Script for CSUN 2008 presentationSlide 1Music playing; our names and profiles on screen; and photos of students. Slide 2Ted: We welcome you to our presentation. I am Ted Wattenberg. I coordinate and teach assistive technology at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, Ca. I also work at California State University, Sacramento, where I teach the educational technology courses for the credential and masters programs in Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling. I have been working with technology engineering and teaching for over 20 years with specialties in usability, person centered counseling, and curriculum development.
A number of years ago, when first reading Marcia Scherer’s book, “Living in a State of Stuck,” I was shocked to learn about the high rates of rejection of assistive technology by people with disabilities. I looked around me; within my own program and discovered many of the same outcomes documented in her book. Our students were not feeling more connected with others after receiving our support. After considerable research, I started developing new models for our delivery of technology and student support. One of the areas where I found students most stuck was in their ability to learn to read. Even with the use of assistive technology and considerable support services, they continued to feel stuck and unable to complete their personal and academic goals.
Janice: My name is Janice Walth. I am an Instructor Assistant at San Joaquin Delta College in the adaptive technology classroom. I teach the advance Jaws screen reading class for using the Internet. And, I also lead the reading group as part of the reading fluency program. I have been a screen reader user for over 15 years; but, only within the last 7 years have I become a fluent reader using a screen reader. Because of this, I have been able to return to school and earn my bachelors degree in adaptive technology for adults with disabilities
We will be discussing the reading fluency program at Delta College that helps people with print disabilities learn to read with a screen reader. We believe that you will find our program unique in several ways, especially our student outcomes and the way in which we measure a person’s reading achievement.
Ted: Current studies on reading proficiency indicate that up to 50% of people are reading at 7th grade or below reading levels. These studies have also indicated that up to 80% of these people have some type of visual reading processing problem causing their print disability. Screen reader technology can provide the opportunity for someone with a print disability to learn to read. They can learn to enjoy reading, feel connected to others that read, and feel confident in their ability to complete academic and personal goals.
Our reading fluency program is designed for adults with print disabilities, but can easily be adapted for children and adolescents in the K-12 educational setting. The curriculum is based on developmental factors of how a person acquires language. These factors do not change whether you are 10 years old or 50 years old. What does change is where on this developmental timeline your students are at. As a K-12 teacher of reading, you have to be able to apply the student outcomes that apply to the developmental age of your students. Several of my students have adapted the curriculum for 4th through high school grades. Please ask more about how this is done during our question period at the end of the presentation. Slide 3Janice: This presentation is not at the introductory level. In prior presentations and published work, we have addressed concepts of learnability, affect, and other factors important for a person to accept and use screen readers as an assistive technology. We have incorporated unique student outcomes and measures of achievement in our curriculum that uses both qualitative and quantitative measures. This curriculum is based on current theories on how a person with a print disability can learn to read fluently, often referred to as top-down or reading fluency. Our curriculum integrates these models with the use of screen readers. Slide 4Janice: In order to explain the student outcomes and measures, we will share stories collected from our students. During December of 2007, we interviewed 24 students, mostly those who have been in our program for more than two semesters. This program developed out of a more informal method of teaching someone to read with a screen reader about 5 years ago. Since the beginning of our current reading fluency instruction as a program about two years ago, we have helped several hundred students learn to read. We feel that the interviewed students fairly represent the diversity of our students and the diversity of the larger population of people with print disabilities. Slide 5All students that were interviewed have signed releases of information that allows us to use recordings, images, and transcripts for conferences, publications, and other publicity for the reading program. Slide 6Gladys’s interview cut. (5:18) Slide 7Ted: Our reading program at Delta College is located in one of the most economically depressed areas of the U.S., where one would expect a high density of people with disability to live. People with reading disabilities are a diverse group of people. They include people with vision impairments, mobility impairments, learning disabilities, and mental health problems. In many ways they have the same demographic diversity of other people with disabilities: they are unemployed, victims of crime, homeless, low educational achievement, and they lack access to technology. Slide 8Janice: We feel that a teacher must have a good understanding of their students’ background in order to teach them to read fluently and to measure reading fluency achievement. Some of the areas that we feel are most important to learn about are a person’s past experiences of failure trying to learn to read and the impact that not reading has had on their relationships with others. Slide 9Eileen (1:03) Slide 10Anna (1:59) Slide 11Ted: Traditional reading programs found in K-12 and adult education environments are based on bottom-up learning concepts, where language is understood to be acquired developmentally and sequentially. Starting with the ability to visually recognize letters and words, the brain is only then considered to have the ability to comprehend language at faster and faster speeds until automaticity is reached. This is the developmental point where the brain has the ability to automatically process read language. It is considered the point of language acquisition when reading fluency becomes possible.
