Expressive+Language+Disorder+and+Blogging

Recently I had a student that had extreme Expressive Language Disorder; his Verbal IQ was 72, while his Nonverbal IQ was 121 – needless to say he was a challenge. People with this disorder understand language much better than they are able to communicate. It is a specific language impairment which is characterized by an ability to use expressive spoken/written language at markedly below grade level, while their language comprehension is within normal limits. Also accompanying this disorder are problems with vocabulary, producing complex sentences, and remembering words. Technology is revolutionizing the way we think and teach. There is so much information available to us on the Internet we must teach our students how to move from acquiring basic information to evaluating, synthesizing, analyzing, and/or applying information. Blogging is fast becoming a way to facilitate this. Research has also shown that “students write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet.” Because of this, many teachers are making blogging an integral part of their lesson plan. These are all important reasons that a student with an Expressive Language Disorder would need to be able to utilize this Web 2.0 technique. Students with this disorder understand the written material that they are exposed to and have a lot to say, but they have great difficulty retrieving and organizing words and sentences when expressing more complicated thoughts and ideas. Blogging would pose great difficulties for them and be extremely frustrating. This disorder is not something that disappears over time, so it is imperative that they be given tools to overcome this barrier. An Assistive Technology that helped my student and can help others overcome the challenge of getting his thoughts written is the use of SOLO 6. Fortunately our school district provides this literacy suite for us, which has the following assistive technology accommodations: text reader, graphic organizer, talking word processor, and word prediction. Co:Writer is one part of the suite and it is designed for students that have difficulty translating thoughts into writing. It will work in conjunction with any application – MS Word, Online, Blogs, Emails, etc. As the student types, it will interpret spelling and grammar mistakes. It can also speak any text – on screen, MS Word, Google Docs, online, etc. My student worked well with this program, it empowered him to put his thoughts together at his own pace. He did not have to sit and struggle with not only getting his thoughts down, but also with spelling and grammar -- often he would lose his train of thought when asking us how to spell a word. We worked with this program last year while he was in 8th grade – writing never became easy for him, but it did become less frustrating and his eventual product was much improved. This program, or one similar, would be beneficial for any student being asked to blog about a topic – they would find it less frustrating to get their thoughts and ideas down in a more coherent fashion, and thus enable them to take advantage of all the benefits that blogging holds for them. [] [] [] [] [] []