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MISSOULA - A new software at the University of Montana and affiliated campuses will make a big difference for students with learning disabilities this spring. The Read and Write Gold software will allow students and employees to have whatever is on the computer screen read to them out loud. The Disability Services for Students department originally wanted it for students with learning disabilities and barriers to print - but found it all UM students could benefit from the program.

Click here to download the full flyer and registration (PDF) Region IV CSPD is pleased to offer a range of training opportunities on the following Reading and Math Intervention programs. All the programs are research-based and are effective in a Response to Intervention tiered model.

My sixteen-year-old son Haley recently came into my office and announced that he’d finished a six-hundred-page manuscript. I suppose that would be unusual coming from any sixteen-year-old, but given my son’s background, it’s especially stunning. Haley is ADHD and dyslexic. At seven, he hated school. He would hide under the dining room table to avoid reading or doing his homework. My novels about Percy Jackson began as bedtime stories for him – a father’s desperate attempt to keep his son interested in reading. That’s also why I made Percy Jackson ADHD and dyslexic, and made those two conditions indicators of Olympian blood.

Written language poses a puzzle for neuroscientists. Unlocking the meaning in a string of symbols requires complex neural circuitry. Yet humans have been reading and writing for only about 5000 years—too short for major evolutionary changes. Instead, reading likely depends on circuits that originally evolved for other purposes. But which ones?

Visit funnix.com for more information Funnix, an education company based in Eugene, Oregon, is giving away their beginning reading program, which shares the same name as the company, absolutely free for the month of January. The giveaway is for the complete reading program, not a demo version. It never expires, and there is no limit to the number of copies that the company is willing to give away. However, there are only 18 days left to take advantage of this free offer. Already more than 18,000 copies of Funnix, valued at more than 4.5 million dollars, have been given away.

By the time he was 17, Antonio Rocha had bounced among 11 New York City schools and was reading at a first-grade level. It wasn't until he told school officials "I want a lawyer!" that things began to change.

With the help of an advocacy group, Rocha pressured the city to pay for 480 hours of private tutoring, which eventually helped him read at a functional level. Now 20 and working for United Parcel Service, he's one of three people profiled (and the only one comfortable with being identified) in WNYC Radio reporter Beth Fertig's new book, Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?.

The use of optical character recognition (OCR) systems combined with speech synthesis (computer-generated speech) has become increasingly accepted as a means of compensating for reading disabilities. These OCR systems, or reading machines, convert printed text to spoken language so the user can hear and see written words. These technologies are now marketed internationally (for example, WYNN®, Kurzweil 3000®), commonly found in assistive technology centers serving individuals with learning disabilities, frequently exhibited at LD conferences, generally considered in assistive technology evaluations for students with LD, and regularly discussed in publications on LD and assistive technology.

Long-awaited legislation to replace three federal reading programs—Early Reading First, Reading First, and Striving Readers—was introduced Nov. 5 by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and would authorize $2.35 billion in funding to improve reading and writing in kindergarten to 12th grade.

E-Z Web Accessibility! - Content Management Systems Date:  Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Mountain Time Read More and Register Introduction to Assistive Technology Date: Monday, April 11, 2011 Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Mountain Time Read More and Register The Internet and our Aging Population: Getting Seniors Online Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Mountain Time Read More and Register Telling Our Stories: Mike Ervin Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Mountain Time Read More and Register iPads and Communication Apps: An Interactive Exploration Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Mountain Time Read More and Register

This revised study finds that students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave without a diploma than proficient readers. It is notable in breaking down for the first time the likelihood of graduation by different reading skill levels and poverty experiences. It also updates a 2011 research brief with new data on graduation rates for students living in concentrated poverty.

“Nobody Is Too ‘Anything’ to Read, Write or Communicate” The late news broadcaster Walter Cronkite catalogued the ills of the world every night for television viewers. But through the cataract of daily despair he always glimpsed a reason to hope, to be joyful about the possibilities of the moment and beyond. For the tens of millions of viewers who watched his coverage of the first lunar landing 40 years ago that enthusiasm reached out from their TV sets, when, at the moment of human touchdown on the surface of the moon, Cronkite shed his cloak of objectivity and exuberantly exclaimed, “Oh, boy!”

Despite the many daily challenges that confront them in their sphere, members of school district assistive technology teams nationwide share Cronkite’s enthusiasm for the vast potential of technology to change the lives of individuals with disabilities. Sure, the struggles AT team members face are daunting: lack of time and money; too many pre-service and in-service teachers without sufficient AT training; funding-strapped districts that are sometimes reluctant to approve teams’ AT recommendations for individual students; the reluctance of some districts to accept AT’s viability, and a continuing belief in a few education quarters that some children with disabilities may never learn to read and write. Fortunately, among district AT team members – speech-language pathologists (SLP’s), occupational therapists (OT’s) and others – the technology flame burns brighter than ever. Their enthusiasm still bubbles. Their thirst for information about the latest technology developments that may aid their district’s children is unquenched. And their conviction that no child is too disabled to read or write remains not only ironclad but often translates into a hard-won happy reality for the children with whom they work.