Instead, our reading fluency program is based on top-down reading fluency theories. Our model consists of an initial student orientation and a three stage reading fluency curriculum of affect, fluency, and flexibility. In our model, a person does not have to first learn to visually recognize words at faster and faster rates until they reach automaticity. Language acquisition is not limited to only those people who can visually process language. It is understood that reading fluency can also be reached by learning to recognize words and comprehend phrases through auditory input of language. Brain and social development is encouraged by reading every day.
Slide 12Janice: During the orientation, the teacher should begin to understand the student’s prior experiences in trying to learn to read. It is the time when the teacher can find empathy with the student in order to successfully help them to learn to read. This is not about the teacher being sympathetic with the student’s prior experiences, but how the teacher can find a way to understand the feelings of frustration, fear, and anger that the student probably has.
During the orientation, the student should learn how this reading program is different than other reading programs that they have tried. They will be learning to read by listening and not with the eyes. The student needs to feel that the teacher understands his/her vulnerability to failure. And, also important, the student should understand that they will not be given vocabulary or comprehension tests in this program. They will learn a new and more valid method of knowing their reading achievement. Slide 13First we will view a few students discussing what it is like to learn to read by listening. The student must be convinced of the idea that reading is not done with the eyes, but with the brain. Only the human brain can comprehend and use language. Slide 14Janet (:59) Slide 15Anna (1:10) Slide 16Ted: At this time in the interview, a student will commonly ask the question, “If reading is not done with the eyes, than what really is reading and what makes reading different than conversation?”
It is important at this point in the orientation that we provide the student a general idea of why they might be having a hard time learning to read or remembering what they have read. I explain to them that learning to read is only one part of language acquisition; a developmental process beginning before birth and continuing throughout their life time.
In a personal conversation with Noam Chomski, he expressed that the ability of a person to develop mental representations from read material is one of the highest forms of language development. This ability must be learned and is a combination of several cognitive tasks including time, prior experience, and context. Slide 17Ted: To understand language, a person must perform a series of language and memory tasks. Words and phrases are first inputted into special working memory areas of the brain that are associated with language. A person must form a mental image or representation of the ideas that come from that language. This representation must be then compared with representations previously saved in long-term memory.
These prior representations are made of emotions, contexts, and meanings that are relevant and understandable to the person. Any of these prior representations that relate to the new image must be transferred to the working memory, where a new mental image is then formed that includes the emotion and meaning from the prior images. The reader’s understanding now becomes a landscape of emotions, contexts, and meanings. The language process is not complete until the new representation is transferred and saved to long-term memory.
All of this must be finished in 20 seconds, because after that, working memory will forget it and the language process must be started over and over and over again until it is completed correctly in the allotted time.
At this point, the student usually has another “Aha” moment. They finally understand why reading is not enjoyable and why they have problems remembering what they have read. If they can’t complete the task of processing the language in 20 seconds, they will always have trouble with reading comprehension. They are stuck because they read too slowly.
Conversational word speeds are about 60-90 words per minute. At this rate of language, the brain cannot complete all of the representational processes. We can understand and enjoy conversation over longer periods of time only when the person presenting the language adds emotion and meaning into their language, helping the listener with the brain activity.
The difference between conversation and reading then is that in reading, a person has to add the emotion and meaning to the language all by themselves. This can only happen when the word input is fast enough for the brain to automatically process the language, what we call automaticity. This speed is a minimum of about 190 to 200 words per minute.
