Helping Special Needs Pupils with Assistive or Enabling Technology in Moodle
Using Moodle, we, teachers of English as a Foreign Language, can help pupils who struggle because of a Learning Disability. Enter Moodle’s Assistive or Enabling Technology!
In 2000, I took a two-year course (having an in-between year when I had to tutor a struggling reader) in Teaching English to those with Specific Learning Disabilities (Dyslexia) from The British Dyslexia Association and Bar Ilan University. Having become aware of something I had hardly known anything about, ever since then, like many colleagues, I have made it a point to try to cater to the special needs of pupils with a Learning Disability. This is, in fact, in line with the policy of the Israel Ministry of Education.
To be sure, I am crazy about Moodle for a wide variety of reasons. Well, here is one more reason: Using Moodle’s Assistive or Enabling Technology, pupils can receive appropriate help so that their level of stress is reduced when they have to read a text. These pupils can use this technology to have text read to them, so they can concentrate on content and not on their struggle to decode. Incidentally, it has been proven that when given appropriate help by teachers who are trained to cater to their special needs, many of these pupils will eventually become skilled, independent readers (For more on this, click here) .
Moodle’s Assistive or Enabling Technology helps visually impaired pupils, too. “The Accessibility block appears on each course page and allows users to customise Moodle to their visual needs. It supports changing of text sizes and colour schemes and users can save their preference so that it can be applied permanently throughout the site.” (Read more on the source from which I quoted these words- Click on this link).
I have created a short video not only to illustrate these points but also to show how pupils can learn when teachers use, for example, a Moodle Lesson. Click here to view.
On the one hand, the extent to which teachers can make use of Moodle’s Assistive Technology is up to a teacher’s creativity. On the other hand, it is up to the effort that pupils with special needs will invest, too.
Moodle’s Assistive or Enabling Technology is a change maker. I suggest you give it a try.
Married to Susy, with two daughters: Gabriela and Maia, and three granddaughters (Sol, Dor, and Eliana), Eduardo is teaching English at school.
Having completed with HRDNZ both MoodleBites for Teachers and the six MEC courses, Eduardo is a Moodle Certified Educator.
He is a Certified Israel Ministry of Education Teachers’ teacher.
He has developed and facilitated several Israel Ministry of Education’s Spanish and English as a Foreign Language online workshops.
- Giving access to high-quality educational experiences with Moodle – 28th January 2023
- Enhance K-12 English Foreign Language Skills with Moodle – 28th September 2022
- Dig into Digital: Focus on H5P – 28th August 2022
Great post Eduardo !
I do like the Accessibility Block plugin.
I wish all Moodle Themes would incorporate a simple method of changing the size and colour too.
However, I expect the reality is that people who do have accessibility challenges probably understand their browsers settings, and use browser plugins, that address some of these issues effectively? 🙂