You Need
Echoes of Oldham
Sally McKeown (TES, Special Children Magazine and BECTa) visits the first SpecialNeedsIT exhibition and HowITWorks seminars.
Rain-lashed,
windswept Bolton on a weekday is not everyone's idea of a good time.
Nevertheless, thousands flocked to the Special Needs North Exhibition held in
the Reebok stadium on 23rd and 24th May.
It was the first time I had been to this particular show and I was curious to see how it panned out. I have fond memories of the Oldham Special Needs event, organised for many years by Martin Littler of Inclusive Technology. This was a regular event in the IT calendar when teachers and support staff used to come north every Autumn to catch up on new developments and get a quick fix of in-service training at the free seminars.
Could this rival Oldham in its heyday? Doubts arose when I saw the narrow corridor which represented the IT village and realised I'd be touting for business outside the Gents all day. Still, I decided to lay aside my prejudices and conduct an impartial investigation. So while working on the Becta stand, I waylaid Special Needs exhibitors with the hackneyed question, "So, what do you think of the show so far." "Brilliant!" was the usual reply.
John Needham was my first victim. His company CALSC sells software to improve memory skills. Apparently research shows that 80% of what we learn is forgotten within one day. Their new product Time to Revise sets out to remedy this. So was the show good for his company? "It's a lot busier than we expected," he told me, "in fact we might run out of leaflets. People in the north should make a beeline for this exhibition, it's so substantial. As an exhibitor, I just love the fact that it's so accessible - straight off the motorway and into the venue."
Many of the old favourites were present. Sherston were featuring software to support the Literacy Hour: the Oxford Reading Tree stage 5, the Big ABC and Sound Stories as well as the all-time classic, The Crystal Rainforest. Crick were showing the latest version of Clicker and promoting the Clicker grids on the Web.
For those working with physically disabled pupils or children with communication difficulties, help was on hand from Penny and Giles who have a new switch which can be tailored to respond to the lightest touch as well as being robust enough to take a good thrashing from the heavy handed. The ACE Centre were stressing the value of low tech solutions showing symbol books as well as advertising their latest range of training days. On the Widgit stand there was Music Factory, a musical composition package for pupils with special needs and a new email facility which can be used with symbols and photographs instead of text.
Roger Bates of Inclusive Technology ran a seminar called Making IT Happen and his theme was the use of technology to include SEN pupils in a group, "So often they are on the fringe of activities, the spectator rather than a participant. He was showing Tech Talk a communication device where new messages can be recorded in seconds - honestly it's easier than putting a message on your answer phone. With this handy device, children can join in counting activities by pressing the right number to speak when their turn comes or can read their page of the Big Book during Literacy Hour.
There was also support for SENCOs. IEP Developer focuses on the secondary market and is designed to cut back on bureaucracy. All the reports it on one sheet and cover Basic Skills targets as well as Personal and Social Development strategies. Staff on the stand stressed that to be successful, it has to be a whole school initiative where senior management get all the staff involved so progress is monitored across a range of lessons and not just by the SENCO.
Becta's stand featured the new Inclusion Website. Launched at the Education show in March this was greeted enthusiastically by teaching staff. You fill in a mini questionnaire deciding who will use the resources: teachers? careers advisers? management? Which curriculum areas and categories of special need you are looking to support. Then Q goes off to track down resources or, if there is a dearth of relevant material, it will refer you to a forum or an expert. It will even keep your details on file and email you if new resources become available.
Becta has also been running a major project on Voice Recognition Technology and also has published book, Dyslexia and ICT: Building on Success. As I was presenting a seminar on these topics with my colleague Mick Thomas, I was keen to see examples of technology to help pupils get a first draft down on paper. There were quite a lot.
Neil Hibbert of NTS was showing Dreamwriter which is widely used by dyslexic learners. His seminar concentrated on management issues such as choosing the right product for learners, sometimes dyslexic learners are given a fully-fledged multimedia portable when what they really need is a straightforward, effective word processor.
textHELP were showing Talk and Type version 3 where text is highlighted as the voice speaks and it is easy to align text and insert graphics. Iansyst had a wonderful pen called the Quicktionary Reading Pen which scans in written text and will read it out loud. This gets round the vexed question of copying out which can be a time consuming and pointless task for many learners.
My favourite new product was Draft:Builder a planning tool with speech support and switch access from Don Johnston. Start in Outline and write the headings. Expand these in the Notes area, which can also be used by the teacher to create a writing frame. Then move into the Draft facility, which can be exported as a text file or turned into a cloze passage to reinforce spelling, vocabulary or syntax. This is an ideal planning tool which will go a long way to overcoming "Blank page syndrome".
So, all in all, a good time was had by all but I must admit to a slight nostalgia for Oldham. Whatever happened to meat and potato pies with mushy peas? These new-fangled turkey salad baguettes may be fine for Bolton Wanderers fans but after a hard day's work outside the gents, a bit of rib sticking food would have gone down a treat.
Sally McKeown is a Project Officer at BECTa and author of "Unlocking Potential" to be published in Autumn 2000 by Questions Publishing.