Thursday, May 26, 2016

Assistive Tech - Day 3 Takeaways

We spent a lot of time on Day 3 discussing and playing around with Read & Write for Google, an app that can be used in Google Chrome. 

Read & Write for Chrome is a really cool support app that can help people with a number of tasks. Some supports that it offer include being able to highlight passages in multiple colors, which would be very helpful with students organizing their work or taking notes. It also allows you to highlight a passage and have it read aloud to you, which is amazing for those students not reading at grade level. That is also very handy for the EAL population, which is growing rapidly in our community. It also gives a large number of different voices for the read aloud portion, which is a really nice feature.

This screenshot shows some of the cool features that Read & Write for Google has to offer!
Another amazing feature for this app is the ability to build a word list right in the document that you're reading. This would've been so handy years ago during high school & undergrad, when there were so many vocabulary words to memorize. For students who struggle with organization, this would be extremely beneficial. It also has a dictionary & picture dictionary feature, that is also very useful.

One drawback to the app is that it can only be used while in Google Chrome, which makes it usable for laptops & Chrome Books, but not on an iPad. That being said, in the HRSB it seems as though we are leaning towards purchasing Chrome Books rather than iPads, most likely due to the cost of iPads, so this works out fine for us. 

 I really enjoyed playing around with the Read & Write for Google feature while working on our collaborative project. It was a great way to become more comfortable with the feature, which encouraged me to use it in my classroom. I also just found out that we acquired 20 Chrome books in our school, so I'm excited to get my kids set up on them and get to work!

 There's a really cool video below that goes into the features of Read & Write for Google in a little more detail, so feel free to check it out!


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3 comments:

  1. StephMay 26, 2016 at 8:55 AM

    Hi Chris!
    I also enjoyed having the opportunity to play around on Google Read & Write through our collaborative project. I really appreciate the hands-on nature of this course.

    I think Google R&W is an incredible support tool and I have started to use it more on my Chromebook for note-taking/word processing. I have not tried it on my iPad. That's great news you have acquired 20 Chromebooks! I find they are incredibly useful for word processing and note-taking, though they lack the awesome apps and incredibly accessibility features that iPads have. Conversely, I find word processing on an iPad to be frustrating sometimes, so I guess each device has it's pros and cons.

    Thanks for sharing the video and screen shot of GR&W tool bar - very helpful! :)

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  2. Tim BealsMay 28, 2016 at 7:47 AM

    Read & Write for Google is a neat tool. I had seen it before, but I had never taken the opportunity to play around with it to explore all of the features. Just like you, I thought back to my own schooling, wishing that I had had access to the note taking and vocabulary list features. I could see those being invaluable tools for any student regardless of ability. I also thought about some of the scholarly articles I've had to read over the past year or two, and thought that the dictionary would have been a helpful tool to have!

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  3. cpottJune 19, 2016 at 5:39 PM

    Hi Chris, I too find that HRSB is more Chrome Book centered at the moment and there has been a huge influx of them into the schools. They are also really pushing the use of Google Drive which I wouldn't be surprised if that is why the Chrome Books. I am a huge fan of R&W4G and all of the tools that it is capable of. However, after taking this course, I also see the benefits of the iPad. I think we really need to start advocating the importance of both as they both have different purposes but the iPad is much more versatile in it's abilities.

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