Halton/Bridges Research ProjectKurzweil Professional Development

Anne Hill - ahill@fanshawec.caMarion Thorpe - thorpem@hdsb.ca

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Focus

Project Title

• Do comprehensive models of professional development for teachers, educational assistants, parents and students help improve comfort with and use of assistive technology?

• Does using Kurzweil help improve student reading comprehension ?

Kurzweil in the Classroom: Stacey’s Experience

What is Kurzweil 3000?

• A reading, study skill, and writing program that educators can use to meet the needs of learners.

• It enables educators to provide differentiated instruction without having to differentiate the curriculum.

How can this help students?

• Provides both a set of tools and opportunities to practice – Reading skills– Study skills– Writing skills– Organizational skills

– Kurzweil 11 - The New Features

Kurzweil in the Classroom: The Babe Ruth Speech

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Maintaining Success

- Our Design Experiment: Overview of the research project

– Change Over Time – hopefully improvement

– Collaboration & Learning for all Involved - educators, families, trainers and researchers

– What type of data collection does this specific research involve?

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Inclusion

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Self Confidence

Specific Research MeasurementsLevel One for Parents/Guardian’s Involves: • A. Completing three completely confidential questionnaires

regarding their Comfort with and Use of assistive technology. • B. Allowing their child’s teacher and the Bridges professional

development trainers to give their child three (pre, during and post training) Kurzweil based MAZE assessments of their child’s reading comprehension skills.

Level One for Educators Involves: • Completing three Comfort & Use Questionnaires

Comfort & Use Questionnaire1) Participant categories

2. General/overall comfort with and use of AT – rating scales range from aware to adept

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Moving Confidently to High School

3. Open ended questions regarding challenges/barriers to using Assistive Technology

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Class-Wide Application

MAZE Assessments - AIM’s Web

Kurzweil in the Classroom:Reading Fluency

Level Two Involves: (This involves as much or as little time as participants desire),

• Level One plus: Participating in an on-line interactive database where participants collaborate with other parents and teachers, viewing video training clips, sharing research articles and stories etc.

Adult participants may collaborate on line in a Knowledge Forum database to outline their challenges and problem solve regarding how to solve them.

A View

A Note

Build On

http://kforum.motion.com:8080/login?DBGroup=HBK_PD

Our Challenges

Time 1) Research set up

• Ethics approvals• Decisions re specific data collection procedures• Best approaches to communicate data collection procedures to

trainers2) Data collection

• Coverage of Kurzweil information • Not wasting family & staff time

Communication 1) Getting the word out to parents and staff

• Content, timing, strategies…..-• Logistics re three locations- Halton, TO and London

Kurzweil in the Classroom: Taking Risks

Where would you go next?• Research issues/questions that you would like

to see addressed?

Creation TapestryJudy Chicago Canadian Textile Museum55 Centre Ave, TO

ahill@fanshawec.cathorpem@hdsb.ca