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Siri,

But voice functionality is built into Android, the Windows Phone platform, and most other mobile systems, as well as many apps

Nuance is at the heart of the boom in voice technology

, Nuance hopes to put its speech interfaces in many more places, most notably the television and the automobile

Meanwhile, the Sync entertainment system in Ford automobiles already uses Nuance’s technology to let drivers pull up directions, weather information, and songs. About four million Ford cars on the road have Sync with voice recognition. Last week, Nuance introduced software called Dragon Drive that will let other car manufacturers add voice-control features to vehicles

“It’s astonishingly accurate,” says Brian Phelps, CEO and cofounder of Montrue and himself an ER doctor. “Speech has turned a corner; it’s gotten to a point where we’re getting incredible accuracy right out of the box

Sejnoha believes that within a few years, mobile voice interfaces will be much more pervasive and powerful. “I should just be able to talk to it without touching it,” he says. “It will constantly be listening for trigger words, and will just do it—pop up a calendar, or ready a text message, or a browser that’s navigated to where you want to go

Students who use assistive technology - Currently, some of the testing tools have compatibility problems with some screen reader technologies. This occasionally results in the screen reader program crashing during an exam. A good practice would be to have a mock exam available for students to try so that they will know ahead of time if their assistive technology will work with your exam. If it does not, an alternate version of the exam will need to be provided

Teach students using a PC to right click on the content they wish to print and choose print. This will allow them to print only the content in that frame.

using color to differentiate between addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems can be very helpful. In learning sequential step problems, highlighting each step in a different color can also overcome this natural difficulty.

What To Avoid With Visual Learners

Rote memorization and drill will not only be mostly impossible for your visual learner, but will also sap his natural love of learning.

Visual learners also tend to “visualize” time passing, so timed quizzes and tests put almost tangible pressure on them, causing unnecessary anxiety

not always be able to “show their work.”

, be prepared for a visual learner to

It is important to help them to understand that their visual learning style is not a disadvantage, but simply a different way of acquiring knowledge

The Torrance Tests were developed by E. Paul Torrance in the late 1950s, when he was an education professor at the University of Minnesota.

Well, surprise, surprise.  For several decades we as a society have been suppressing children’s freedom to ever-greater extents, and now we find that their creativity is declining.

Creativity is nurtured by freedom and stifled by the continuous monitoring, evaluation, adult-direction, and pressure to conform that restrict children’s lives today.  In the real world few questions have one right answer, few problems have one right solution; that’s why creativity is crucial to success in the real world.  But more and more we are subjecting children to an educational system that assumes one right answer to every question and one correct solution to every problem, a system that punishes children (and their teachers too) for daring to try different routes.  We are also, as I documented in a previous essay, increasingly depriving children of free time outside of school to play, explore, be bored, overcome boredom, fail, overcome failure—that is, to do all that they must do in order to develop their full creative potential.

In the next essay in this series, I will present research evidence that creativity really does bloom in the soil of freedom and die in the hands of overdirective, overprotective, ov

If anything makes Americans stand tall internationally it is creativity.  “American ingenuity” is admired everywhere. We are not the richest country (at least not as measured by smallest percentage in poverty), nor the healthiest (far from it), nor the country whose kids score highest on standardized tests (despite our politicians’ misguided intentions to get us there), but we are the most inventive country.  We are the great innovators, specialists in figuring out new ways of doing things and new things to do. Perhaps this derives from our frontier beginnings, or from our unique form of democracy with its emphasis on individual freedom and respect for nonconformity.  In the business world as well as in academia and the arts and elsewhere, creativity is our number one asset.  In a recent IBM poll, 1,500 CEOs acknowledged this when they identified creativity as the best predictor of future success.[1] 

judgmental teachers and parents.

Statement of Needed Transition Services - beginning no later than the first IEP developed when the eligible student is 14.

Merit pay and eliminating teacher tenure, while turning teachers into at-will employees are the biggest disservice our leaders can do to students.

The teaching of history, civics, geography, and the arts have shrunk to almost nothing in some schools, or are made to serve the tested areas.

Even worse, in some schools weeks of valuable classroom time are wasted giving practice standardized tests (and tests to practice for the practice standardized tests) so obsessive administrators can track how the students are doing

. Pearson

received the contract to create the tests, has a full series of practice tests, while other companies like McGraw-Hill with its Acuity division, are already changing gears from offering practice materials for state tests to providing comprehensive materials for Common Core.

Common Cor

Why would anyone willingly sign up for this madness?

I cannot remember a time when the classrooms have been filled with bad teachers. The poor teachers almost never lasted long enough to receive tenure.

there are exceptions

here is nothing to stop administrators from removing those teacher

tenure

provide teachers with the right to a hearing. It does not guarantee their jobs.

Times have changed. I have watched over the past few years as wonderfully gifted young teachers have left the classroom, feeling they do not have support and that things are not going to get any better

That framework is being torn down, oftentimes by politicians who would never dream of sending their own children to the kind of schools they are mandating for others.

After all, what other profession would allow me to make $37,000 a year after 14 years of experience and have people tell me how greedy I am?

Motivation comes from within, not external threats or bribes

-"People to contribute rather then just show up and grind out their days." (100) -What teacher has not wanted this?

-"Control leads to compliance: autonomy leads to engagement...only engagement can produce mastery" (110-111) When was the last time you had true engagement and what caused this engagement?

-"Do the workers refer to the company (school) as "they"? Or do they describe it in terms of "we"?" (129)  Do your students see school on their team?

First, Student's need to gain autonomy, not empowerment (we love this word, it gives the impression that students have power in the system).  Autonomy is self direction. Second, Mastery of the topic (big word in education ten years ago).  And third, purpose (education likes to use meaning or relevance).

the system right now makes this very, very hard to do

I find it very difficult sometimes to convince students that I am not grading a project, or that they can take a quiz whenever they are ready.  Students have learned that they will be told and shown how to survive in education. 

We need to encourage students to be independent thinkers that formulate their own methods to their own answers.  The data collection systems of education need to change to meet the new education system of the 21st century; we need to stop attempting to make new methodology fit into old data collection routines.