Students 2.0 Apps to Enable Students Maximise their Academic Performance Pauric Holleran, Assistive Technology Officer UCD Access Centre
Students 2.0Apps to Enable Students Maximise their Academic Performance
Pauric Holleran, Assistive Technology Officer
UCD Access Centre
• Supporting students with difficulties in specific areas
• Helping students achieve academic excellence
Learning Tools - A Broadening Scope
How Much Does Accessibility Cost?
• Texthelp Read and Write– approx €400
• Claroread– approx €250
• Free alternatives are now available
Ambient Connectedness
• More distractions
•Greater difficulty in sustained work
• Use of social media for peer-learning
Purpose of the Study Smarter Student Group
• Glean information on the needs of students on technology tools for learning
• Richer feedback on tools• Create student technology leaders and
ambassadors
Benefits of Facebook Group
• Complemented offline focus group• Sustained students’ engagement• ‘Likes’: immediate feedback
•Much richer feedback than:– online surveys– individual feedback
Overview of Tools
• Reading Tools
• Writing Tools
• Notetaking Tools
• Organisation / Task Management Tools
Text to Speech
• Reading text out loud makes it easier to engage with written content.
• You can use it to read websites, documents or lecture notes.
• Convert text from books and handouts to digital documents to be read out loud.
Reading with your Phone
• iPhone – built in text to speech• Android: VoiceAloud
• Reading printed documents
–iPhone: ClaroSpeak- £5–Android: Google Drive
Visual Tools
• Optimize the learning environment
• Benefits accrue over time
• Features– Text size– Background color– Line spacing– Distractions Removed
Cultivating a Sound Environment
• Online Noise Generator–Simply Noise
• Online Rain Generator–Simply Rain
• CoffeeShop Noise Generator–Coffitivity
• Advantages– Intuitive way to organize ideas– Generating ideas quickly– Simplifies complicated information
–Emphasizes associations
Mindmapping
Word Prediction
• Can customize dictionaries
• Adapts to user style and word-use
• Becomes more accurate with use
• Cloud-learning capable
Using Text to Speech to Proofread your work • Read your text back to yourself
• Provides a fresh perspective
• Can assess for clarity and flow
• Can identify awkward phrasing
Using Text to Speech
• Recommended questions– Are my main points clear?– Are there keywords from class I can use?– Have I provided supporting evidence?– Should I give an example?
Personalized Audio Bookmarking - Livescribe
• Quickly find and replay the most important parts of your lectures with ease
• Upload your notes and recordings to your computer, where you can store and organize them
Evernote – Your “External Brain”
• Collect and organize information easily– Capture webpages– Tag information - assigning tags to individual notes
means you can sort your data in meaningful ways
Evernote – Your “External Brain”
• Good for “brain dumps”
• Evernote saves the entire article or webpage, so you never have to worry about something (even the included images) disappearing ever again.
• Useful as ‘idea buckets’.
Project Management Tool - Trello
• Makes it easy to collaborate
• Can easily assign team members to tasks
• Add and modify cards easily
• Augments your collaboration without overwhelming you
Elements of Flow
• Clarity of goals and immediate feedback
• A high level of concentration on a limited field
• Balance between skills and challenge
Pomodoro Technique
• Reduces the impact of internal and external
interruptions on focus and ”flow”.
• Forces the pursuit of a singular task.
• Regular review encourages self-evaluation.
Pomodoro Technique
• As pomodori are completed, they are recorded, adding to a sense of accomplishment
• After practice, students develop the skill to anticipate the amount of time a task requires.
Pomodoro Technique
• Starting Out– Start small – shrink the length of time until you no
longer feel resistance to it.– Write distractions on a separate piece of paper.– Neurological benefits of ticking sound.– After practice brain will switch to ‘work mode’.