Show 22 -- LD and Writing

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Hello, and welcome to disability 411, the podcast for disability professionals. I'm your host Beth Case and this is show #22. I can't believe we're sneaking up on show #25 so quickly, you know that's a bit of a milestone. I'm not sure when I started this if I thought it ever make it to show #25. In fact someone recently asked me when did 411 disability start, and I looked it up and the first show went up on September 27, 2005, and that seems like a long time ago, but we are coming up on show number 25, and what I'd like to ask you all to do, if you would, is let me know what's been your favorite show so far. Drop me an email at disability411@jinkle.com and let me know what show you liked the most, benefited from the most, any comments or stories or things on these shows so far, and I'd like to put together a sort of listeners' choice thing on show #25 and just read any comments that you all have to make and let people know what have been the favorite shows and that sort of thing.

I think it'd be kind of fun so send me those comments or voice recordings on emails or whatever to disability411@jinkle.com. I have been getting some great emails from you all, and I really have to thank you for those. I do put a lot of work into this and sometimes you wonder if anybody really listening. Does anyone really care about this show? Am I doing all of this for nothing? And about the time when I am having the worst self-doubts, is when I get the best emails and they really keep me going.

In fact, I started emailing some of my favorite podcasters and letting them know how much I appreciate their shows, because I sort of figured that, oh they have so many listeners and I'm sure they get quite a bit of emails and they don't really care about my little emails, saying I love your show, but being a podcaster those emails really do mean a lot. So I just want to thank you all for those. I am surprised, again, at the number of teachers that use my podcast as part of their class and I just think that's great. Anything that I can do to help you all, I would love to do. If there's a certain topic that fits in with a unit or chapter in your book that you're going to be covering and you'd like to have a show relate to it just let me know.

I've gotten some great ideas for shows from listeners and I am researching two or three right now that are your all's ideas, and it does take a little time to put together. So if you send me an idea and you don't hear a show on it right away... it usually takes me, I would say probably a month, maybe a little bit more, from the time I get an idea -- whether it's my own idea or someone suggests it - to find the right person to interview, to get it set up, get all the materials. It takes a little time, so if you sent in an idea and you haven't heard a show on it yet, don't worry that doesn't mean that I'm not using your idea. I've got a couple three in the works right now that were your all's ideas.

Okay, I do want to put in a plug for the AHEAD conference that's coming up in July. It'll be in San Diego which is one of my favorite places to visit. I just think it's gorgeous. If you're not familiar with AHEAD, it's the Association on Higher Education and Disability, and it's pretty much the organization to belong to if you work with disabilities in higher education, whether it's as a disabilities counselor or a rehab counselor, or whatever way. It's just the association to belong to, to stay on top of everything in the field. It's really good.

Anyway, the head conference is coming up in July -- as I said -- and they're doing something different this year, where they're asking people to pre-register for the breakout sessions. Now in the past you just sort of went to whichever breakout session you wanted to go to at that moment. I usually would look at the schedule each morning and decide what I was going to do that day. Well I suppose in an attempt to help the presenters feel more prepared and make sure their rooms are large enough and they have enough handouts and all that sort of thing, they are asking people to pre-register for each of the breakout sessions this year, so you do have to kind of think and plan a little more ahead then you have in the past.

I'd like to just put in a plug for my own breakout session. I am doing one on Saturday morning that has to do with podcasting. We'll talk about how podcasts can be used in educational environment, how to make them accessible, and kind of go over the basics of how you put together a podcast. My plan is to actually make a podcast during the session so you all can see how it is done. Now I know I have some pretty stiff competition for Saturday morning with the other breakout sessions I know will be popular, but if you're interested in putting together a podcast and would like to learn more about how it's done, then I encourage you to at least consider coming to mine.

But, whether or not you're coming to my session, if you are going to be at AHEAD, drop me a line. Maybe we can get together for a bite to eat or ice cream or whatever at the conference. I really enjoy meeting any of my listeners that attend, so again if you're planning on going, drop me a note.

Okay, today's interview is a follow up of one we had a couple shows ago, Ellen Engstrom talked to us before learning disabilities in reading and some of the tools that are out there and some of the techniques that can be used to help students who have learning disabilities compensate for difficulties they have with reading. Today's interview is going to be focused on writing, and these are some really great techniques and tools that are available even if you don't have a learning disability. These things can really help organize and structure your writing. I hope you all learn something and enjoy.

