentiation with literacy texts in classes during comprehension tasks as struggling readers can now access the same text as their peers.
I can see how dictate would be really useful for some of my students. I think it will make creating texts a possibility that may have seemed less possible without this tool. I think it will also give confidence to some children with dyslexia to work more independently. It can allow children with mobility issues or those who struggle with their fine motor skills to access many tasks.
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Hi Orla,
I agree both Immersive Reader and Dictate and extremely powerful tools for use in the SEN classroom and particularly as you’ve mooted in EAL scenarios. In fact, these Microsoft’s Learning Tools in conjunction with the other 365 apps like Word, OneNote and Teams can be used to tailor bespoke supports that cater for a vast array of educational needs. Having such powerful assistive tools inbuilt into the tools our students use daily is invaluable and even better still is that Microsoft continue to develop new assistive tools. Reading Progress in Teams is one new addition that springs to mind…
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Another really useful module; these AT devices are all new to me and something which I will bring back to school – while I can see lots of uses for the age group I will be working with in SET next year (1st class), I think further up the school, some of these tools could be game changers for the children.
Immersive Reader: Overall this just seems to be a fabulous tool, from being able to highlight different amounts of text, change size, text colour, background colour, break words into syllables, highlight parts of speech, the scope is just endless. Also, the read text facility is fantastic. I also love, love the fact that using One Lens, I can just photograph a page of a reader for example and Immersive Text will automatically pick up the text when saved to One Note etc. A real time saver for the teacher in helping to differentiate for each particular student.
Dictate – another wonderful feature; I have noticed the microphone up in the Toolbars but have never known how to use it. A wonderful tool for children, allowing them to concentrate on creative writing without having to be limited by any physical writing difficulties.
Sharepoint – I need to look further into this to fully understand how I could best use this and to get a better sense of where Sharepoint might fit into Power point or whether they are very much separate stand alone tools. But quite clearly, its a useful tool to break down and provide information to students that they can then use at home to understand and review work covered in school.
So much to take in from these modules – but all really good, interesting stuff. Really delighted I signed up for this course – had no expectation that there would be so much AT out there.
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Hi Katherine,
Thanks for your overview of the above accessibility tools. Certainly, ‘Immersive Reader’ and ‘Dictate’ would be suitable for children in 1st class, subject to their specific needs. Immersive Reader is such an excellent tool that can be introduced across a whole class, as it offers so much functionality. The ability to identify and locate ‘parts of speech’ is something that all children can benefit from. The picture dictionary is also really useful for EAL learners. Using ‘Dictate’ will also help those children who are strong orally but struggle with getting their thoughts down in writing.
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Immersive reader- this is a fantastic tool in that the lens can scan, alter and adapt text to suit the reader and child with SEN. No one child is the same therefore no one single methodology suits all. This AT allows the changing of text size and font. Also allows for specific focus on certain highlighted areas. This AT can help children who find reading larger texts by allowing them to break it down into more manageable parts. This can be particularly helpful for children with working memory related issues.
Dictate- this AT would have been most familiar to me as this is a feature on most mobile phones and smart watches. This feature on PC is useful in that it allows children with physical disabilities to access the internet and use technology with their voice. In my opinion this is one of the easier ATs to implement and use within schools with children with SEN.
Sharepoint- I like share point as it is a means to record and store learning. Particularly I feel this would be very beneficial in the older classroom and children with SEN. It can allow for specific focus on one topic allowing for consolidation of work or specific area of focus for a child with SEN.
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<span style=”color: #163c42; font-family: ‘Hind Madurai’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>Participants are asked to reflect on Immersive Reader, Dictate and SharePoint as an AT for Inclusion in their classroom and post a reflective piece (150 words minimum) as a reply to this post.</span>
Immersive Reader is a game changer. I am excited beyond belief to be able to use this in September. As SENCO, we recently got very excited that the SENO granted a Reading Pen for a student with dyslexia. Over the moon! This opened the door for this child who loved math to be able to complete tasks independently without someone reading for him. AND NOW?! We can use our ipads to read any text…use a picture dictionary…translate it to a different language…make it easier to read by changing the font, background colour, restrict the view… I mean the opportunities are endless. Instead being restricted to one pen, we can use our ipads to do the same job to a much better standard. To say I’m excited to train all the SETs in school how to use is an absolute understatement. Especially our EAL teacher!
Dictate should be a similar game changer for one student in my school in particular. She has no mobility and currently uses eye gaze to type responses but this is time consuming and exhausting for her. I did see mention of Dragon elsewhere in the course- I wonder is this the same as dictate-I need to look it up. If dictate can pick what she is saying clearly enough I think that would be amazing.
In our school, we use Sharepoint to save and store all of our plans, files and documents for sharing among staff. I was unaware of its other potentials but I will definitely be looking into it!
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I have taken a lot of useful ideas from this second module about specialist high tech options and using Microsoft 365. I found the Microsoft resources very useful.
Having never used Immersive Reader, Dictate and SharePoint as an AT for Inclusion; I have learned a lot about how to use these. I look forward to incorporating these into my planning and teaching lessons using these fantastic resources.
I look forward to using video clips, podcasts, immersive reader, dictate, one note and share point in my lessons. I think many of my pupils will benefit from these resources and will bring a more interesting way of learning for the pupils, especially for the visual learners and pupils that like to watch video clips and type their work in goggle docs.
I feel more confident using these resources in my planning and in lessons.
Thank you, Shona Muldowney
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Hi Shona,
Thank you for your post and your contribution to the forum. Given that you have yet to use features like Immersive Reader or Dictate, the next few months will probably be a bit of a learning curve / trial and error as you see how they work on the ground in your context. I think you will find that they help to make reading and writing activities far more accessible for children with literacy difficulties. It will take time for the children to learn how to use them and to understand exactly how it can assist them. As an SET, it may be useful to set some time aside to look at the mechanics of the tools, and discuss contexts in which they should be used / should not be used.
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