Since moving back into a school-based teaching position this year (best move ever!!) I have consistently encountered the question of Remediation V Access, also commonly referred to as Remediation V Compensation.
In other words, do I try to fix the problem and assist the student to achieve age appropriate results?
OR
Do I recognise the problem and provide the student with alternate means of access (content representation) and expression?
mmm. Both are not mutually exclusive and can co-exist, however when you are working with a student approaching adulthood, who has spent much of his high school years walking the halls, out of class who is so turned off by traditional paper based learning materials ... something has to change ... I'm for keeping him engaged in learning, my initial objective is to provide him with access methods and strategies. In past weeks this particular student has exited himself from theory based classes. Today I arranged to work alongside him to support the theoretical component of his course. When he showed me the hard copy notes ... I understood his pain! Too much text, where to begin? This student has always been challenged by print, his reading levels would be equivalent to an early childhood student ... somewhere along the line he has missed the remediation boat and chose to avoid and disengage. The material was not available in a digital format ... to be more exact, was not readily available ... and this student needs readily available!! | So today I spent $12.99 on an App which will, given our initial success provide this young man with an effective and efficient means of print access now and into the future. $12.99 for an App I hear you say ... expensive? Well consider that he can now independently access a printed page and have it read to him (as many times as he wants / needs) as opposed to him requiring an adult to read it for him. Still expensive? No, it's the best $12.99 I have spent in a long time. Which App? Prizmo - Scanning, OCR, and Speech |