Slide 18Janice: A teacher must have a quick way to measure the reading achievement of their students in the classroom and be able to intervene effectively. A student must also be able to measure their own reading improvement so that they can begin feeling confident in their ability to learn. Prior research into reading fluency shows that quantitative measures of vocabulary and comprehension, by themselves, are not valid to assess reading achievement. In our program, we use both qualitative and quantitative measures to asses a person’s reading achievement.
Current studies indicate that the primary factors in determining whether someone will be successful in learning to read are a person’s self-efficacy, confidence, motivation to read, and connectivity to others. As student outcomes, these are difficult factors to measure; impossible to measure quantitatively. We feel that our reading curriculum effectively allows us to assess these qualitative factors in the classroom. Slide 19Anna (1:45) Slide 20Denise (:51) Slide 21Janice: After the orientation, we try to get the student reading as quickly as possible. In stage 1 the student has to overcome significant emotional barriers that will prevent his/her confidence and motivation to read. And, these are the primary student goals of the first stage of our program. The simplest and honestly the most reliable method of determining whether a person is gaining confidence and motivation to read is whether they are enjoying themselves. There is a common progression a student works through. They first must form a positive affect towards the voice and technology; they must really believe that they are reading by listening; the book that they choose must be interesting and within their experiential context; and most importantly, they must acknowledge the progress that they are making. The reading speed will increase naturally as they read. Slide 22Judy (1:08) Slide 23Judy (2:26) Slide 24Ted: While, we get a significant amount of “Aha” moments in stage 1, it is in stage 2 where students really reach higher levels of reading enjoyment, fluency, and connectivity with others. In this stage we concentrate on helping the student become independent with the technology and with reading. Not only do they need to know how to use a screen reader, but they must learn how to scan and find books by themselves; they also must develop confidence in choosing new types of reading materials. Most of our students have never read a complete adult book before this class.
In stage 2, students must develop the social behaviors required of reading fluency. These behaviors support the ability to critically analyze ideas.
And lastly, in stage 2, students finally reach automaticity speeds of reading that can be maintained over long periods of time up to 2 or 3 hours. Slide 25Denise (1:13) Slide 26Rita (1:07) Slide 27Janice: The reading group is available to all users of screen readers, from beginning to advanced readers. The purpose is to provide a social setting for people to come together and share the unique experience of reading with a screen reader. The group meets twice a week. We read and discuss short stories, newspaper and magazine articles and sometimes short novels. Within this social environment, the students build confidence in their reading ability and share tips about their own reading techniques. They are able to expand their reading experiences by reading a variety of subjects, authors and literary styles. The discussions that come from the diverse material help the students recognize other perspectives than their own. Slide 28The instructor can use the reading group as another tool for measuring student progress and can identify unique problems that are experienced by individual readers. The online aspect enables students to stay connected even if they can’t make every session. The comment section on the web site gives the student the additional experience of expressing their opinions in writing. Slide 29Ted: We are developing an interactive tool called the Reading Café, to support students in learning how to select new reading materials and to encourage them to read beyond their previous experiences. Slide 30The Reading Café allows a student to read the comments of other students about books that they have read. Slide 31A student is also given an opportunity to submit their own comments about books. Slide 32Stage 3, the final stage of our curriculum, is called flexibility. This is when a person begins to see them self as a life-long learner. They are taking regular classes that challenge their self-perceptions and enable them to complete educational and personal goals. They must learn how to integrate reading with diverse learning tasks needed to complete college level coursework. At this point students often express a strong connectivity to other learners and are confident in their ability to succeed in diverse learning environments. Slide 33Denise (1:20) Slide 34Santos (1:14) Slide 35Ralph (3:15) Slide 36Janice: This completes the formal presentation. We feel that screen reading technology provides an alternative to visual reading for people with print disabilities. The computer will only provide language. A person must still learn how to read with a screen reader. Our screen reading fluency program provides strategies and measures to teach someone to read fluently. To effectively use this curriculum, a teacher must be able to empathize with their students as they risk learning to read. Now, we are open for questions. Thank you. Slide 37References
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