Assistive technology exists to help students with a learning difficulty or disability participate in education more fully. It helps to close the gap between them and their peers. Schools can apply for an Assistive Technology grant from the Department of Education to buy laptops, tablets, etc for eligible students. I will be covering the dyslexia-specific assistive technology today as there is an extensive range available for other needs and disabilities.

Usually, the equipment provided is kept in school as it is school property and can be passed on to another student or another school when it is no longer needed by the pupil who it was acquired for.

To support children with dyslexia, we would use assistive technology in the form of laptops and tablets, reading pens, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text tools. These help children who have difficulty with reading and writing.

Laptop/Tablet: Often handwriting and transcribing can be very difficult for a child with dyslexia, the laptop takes away the pressure of illegible writing and helps the child and teacher understand what has been written. Hand strength and fine motor skills required for writing can be a common issue with dyslexia so enabling them to carry out the task in a more suitable way is a great support for them. The laptop also opens the user up to other assistive tools such as text-to-speech and speech-to-text.

Reading Pen: When reading a piece of text and confronted with a new or tricky word, the child can run the nib of a reading pen across the word and it is read aloud to them, as if a teacher or parent was reading the word for them. This offers more independence to the child when reading. Some reading pens even offer an explanation of the word. Certain “word-only” reading pens are approved by the Department of Education for use in state exams.

Text-to-Speech/Speech-to-Text Tools: Most tablets, laptops, and devices offer text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools. There are often in-built accessibility tools of this nature on some websites if we know where to find them. Chrome has a “HelperBird” tool that will read aloud any passage of highlighted text. Seeing AI is a text-scanning app if you just point your phone camera over the page you want to read. These tools are generally not provided by schools but they are very useful in day-to-day life and as far as I’m aware they are free to use.

Assistive technology is merely a tool to help children carry out activities, a structured literacy approach, with multi-sensory methodologies, will help them to understand literacy in a more meaningful way, but having the assistive technology means that they can do more with what they’re learning. It levels the playing field as it can alleviate pressures associated with writing and reading, delaying the child's achievement in various areas of the curriculum.

When I first set out to study dyslexia, I thought I had a pretty clear understanding of what dyslexia was. I was sorely mistaken. Even with years of experience working in dyslexia workshops and teaching in a mainstream classroom, I was only aware of how dyslexia presented itself in the children's work. I didn't know why dyslexia was causing these problems for children, nor did I realise that the difficulties can extend beyond literacy. I was not aware of the extraordinary strengths that come with dyslexia, as I was focused on the difficulties that were presented to me in the classroom

The International Dyslexia Association define dyslexia as follows;

“ Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities” .

This definition fails to recognise the dyslexic strengths but it gives us quite a simple understanding of how it manifests itself in children's academic performance.

The main points that I would like people to understand about dyslexia are that dyslexia -

- is hereditary

- Affects 10-15% of the population

- Lasts a lifetime

- Often co-occurs with other learning difficulties

- Comes with some very useful strengths

Dyslexic-type difficulties include:

• Reading
• Spelling
• Writing
• Rhyme
• Sequencing
• Letters and Sounds
• Information retrieval
• Organising
• Handwriting
• Time
• Processing Speed
• Working Memory

These are some, but not all dyslexic-type difficulties. A child may have all of these or only one or two.

Some of the common strengths we see with our dyslexic learners would be

• Atypical approach to problem-solving
• Innovative
• Creative
• Determined to persevere
• Good procrastinators – taking time to find appropriate solutions
• Empathetic
• Often good verbal communicators

Dyslexia is as individual as a fingerprint. It occurs across a continuum and each learner has their own set of strengths and difficulties. Dyslexia makes school so very difficult for a pupil but with the appropriate supports we can help them to achieve their full potential.

Games played with curved sticks and a ball can be found in the histories of many cultures. In Egypt, 4000-year-old carvings feature teams with sticks and a projectile, hurling dates to before 1272 BC in Ireland, and there is a depiction from approximately 600 BC in Ancient Greece, where the game may have been called kerētízein or because it was played with a horn or horn-like stick. In Inner Mongolia, the Daur people have been playing beikou, a game similar to modern field hockey, for about 1,000 years.

Most evidence of hockey-like games during the Middle Ages is found in legislation concerning sports and games. The Galway Statute enacted in Ireland in 1527 banned certain types of ball games, including games using "hooked" (written "hockie", similar to "hooky") sticks. By the 19th century, the various forms and divisions of historic games began to differentiate and coalesce into the individual sports defined today. Organizations dedicated to the codification of rules and regulations began to form, and national and international bodies sprang up to manage domestic and international competition.