Beth Case: Well today we have, once again, Ellen Engstrom from Landmark College. If you missed our previous interview with her be sure and go back and check it out. Previously she talked to us about some of the difficulties faced when it comes to reading, and today we're going to talk about the other side of it and the difficulties that students face when it comes to writing. Ellen thanks for join us again.

Ellen Engstrom: Oh, thank you for having me back, Beth. I enjoy it.

Beth Case: For those who did not hear the first interview that we did with you, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Ellen Engstrom: Well I am an associate professor at Landmark College, and I also work for the Landmark College Institute for Research and Learning. So I teach students here at Landmark, and I also work with outside educators helping them learn different ways of approaching instruction that will be helpful for students of different learning profiles. So I have worked quite a bit with students with dyslexia who have reading and writing disabilities, and I have given a lot of thought on how to help them.

Beth Case: And if you're... you all are not familiar, Landmark College is a college that specializes in working with students that have learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder, and we will have a link to their website in our show notes which as always can be found on disabiltry411.jinkle.com to learn more about this fantastic college. It's just a very famous and well-run program.

Ellen Engstrom: Well thank you.

Beth Case: You're welcome, and it's true. And again, in the interest of all disclosures, I am taking one of Ellen's classes about learning how to use technology that I can hopefully introduce to some of my students to help them be more successful. And I'm finding that a lot of the tools that we're learning to help students who have learning disabilities would actually be very helpful to all students. If you perhaps have a special interest in learning disabilities, you certainly need to pay attention to this show because these tips and techniques and assistive technology are really applicable to a wider audience. So Ellen I'll just turn it over to you and let you tell us about writing.

Ellen Engstrom: Well writing is so interesting because writing is one of the most complex acts that humans do. It's heavily influenced by cognitive and affective factors and so the students who have problems with writing may have different kinds of issues going on with them. For example, there are students who have language-based difficulties which means they have trouble with spelling, they don't write well, they don't understand sentence structure or paragraph structure, they have trouble learning grammar and punctuation, and those students will have a lot of difficulty. Those are barriers to their writing process of successful writing. But the other thing that's happened is that students who have attention-based difficulties -- attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity and other things -- may result in random errors in spelling and punctuation and syntax not caused by brain-based language disorders but by a lack of attention and focus, so that sustaining a consistent effort throughout the writing task is very difficult.

In either case, when you have difficulty writing, anxiety results, and of course we know what anxiety does to people; it just shuts you down. We have a lot of people who have writer's block as well, and even if all those other things are in place, frankly poor planning, disorganization, difficulty narrowing a topic, procrastinating, all of those things add up to really having a lot of difficulties. So what we do at Landmark College with and without technology is we use The Writing Process, which is commonly used amongst educators. The Writing Process basically is just an approach to writing that breaks writing down into different steps.

Typically these include generating ideas or brainstorming, organizing those ideas, drafting the ideas into something kind of text, and then revising and proofreading. Sometimes when you break down the process into those discrete steps then you lessen anxiety and students don't feel so overwhelmed. But the great thing about technology is that we can begin to look real specifically at what barriers students are experiencing with their writing and how can we break those down. So, for example, if someone is a very poor speller, I've seen students just freeze. They're just so obsessed with how to spell words that that's all they can think about.

And remember, our active working memory only allows us to do so many things at the same time, so if it's caught all up in how to spell a word then trying to come with an entire sentence to express a thought is never going to happen. So generally the things that we can use... word-processing software -- of course we don't think of this way anymore -- is really an assistive technology too because it provides spelling support through spell checker and that often will be a big enough help but maybe not completely, you know. So another level is to use word prediction software, which is actually really kind of cool. You can get individual programs for this and it also is part of some bigger writing programs. Kurzweil 3000 -- that I talked about a few weeks ago -- has a whole writing arsenal of tools in it as well as the reading part, and word prediction comes with it. Basically you train it to know which words you're likely to use and it will give you choices right there in the menu as you're trying to spell a word so if you recognize the word you can pick it.

Beth Case: Fantastic.

Ellen Engstrom: Usually also in any good word prediction program, the program will read the word as well so that you're seeing it and you're hearing it so that you can decide what to do.

Beth Case: Wow, that's useful.

Ellen Engstrom: Yes, incredibly useful. Now the other thing... that's the spelling piece. Some people really are so tied up with spelling and being able to write, maybe handwriting, that just the brain/hand connection, either through writing or typing or keyboarding, it's just really disconnected. And so then of course we have voice recognition software, which basically allows the writer to talk into a microphone and ideas and words come up on the screen. It reduces spelling concerns. There are people who have great oral language skills and they just freeze and can't expand ideas into written format, so this turns out to be a wonderful tool for some people. Now it's tricky, voice recognition software. Examples of it would be Dragon Naturally Speaking or Via Voice for example.

