Alphasmart

[Migsy1]

Does anyone's kids have one? I was wondering if it might be useful for my dyslexic DS who is 10. Does it have a spell check on it?

My DS used one for 4 years from Y3 until Y6. He doesn't have dyslexia though, he has ASD and is pretty dyspraxic, so he used it because it was a lot quicker than hand writing. It does have a spell check but it's quite clunky compared to a laptop or notebook spellchecker. My DS would have been distracted by a laptop, an Alphasmart is really basic, no distractions. It really depends on your DS's character. If he's approaching secondary age a laptop or notebook may be more appropriate.

Thanks Ellen. He is in yr 6. Maybe a laptop would be better. What does your DS use now?

Weeeell, he was supposed to start using a laptop in secondary, but he's decided he doesn't want to stand out and is writing by hand! He's in Y7 and he's come on so much this year. The only trouble is that he's still really slow so in tests he doesn't get much done. When he used the Alphasmart in lessons he could use it in his SATs as it was 'normal' for him. Now he doesn't use it he can't use it in exams either. He also thought the Alphasmart was 'too babyish' for secondary.

I second the laptop/netbook suggestion.. simply because as he gets older children are often encouraged/expected to produce printed work and also you can do so much more.. with office software of any sort he can do powerpoint, word docs.. and research all in one spot.
My DS2 uses a laptop for most of his work as he has very poor fine motor (and learning diffs) and in the school in which I work several have laptops and they are so much easier to hook up to school printers etc etc

My lad is 7 and uses one for some lessons. It's too basic to distract him and allows him to keep up in lessons he enjoys like science and history without getting frustrated by the snails pace of his handwriting. He does do "write from the start" at home every day and for English he writes long hand.

For secondary I think I'd deffo pay for to have a laptop myself if school couldn't run to one, as the larger screen would allow you to view more text at a time & insert diagrams etc. Then again I find things like mindmaps really handy for note taking and a laptop facillitates this kind of graphical info recording in a way that an alpha smart can't.

welllll, thing is with the Alphasmart, it has a tiny screen that only display a line or two of text at a time, so it won't let him get used to scanning around, which is what mature readers do. Even if he isn't at that kind of stage ( ie he reads just one word at a time without a second glance out of the corner of his eye at any others, when he needs to read real text ( books etc), being used to an A/S won't help. He'll get distracted by all the other text becuase that's not what he's used to seeing. OK if he gets distracted anyway and he needs to get his coursework down a bit at a time, but otherwise you're best off with a laptop or something that looks at least like a real page or you may actually be holding him back.

Lilz, you can adjust the Alphasmart font to show up to 6 lines of text. But, yes, by Y7 you do need to start thinking about presentation of work and the Alphasmart isn't good for that. Its pros are that it's very robust, works on 3 AA batteries, isn't attractive to thieves and has no distracting functions. Its cons are its very basic presentation, and small screen.

I'm mildly dyslexic and that's partly why I rec a laptop for year 7 onwards.

The ability to mindmap, highlight text in various colours, see the WHOLE page of text, enlarge fonts etc, etc is invaluable to me when I'm studying, especially if I'm trying to make sense of a topic where I find the subject matter challenging. My sis is also dyslexic and she finds the same.

I used a wordprocessor with a similar screen size to the alphasmart, with a at Uni 20 years ago and loathed the darn thing in comparison to the ease of producing an essay on a computer screen (budget constraints meant I couldn't afford a home PC for typing essays - it was the days of netscape & wordperfect).

DS is at the stage where he's only producing a maximum of 5 or 6 simple sentences at a time. Therefore he doesn't need a larger screen.

The BIG downside to a laptop are the security issues - alphasmarts are way too uncool to nick. The average school isn't that secure an environment.

Dd2 found the alpha smart way too limited, so she uses a net book in school. She uses it because of her fine motor issues, not dyslexia though. She's 8 now.

My ds, who's in year 5, has had an Alphasmart for over a year now and is now hopefully in line for a laptop, after some pushing from his teacher and recommendations from the EP.

He doesn't have dyslexia, but has fine motor and other issues with handwriting which were holding him back in written work - basically he got to the point where he just refused to write.

His teachers came up against problems with using the Alphasmart because of the small screen and are finding this is a problem more and more now he's producing extended pieces of writing.

My ds has AS and we've also find it nigh on impossible to get him to revisit a piece of work for editing and laying things out properly. To him, once he's finished typing a piece of work, its done and dusted. This is a real problem with the Alphasmart, because with the small sized screen he can't see enough of his work to be able to set it out nicely on the page and forgets to put in paragraphs etc.

Its also a bit of a pain having to plug it into a computer to download then edit the work, as its an extra leg that takes additional time and of course relies on access to a computer whenever its needed.

Boch, with our secondary pupils who were laptop users, they would sign them out from the learning support department for specific lessons and hand them back in after (and take the work home on a memory stick) so there were less issues with security. Most classes had an lsa in attendance anyway, and there was always discussion over whether a pc was available to access at home.

Thanks for all your advice. It definitely sounds like a laptop would be a much better option for him.