Dr. David Metzner

There are many ways that tablets can help children learn, but what about children with dyslexia? Would the tablet help them learn to read better? Here are some of the many ways that tablets can not only help students learn at the same pace as a normal student, but have learn better ways to cope with the challenges that they will face throughout their entire lives.

What is Dyslexia?

Thanks to the media, the most popular learning disability today is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and every school teacher thinks that they can diagnose the disorder and recognize ADHD symptoms in children. Dyslexia is certainly less known but it is also very common. Dyslexia is much milder learning disorder that prevents a child from reading. It is important to remember that children that have dyslexia rarely experience mental retardation. Many children will have problems with orthographic coding, processing speed, language skills, verbal comprehension, phonological awareness, and auditory short-term memory.

Dyslexia is one of the most common reading disorders. Many of the children that suffer from dyslexia also suffer from another learning disability, making it even more difficult for the child to learn. Children that have dyslexia will have difficulties coming up with rhymes on their own. They will have problem with spelling, guessing words, adding letters to words, omitting letters from words, summarizing stories, reading out loud, and counting the syllables in a word. Parents should spend time understanding specifics of children with learning disabilities and learn how to select the best learning strategies for their children.

How do Tablets help Children Read?

One of the biggest problems that teachers and parents face with dyslexic students is teaching the child to read. Since reading is an enormous part of our everyday life, it can leave children at a serious disadvantage. Just imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t read. How could you keep up with the class if you were not able to read the book?

Learning Ally

Learning Ally gives the student the ability to not only be able to access audiobooks, but “VOICEtext” books as well. “VOICEtext” books are not like the other audiobooks that many dyslexic students rely on. What makes “VOICEtext” so special is that it highlights the entire paragraph instead of word by word like many of the other apps that are available to help dyslexic children read. Learning Ally can be installed on either iOS or on Android tablets which gives children with dyslexia the chance to read on the tablet they already have.

Voice Dream Reader

Voice Dream Reader is one of the best text-to-speech apps for children with an Apple product. Voice Dream Reader does more than just text-to-speech for your books. The reader allows the student to input text from a number of different sources like Dropbox, Evernote, Bookshare, and the web. This allows the student to have the ability to have the text read to them without having to use specialized programs that the text-to-speech reader can read from. Voice Dream Reader reads anything that the student pastes into the box as well which makes it easy for students to use with applications that it does not support.

Priszmo, the Picture Reader

For students who are at school and want to read their textbooks, Prizmo is the right app for the job. Only accessible on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPads; Prizmo has the ability to read back pictures of text documents. This allows students to not only have the books at the school read to them, it gives them the same ability to read anything they encounter as long as they can take a readable picture of it. Students can also have that picture converted into PDF which can save the text for later. This can help them if they need to keep ahold of the information for a later use.

Co:Writer, Helping Little Writers Find the Words to Express Themselves

Co:Writer is another wonderful app for Apple touchscreens that allows children to find the words that they are struggling to find. Since one of the problems that dyslexic children face is not understanding quite how a word that they want to use is spelled Co:Writer’s text prediction can help predict what they are trying to say. It also uses topic based dictionaries to improve on its word predications which allows students to find a specific word that they need that is based on a topic they are writing about. This can save the student a lot of time and aggravation while helping them learn the correct spelling at the same time.

Quizlet, Giving Dyslexia Students Flashcards They Can Use

Quizlet is a flashcard app that is not only available on devices, it can be accessed on the web as well. Quizlet allows students to use the flashcards that it provides to study whichever subject they need to learn. Quizlet also allows the student the ability to create flashcards if there are not any on the subject that they are trying to learn about. But the best option that Quizlet gives dyslexic students is the text-to-speech option which means they will be able to enjoy learning about the subject.

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