We use Dragon Naturally Speaking here at Landmark. I've used it over the years, and as I've been using it the accuracy has improved so much. It's much easier to train, but you do have to train it, and that means you have to talk into the microphone, read things in to it. It has to get used to your voice, the inflection of your voice, and how you speak words in order to be able to accurately reproduce the words on screen. It's usually easy to do. Sometimes with speech impediments or very heavy accents the training can be harder, but in general it's gotten better even with more difficult cases.

I worked with a student who has a wonderful writing voice but his writing is messy and his spelling is terrible. He failed English in high school all the way through. When he came here as adult, never having used a computer and learned keyboarding -- just couldn't do it fast enough -- took to Dragon like a duck to water. When he started he would do all his brainstorming and organizing separately and then he would dictate his work into Dragon. Honestly and truly he broke down to tears when he saw his writing come out on the screen in a nice clean format with correct spelling and so on; it was magic. He graduated from Landmark and is now at a college majoring in writing, if you can believe it.

Beth Case: Wow, what a great success story.

Ellen Engstrom: Oh, it's just wonderful. He said, "You know, if I had Dragon in high school, I wouldn't have spent all that time in detention," so it's really quite wonderful. The other tool that I think is particularly nice for writing, and I know that you're working on this somewhat now -- have worked on it for the course -- is the use of visual mapping software to brainstorm and organize ideas. Now the classic program for this that's very accessible and pretty cheap is Inspiration software, which allows the writer to brainstorm or come up with ideas in a visual map, in a graphic format, which can then be transferred to an outline and eventually converted to a word processor.

The great thing is, is that you can brainstorm without having to use a ton of words and I've even used Inspiration in the graphic format just to use visual images first sometimes with students and add words later, people with word retrieval problem or expressive language issues that can be really useful and there again the writer is able to focus on primary task, which is getting the ideas out without any concern about grammar, punctuation, and all that stuff, which is important and which needs to be addressed, but at a later point. Sometime for some people, people who have very strong visual, spatial intelligence you might say, the fact that you can visually can separate one concept from another and link them or connect them in a visual or format makes the connection clearer to them as opposed to having to figure it out embedded in text. It's also very interesting, reinforcing, and I think it reduces the boring qualities of writing.

Beth Case: What I like about it is, for someone who has difficulty with language... it's like a cycle. They have an inherent difficulty with the language so maybe they don't do well on paper. They get a bad grade. Then they become anxious about not doing well also on the next paper. Their anxiety about not doing well actually causes them to do worse and it becomes this cycle. And the nice thing about Inspiration is that it doesn't have to be word-based. They have lots of little icons and pictures and you could stick a picture there that represents something and type one word to help you clarify what that means, so it takes the verbal out of it and lets them get their thoughts sort of organized.

Of course like you said, eventually it does have to become words but I met with a student quite recently who... his homework assignment was to attend a workshop and write a one page summary of this workshop, and he just could not do it. He just came into my office very upset. He just couldn't do this and I just talked with him and said, "Well, what was the workshop about? What are some of the problems they mentioned? What were some of the solutions they suggested? Did you learn something new there? What did you learn?" We had this great conversation; he knew all this stuff.

Ellen Engstrom: Sure.

Beth Case: He had the knowledge but the idea of putting it into words on a piece of paper was so traumatic for him, and had to do with not only with difficulty due to a learning disability but also just years of negative experiences having to do with papers.

Ellen Engstrom: Absolutely, absolutely it doesn't mean you have a learning disability if you have those difficulties. I find that any number of what should I say? Any number of learning difficulties -- attentional, language based, nonverbal, etc -- often the writing is kind of the Bermuda Triangle, where they all come together and it causes all these problems. Because it's so complex for various reasons. So yeah I think this is a tremendous tool. I think again you have to be careful. Sometimes students that fall more along the non-verbal learning disabilities, the Asperger's/Autism spectrum, often have more trouble with their visual fields and the graphic environment; they're much better off with the linear ones. But of course the great thing about Inspiration is that you can do wonderful stuff on the outline side. You can move things around and organize your ideas that way. So it's a very... that program is just so worthwhile.

Beth Case: And if you aren't familiar with Inspiration, I will have a link to the website, but they have a free 30 day trial that is completely functional. You know sometimes you get a trail piece of software and it limits what you can do with it. The Inspiration software is fully functional; it's just for 30 days, so that you can get in there and really try it out and use it to see whether its something you and your students could benefit from. I really like it.

