To be gobsmacked at this letter from the school?

[sellisx]

My little sister who lives with me, came home yesterday with a note from the school to say, they are now starting to do their homework on emails. So instead of handing in a written homework piece, it'd have to be e-mailed.
That sounds bad enough but then goes on to say that "they should probably use Gmail as it has a spell checker"
:O I just can't fathom this. Surely spell checking isn't cheating?

Support for people with learning difficulties seems to be better at university than school. My nephew (also dyslexic) got a grant for some specialist kit as well as exam assistance. My brother (another dyslexic - runs very strong in my family) now mostly uses a voice recognition program. Even in the old days my father dictated everything to his secretary to type up. His writing was also terrible. It's not the worst problem to have once you finish schooling.

We are in the process of teaching DD to touch type, she is in year 6 and dyslexic. She is really doing well in overcoming her reading difficulties but her handwriting is a real barrier and being able to type effectively enough to take notes will be invaluable to her as she goes through school and further education.

She has (and the rest of the school) been using "my maths" to submit her maths homework, although this year she hasn't because i think her teacher is a bit of a technophobe, but it also seems they are focusing more on mental arithmetic and the basics again this year.

We have had to pay for specialist tuition and the touch typing ourselves (although thankfully this year have received a charitable grant to cover this), the schools provisions for her SEN have bordered on non-existent.

She is officially diagnosed as severely dyslexic by ed psych.

Nooka, could you tell me the name of that game, sounds perfect for my DS!

Typing of the Dead - it's great.

Ds age 7 likes writing on the computer sometimes but usually does homework in pencil (all homework for him can be any sort of writing, drawing, Powerpoint, collage...) , because the kids like showing each other their homework in the playground, but if it's sent by email it only gets seen by the teacher. I've seen him try to figure out the red wiggly lines and add names to the dictionary, and it seems to help him learn correct spelling.
Though MrNC is severely dyslexic and can't use a spellchecker as he can't figure out which word to change it to - he once offered me a uni essay so I could save time, but he'd gone through the whole thing quickly just selecting the top suggestion for each word, so it made no sense whatsoever!

Brilliant, thank you :)

That's the one! Very silly and quite effective at making you look at the screen and not at your hands When ds was first diagnosed we got a dyslexic dictionary (based on sound and syllables) we both found it impossible to use because we struggled to hear the number of syllables.

I was a very early reader and I'd never really thought about how to read, I just sort of look at the page and the meaning appears iyswim (I'm lousy at learning languages too) it was so difficult trying to help ds (we ended up with a fantastic synthetic phonics tutor instead).