“Supporting Mathematics through Technology – a shared experience”

Following the successful full day conference “Forging the Future” [1] held at Loughborough University in April 2006 and the “Personal Perspectives in Science and Mathematics” [2] event held at the University of Birmingham in December 2005, the Dyscalculia and Dyslexia Interest Group (DDIG) recently focused on the role of technology in supporting students with dyscalculia and dyslexia. “Supporting Mathematics through Technology – a shared experience” was held at the University of Northampton on 6th December 2006. The half-day event sought to bring together professionals who provide support to students in Higher Education, particularly those students who experience difficulties with mathematics.

The title indicated the wish of the DDIG group to make the event “a shared experience”, with a greater emphasis on delegate participation and to provide an opportunity for a hands-on approach. This was in contrast to previous DDIG events that have primarily been driven by speaker presentations.

While the format was predominantly workshop based, it was felt that an initial short presentation would provide an overview and set the scene for the event. In “Harnessing the Power of Technology to Support Mathematics”, Dr. Abi James from Iansyst, gave a review of the technology available to support dyslexic and dyscalculic students with mathematics.

The short presentation led onto the workshops. Delegates were able to select two of the four offered. Each of the workshop leaders tried, where possible, to facilitate participation and provide opportunity for delegates to try out the technology for themselves. It was also hoped to draw on the rich experiences and challenges of the participants.

“Using the Power of Speech with Maths” by Abi James (Iansyst) looked at how speech recognition and text-to-speech can be used to support students reading and writing mathematical notation. This session included a demonstration of the Mathtalk software. There was considerable interest in this new development and a lively discussion followed.

Our hosts at The University of Northampton have recently moved to make their website accessible and “Making information Accessible” provided a comparison of their previous website with the current version. The session, organised by Steve Martin (Senior Web Designer) and Angela Ashpole (Accessibility Officer), included a JAWS demonstration to illustrate this change.

“Using MSWord to Support Maths Teaching - hints and tips for maths teachers” (Frances Wright, Mathematics Learning Centre, DeMontfort University) provided a hands on session for those delegates who had a general idea how to use MSWord but wanted to learn more about some of the ways in which MSWord can help with the presentation of materials for teaching / learning mathematics.

The final workshop focused on applicable software. The workshop began with a short demonstration of Autograph (Jan Robertson, Mathematics Learning Centre, DeMontfort University). Autograph is a very useful package for teaching several topics, particularly linking graphs and their equations. This was followed by two further short demonstrations with mind mapping packages. The first, “Mind Manager”, (Ursula Iliffe, University of Northampton) provided an introduction to the use of mind mapping software packages which can be used to assist students who have organisation difficulties or difficulties working with large spreadsheets. The second, “SmartDraw”, (Glynis Perkin, Progression Officer, Loughborough University), showed how this package facilitates the creation of more algebraic mind maps.

The event closed with the opportunity for delegates to meet together, eat and exchange ideas.

It is hoped that DDIG can continue to provide more opportunities greater delegate participation through its events and workshops.

The full day DDIG conference will be held at Loughborough University on Tuesday 27th March 2007. Full details will be available shortly on http://ddig.lboro.ac.uk

[1] Trott C. (2006) “Forging The Future”. Dyscalculia and Dyslexia

in Higher Education, MSOR Connections Vol 6 (3)

http://mathstore.ac.uk/newsletter/aug2006/pdf/26c_trott.pdf

[2] Perkin G., Croft A.C. and Grove M. (2006) Personal Perspectives in

Mathematics and Science, MSOR Connections Vol 6 (2)

http://mathstore.ac.uk/newsletter/may2006/pdf/20ddig.pdf