Ellen Engstrom: I do too, and my students like to it too. They get used to it and they really like it for the brainstorming and organizing stuff like that, and of course the great thing is, until you have actually seen Inspiration convert an outline into a word processor, so that you can fool with it and turn it into text, you haven't lived. It's like magic.

Beth Case: I also have to say, on sort of unrelated note, Inspiration is great for creating flow charts. If you have to create flow charts for work, that's what I use to create my flow charts for work.

Ellen Engstrom: And don't forget there are gazillions of templates in Inspiration, for goal settings, for teaching, templating, writing things, time management, just amazing stuff you can fool around with, and you're not reinventing the wheel.

Beth Case: Now with the previous interview and with this one, we have just barely even started to scratch the surface of the difficulties that students with learning disabilities face with reading and writing, with technology that's available to help them and how do you use it most effective. This has been, out of necessity, a very shallow overview. Would you like to share information on your online course and other resources so that if someone wanted to get the more in depth training they'd know where to go?

Ellen Engstrom: Sure. Well we do offer this online course on technology solutions for students with disabilities. I actually teach a live course, in the summer, in July, In Putney, beautiful Putney, Vermont, for three days here. The other thing that's available... we'll be running it again in the fall. If you go to the Landmark website which I think you're going to link to --

Beth Case: I will.

Ellen Engstrom: And the Landmark College Institute for Research and Training. There we list our online and live course workshops and things, so you can catch it there. The other thing I do have and this feels like a shameless self promotion but whatever.

Beth Case: Oh. Go ahead.

Ellen Engstrom: I have actually written a guide for educators, to using assisted technology to teach students with learning disabilities. That?s available through Landmark Institute for Research Training. Eventually it may be on the international dyslexia associative website as well, but it isn?t right now. You can actually contact us and for $34.95 plus shipping, we?ll send you this guide it also comes with a disc that has a trial of Kurzweil 3000 along with note taking templates and other document that you can practice doing some of these strategies with. And you could also download the inspiration 30 day trial. I like to encourage people to strategically use software so that they interface with each. That?s what I recommend.

Beth Case: And this is the book that we're using in the class right?

Ellen Engstrom: Yes.

Beth Case: So I can personally vouch for the quality of this book. It has lots of step by step instruction on how to do things it has lots of graphics and screenshot images, and I love it. Its very clean, its very accurate.

Ellen Engstrom: Thank you for the endorsement.

Beth Case: So yes I endorse this book.. Well Ellen once again its been an extreme pleasure having you on and I?m not just saying that because she's my teacher for the course.

Ellen Engstrom: [laughs]

Beth Case: The grade isn?t counting for anything I?m just there to learn and I really I?m enjoying it.

Ellen Engstrom: I?m glad.

Beth Case: We will be providing links to the software she?s mentioned and to landmark college and to anything else that we think of that might be useful on our show notes at disabilty411.jinkle.com and if you all have any questions for Ellen or other related questions please just send them to me. My email is disabilty411@jinkle.com and I would be sure to get answers for you on those.

Stay tuned will be back after this.

[music]

Beth Case: I hope you all enjoyed that I always love talking to Ellen shes just so cheerful and so full of energy. I just love her. Anyways that pretty much just wraps it up for todays show. I do want to ask you alls patience as the website goes through a redesign. There maybe times when its not quite up-to-date or that its not as pretty as it hopefully will be, but going through such a major overhaul as I am trying to do, does take a little bit of time and theres always problems that pop up that you don?t foresee, anyways so, just bare with me and once I think its theoretically finished I will be asking for some testers especially if you use assistive technology to take a look at it. I?ll go get back to work on that and will talk to you all next time, until then this has been disability 411 the podcast for disability professionals. Don?t forget to checkout our websire disabiiltiyt411.jinkle.com. You can hear past episodes and don?t forget to send which one is your favorite and you can read the transcript for this and all past epsoides. I?m Beth Case and I?ll see you all soon.

Beth Case: The Disability 411 podcast is licensed under a under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, NoDerivatives License and is brought to you by jinkle.com with the cooperation of AHEAD in Texas, ATHEN; DLRP, a project of ILRU, a program of TIRR and the PEC Texas SOTAC. To learn what any of this means, please visit our web site at disability411.jinkle.com. Music by the Brobdingnagian Bards is used with permission.

(Transcribed by www.castingwords.com)