Microsoft: Making Learning More Accessible

Jennifer Gonzalez of blog, Cult of Pedagogy, recently wrote about 4 different ways Microsoft is making learning more accessible to students. She says, "Over the last couple of years, Microsoft has been quietly adding some incredible capabilities to their products, new layers that make the software we already use more powerful and accessible for people with reading difficulties, those with visual or hearing impairments, English learners, or people who simply want to customize the way they take in information and communicate their ideas."

I was eager to read further as I currently am struggling with creating the best instruction for my students who struggle with reading and writing. I have such a wide range of readers and writers in my classroom it is hard to personalize my instruction for each kiddo. I am happy to know that Microsoft is stepping up!

Gonzalez shares one particular Microsoft program that caught my eye: Dictate. This is a simple add-in for Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook that allows users to dictate what they want to write. The dictation tool is excellent at accurately recognizing speech, makes pretty good guesses on punctuation and capitalization, and supports more than 20 languages. Over the next few weeks, dictation is going to come built-in to most Office tools, and it’s ready to go on all Windows 10 computers—just press the Windows key + H and try it!

Gonzalez shares suggests various ways to incorporate this tech. tool into the classroom:

1. Help struggling writers get their ideas on paper through dictation. Once they have drafted something through dictation, they can then move on to editing the written work.

2. Offer dictation as a writing option for students with dysgraphia.

3. Engage English learners by having them dictate some responses in their own language, then work to translate those into English. This will allow them to put their ideas together with more sophisticated language constructions without being hampered by limited English.

View video below to see this tech tool in action!