Ill-Structured Writing Problems With ASD & Dragon Size Solutions

 

During my four years of teaching writing, I have had the privilege of working with a variety of students. Each student is different with his or her preferred learning method. Some students walk through my door needing more detailed individualized education plans than others. Every year, I’ve had at least one student diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum. This year is no different from the rest, as I have one boy who has Asperger. This student also has serve anxiety issues. My research of autism spectrum disorders and critique of the writing tool Dragon Dictation, will be dedicated to helping address the ill-structured problem of writing for my student with Asperger.

According to federal data from 2008, 1 in every 88 American children are diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum (Bower 2013). Eight years later, the ratio is shows different numbers. Patterns indicate the number of children on the autism spectrum are increasing at a surprising rate. These findings indicate teaching students with autism spectrum disorders will become more of the norm.

Recent brain research of the autism spectrum disorders(ASD) states a person with ASD has a brain that functions very differently from what most would call a normal brain. New and innovative brain imagining technology indicates that most people with ASD have brains in which messages sent from one part of the brain to another occurs in different frequency’s and levels of efficiency compared to a person with a normal functioning brain (Mostofsky et. 2009). To explain, my student’s brain parts work really well, but the different parts of his brain don’t necessarily communicate well with each other.

Writing is an ill-structured problem because it can involve many variables impacting the intended outcome. Variables for writing include grammar, content, research, structure, vocabulary, and more. According to Kathy Oehler, writing also demands quality communication and coordination with different parts of the brain (Oehler 2013). Oehler states,  “In order to write, a person must activate the areas of the brain that govern motor control and planning, language skills, sensory feedback, problem solving, imitation skills, memory, organization, and proprioception, the awareness of the position of one’s own body in space and the body’s parts in relation to each other.” The student in my class with Asperger and server anxiety, struggles with putting his thoughts and words into written form. He has great ideas and is extremely brilliant, but he can not complete the written task with a proficient and detailed response. His writing is often way more simplistic than his verbal responses. The poor communication between the parts of his brain have greatly impacted his ability to write and form the necessary sentences on paper (Oehler 2013).

Dragon Dictation is a free speech recognition app that will aid with getting thoughts into words.      This app is very simple. It transcribes what a person says using any connected mic for the chosen device. After the app records what is said, it will display it in written form when pushing the “Done” button. From this point on, the user is given the ability to edit their own writing. Dragon may also suggest different words from what it processes as your intended meaning. It also allows you to send your newly recorded writing as a text message, email, social media posts or clipboard copy. This option will be very useful for my particular student because my class use Chromebooks and Google Apps mail accounts. The app also allows different languages, recognizes names from your contacts section, and it detects the end-of-speech. Overall the app is very easy to use, and the app is very accurate with its voice recognition.

Some restrictions of this app include, no storage capabilities, no undo option, and no option to add in proper nouns outside of your contacts. Scrolling through a long note can also be a hassle. Selecting words in a long transcription can also be difficult on a touch screen phone. I foresee having to chunk out large reports into smaller sections of writing, and I foresee having minor issues with punctuation.

In theory this app will eliminate a major barrier for my ASD student. To explain, he will actually have words and thoughts to organize and edit. This is a major step forward from not having any words written. With careful guidance and very specific and structured instructions, my student will be able to bypass the restrictions of poor neural communication. Since the app is free it does come with a few new problems to deal with, but the potential solutions it may help create far outweigh those problems.

 

 

References:

Bower, B. (2012). U.S. autism rate continues to rise. Science News, 181(9), 14-14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23211396

Mostofsky, S., S. Powell, D. Simmonds, M. Goldberg, B. Caffo, and J. Pekar. (2009) “Decreased Connectivity and Cerebellar Activity in Autism during Motor Task Performance.” Brain, A Journal of Neurology 132 no. 9: 2413–2425. Retreived from http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/132/9/2413

Oehler, K. (2013). Please Don’t Make Me Write! Autism Asperger’s Digest Retrieved from http://autismdigest.com/write/

Szatmari, P. (2003). The Causes Of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Multiple Factors Have Been Identified, But A Unifying Cascade Of Events Is Still Elusive. BMJ: British Medical Journal,326(7382), 173-174. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25453459