Does anyone have any experience of Jaws or Supernova and a Magna Link?

[supermum98]

I am trying to do my homework for a meeting. re. recording. My ds is visually impaired and can't read his TA's notes. Support services have suggested he touch-type, but frankly the chances of him ever being able to use this as a means of recording in class is zero in my opinion as he is a one-handed typist and has processing problems. I think ( and have had this confirmed by other professionals that they should be looking at dictation software ie. Dragon, which I hear is good with IPad and IPhone 4s. Spoke to New College Worcester, as advised on here and they were very helpful, they have students taking IPhone's into class for dictation/recording. They mentioned Dolphin Software, as above has anyone any experience of this? I think it is text to speach software as he needs a computer to read stuff out to him.

Also I want his laptop, wirelessly connected to whiteboard but have been told by school is a pipedream. Someone on here mentioned a Magna Link, does anyone know what it is and how it works? Thanx

I worked with a visually impaired student (also diagnosed with mild learning difficulties and a processing delay as well as EAL) for two years as a TA (during her year 7 and 8). She had her own laptop with SuperNova. In my experience it's a great program for so many features (magnification level, colour contrasts, mouse arrow size, voice read out etc.) It took a bit of practice (and, I'll be honest, a huge amount of restraint on my part not to 'just do it for her') but she got it in the end.

We also used a touch typing program which read out what should be typed and then what was typed but she found this confusing so we just used it with Supernova. She used this for doing homework etc not note taking.

Can I ask what size font can your son read? My student could read size 26/28 and if I used a black thinish marker and wrote large enough (4-5 words a line) she could read this. We also had all resources adapted by our resources coordinator.

There was talk of getting her laptop to connect with the whiteboard but it hadn't materialised by the time I left. We did have adapted versions of any powerpoints used on her laptop though.

Thanks blueemerald, that has confirmed my feelings that more could be done.
He needs size 24 for prolonged reading but can get away with 18 for short bursts. Did your student have her laptop in class all the time? The TA's don't take my ds laptop into lessons. 'All resources adapted by our resource co-ordinator', when I talked about resources not materialising I was told by Senco that they had have a lot of SENS kids ie. they haven't got time. At the AR there was a suggestion that I should be preparing the resources for him. What resources did the resource co-ordinator adapt? Did you get an impression that the whiteboard could be linked up to the laptop? Did your student use dragon digtate/natural reader at all?

She had the laptop for all obvious lessons (not DT, PE etc) but sometimes it made more sense for her to write (maths for example, but it did take a while to get her in the habit of writing big enough so she could read it...she ended up being proud of the fact that she got through 9 exercise books in a year) or to have an exercise book along with the laptop (science, for all her worksheets and diagrams etc)

My student (and her more severely visually impaired but NT twin sister) had a set number of 'resource hours' laid out in their statements (adapting in terms of font size/layout is different to differentiation) so we had two resources coordinators (there was also a blind student 4 years above them). The RC adapted everything, all worksheets, text book chapters, graphs etc. She also ordered large print fiction books from the RNIB library.

I certainly remember our very excited IT support guys saying a white board link up was possible but it didn't happen in the time I was there.

My student didn't use a dictation program as, due to her processing delay, she couldn't dictate/explain anything very well. We concentrated on touch typing for her (and also recorded parts of lessons for her to listen to again)

blueemerald, thanx for that, that has given me food for thought. As the school are currently seeking parents opinions, I will flag up that perhaps they need a designated resource co-ordinator, I know there is a blind child and doubtless other visually impaired kids, not to mention dyslexics. I will also ring parent partnership and check out my statement with them, re. resourse hours. My ds has 30 hours TA support and I know that should be sufficient to develope resources, but it isn't happening. What annoys me is when my ds is off or the TA has non-contact time, she will usually be supporting another child, which I wouldn't mind if they were up to speed with my ds's needs, but they are not and seem to think it is my job to develope resources.

There is no way it should be up to parents to produce resources. It does sound very much like school are failing to provide adequate support to meet your ds needs. Without knowing the fine detail of his statement, it's hard to say whether you can haul them up for failure to implement requirements of a statement. If current statement doesn't specify anything about resources, could you perhaps ask for an emergency review to have this written in? But even without this school could be reminded that their failure ro make reasonable adjustments for your son's disability is in contravention of the disability discrimination act. PWP is a good place to start for support. IPSEA will also be able to advise. Also LA may intervene if school not implementing statement.
By the way seen Dragon Naturally Speaking used successfully in school though does take some time to get used to.

Myself and the twin's TA had 5 non contact periods a week (as did every TA regardless of the students they worked with) which we were expected to use to adapt resources (the biggest problem we had was the fact that the teachers were not all great at giving in resources to be adapted until the last minute).