I have learned so much on this course. Although I worked in the computing industry when I was younger, I have to admit to not keeping up with the current trends since I left. Consequently, all of the software we have learned about during the course has been new to me. The benefit of this is that I now feel that, in some respects, I have been dragged (screaming and kicking) into the twenty first century. The downside is that it has been a very long and hard journey.
The Main Points
The main thing that I have learned is that there are so many really useful free bits of software available. I knew that the VI student I work with had specialised software to read his work to him. I had no idea that WordTalk existed, which would read my Word documents to me. Or Balabolka, which will read anything that you paste into it. The former is something that I now regularly use to proofread the work that I am modifying – I listen to what I have produced and follow the original to hear any mistakes that have been made during the scanning or typing process.
Before I attended the one day course, I had no idea about structured documents and their virtues, nor did I realise that pdfs had a text to speech facility or that Word documents and pdfs could both reflow.
The only synthetic voices that I had met were the very robotic ones, I had not met Brian or Amy, Jess or Jack. It was lovely to know that there were more natural voices available.
I now understand more about what DAISY is and where AMIS fits in.
Having spent time in schools with mice that don’t work well, I was already familiar with many of the basic keyboard shortcuts, and have always enjoyed finding out new ones to use. Consequently, it has been great having an excuse to keep finding out new shortcuts.
As the student I work with has found reading more difficult, I have struggled to get him to listen to audio books (it took a couple of years of suggesting/nagging) but he has now discovered that listening to novels is quite enjoyable. It is good, therefore, to know that I can use WordTalk and Balabolka to produce mp3 files from Word documents which may help him, as he moves into Y10, to keep up with the reading that he and his peers need to do as part of their GCSE courses.
Another positive aspect of the course has been the Webinars and the opportunity to collaborate with other participants. It would be useful to have such collaboration for our students as well as for us.
The Downside
I do understand that the whole course is about computer technologies and I have really enjoyed the course on the whole. I am very glad that I can now tweet and blog with the best of them. I am also very grateful to have gained all the knowledge I have, to enable me to provide more format options for my student. However, it has been a lot of hard work, much more than the suggested 5 hours per week, even though I come from a computer literate background, which should help. This, on top of a full time job, has been difficult to fit in. I know at least one person who has not completed the course because of the computing knowledge required. If future courses are run, I feel that there should be a slower introduction to the technological aspects of the course and a safety net for those who are struggling. Many teachers and teaching assistants are not computing specialists, but they would still benefit from the concepts taught on this course. Another option would be to run a precourse for those who lack confidence. It is very daunting when you start to download masses of software, or publish a blog which is visible to anyone on the web,and what do you do when you ask Google but don’t understand anything it comes back with?
Conclusion
I have enjoyed the course so far – and I am looking forward to completing the optional units. They sound as though they may be even more useful than some of the core units. What I need now is time to actually put all the things I have learned into my everyday practice. So far, I have put a lot of time into completing each unit and keeping the day job going with no spare time to put the two together, although I did produce a Word template which I now regularly use. I need to sort out some better voices and start producing some audio files as well as modified print ones.
I am glad to know how to use Twitter and how to write a blog, but it remains to be seen whether I continue with either of these activities once the course has finished. On the other hand, I may well continue reading ebooks for relaxation.
dyslexiata 