Classroom Assistive Technology Devices

Description: Chika Chika Boom Boom is an rhyming alphabet book that children can learn alphabet through rhyme, animation, music and play-along. It can also help children to build their early reading skills.

Description: The controlled language environment of Circletime Tales Deluxe helps pre-readers and students who struggle with beginning word skills. It uses familiar, entertaining settings to expose students to printed and spoken words and contains 56% of the pre-K to second-grade Dolch Sight Word List. The highlights words help children follow along with narration and increase comprehension, rhyming and repetition helps reinforce word learning. It also carefully controlled vocabulary, so students have successful language experiences.

Description: These highly interesting, age-appropriate stories are for older students ages 9-17 who are more than two grades behind in reading or failed readers. Unlike the usual low-vocabulary readers that leave your older students bored, unmotivated and unsuccessful, Start-to-Finish Books boast the differences that make them really work-three formats to support students at any reading level and a "Written for Success" formula that guarantees a successful reading experience.

Description: Earobics Step 1 is designed for developmental ages 4-7 and features six interactive games with over 300 levels of play. It teaches the phonological awareness, auditory processing and introductory phonics skills required for learning to read and spell. The games also develop general cognitive skills such as attention and memory. 

Description: Earobics Step 2 is designed for developmental ages 7-10 and features five interactive games with nearly 600 levels of play. Earobics Step 2 addresses all of the skills targeted in Earobics Step 1, but at more advanced levels.

Description: The translator is a user-friendly, pocket-size item (4 ¼” x 2 ¾” x 5/8” in size and weighs 3.5 oz) that provides users with 210,000 translations and 5000 phrases. The latter are translated to and from English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian to assist travelers. The words are categorized into five domains: doing business, travel & directions, eating & drinking, shopping, hotel, and emergencies. Translations of the words are accessible even when words are misspelled. The item also has other feathers such as local/world clock, calculator, currency/metric converter, EURO converter functions, spell checking, and games. It has an automatic shutdown feature to save battery power.

Description: This hand held electronic dictionary is a tool for elementary students with learning disabilities. Students can type in words they cannot spell and the program will correct them.

Description: This device has variety of functions. It mainly provides assistance on reading and writing activities. Students with reading difficulties can enter a confusing or unfamiliar word and the device can perform a variety of functions: provide correction list, read the word aloud, define the word, and provide synonyms. Click HERE to see a demonstration of this device.

Description: This device mainly helps bilingual students who use both Spanish and English. It can offer a variety of functions such as translating, words definition, correcting misspellings of both Spanish and English.

Description: This program was designed specifically for young children. The program takes an alphabetical approach that encourages children to build early reading skills while they learn key locations. Three activities provide a playful, interactive environment that helps children progress from learning key positions to typing smoothly and accurately.

Description: Kid Phonics is an early reading software. The program contains a number of progressive activities designed to teach basic phonic reading skills. Various activities such as careful listening, sound discrimination, recognizing rhymes and types of sounds, putting sounds together into words, spelling, and finally building sentences are all included in this program.

Description: Kid Phonics 2 was designed to help young readers achieve several objectives such as sound out words, differentiate among letter sounds, understand the uses of prefixes and suffixes, identify silent letters and their effects on words, connect sounds to clusters of letters and build clusters of letters into word, and use words in context sentences.

Description: Lexia is interactive phonics-based software for diagnostic assessment and reading instruction. It was designed for use in elementary, middle, and high schools, voc-tech schools, home schooling environments, and literacy and ESL Centers. The new version of Lexia is useful for teachers as well as students. Students can work independently at the computer to practice their skills with immediate feedback. The program generates reports for the teacher on the progress and ranking of each student and the entire class. An easy to use automated recordkeeping system saves teachers hours of clerical work.

Description: Merriam-Webster® (Speaking) Spanish-English Dictionary is a small (5 5/8” x 3 7/8” x 5/8” in size and weighs 6.7 oz) educational tool to facilitate language development in both Spanish and English. It is suitable for all levels of English and Spanish learners. It provides users with Spanish and English translations of 5,000,000 words and phrases as well as grammatical rules for both languages. It is sensitive to the variations in the Spanish language used by speakers in Central and South America. Its new Touch Panel makes it even more user-friendly. Good sound quality provides 600 accurately pronounced travel words spoken with a clear, natural voice. It also provides spelling correction based on the phonetics of the entered word. Learning exercises provide more drill and practice to improve spelling and vocabulary. The item also includes an address book, clock, calculator, and metric converter and can be used as an organizer.

Description: The Merriam-Webster Speaking Dictionary & Thesaurus is a handy, user friendly learning tool to improve vocabulary acquisition, English grammar, and spelling. The device provides practice opportunities through various entertaining games and crossword puzzles. Its new features, such as phonetic spell correction with auditory feedback and large screen, make it accessible to users with diverse needs.

Description: This hand held reading aid helps students learn to pronounce and understand the meaning of new words. This product could be used by students with learning disabilities as well as by people without disabilities.

Description: This pen-shaped scanner enables users to easily scan a word or line of text, and view its translation and definition on the LCD screen almost instantaneously. It was particularly designed for people with reading or learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

Description: Quicktionary II Multi is a light, handy scanning pen that provides translation and word definitions for English, French, and Spanish. It also contains The American Heritage English-English Dictionary.

Description: Reading for Critical Thinking requires each student to think critically about what they have read to solve a challenging puzzle. Each level includes 80 reading passages on interesting topics which include history, nature, culture, science, unusual facts and many others. Students are motivated to progress through comprehension activities which start with vocabulary-in-context, move on to higher order comprehension questions and conclude with challenging summarizing and inference questions. Finally, students can complete a crossword puzzle using key words and information from the passage. Always waiting in the background is Code Cracker, a game of logic which students can only play after they answer reading questions correctly.

Description: This program incorporates a whole language approach to learning, integrating the components necessary to build reading comprehension skills including main idea, relevant facts, sequence of events, inferences, and vocabulary.

Description: This collection helps young learners master specific reading skills through quality instructional design and the multimedia technologies. Children can learn the major reading concepts taught in grades 4-6. This collection of interactive lessons offers reading material and activities that also can help develop childrens' critical thinking and comprehension skills.

Description: The Sentence Master is a revolutionary way to teach beginning reading developed by Dr. Marion Blank. Avoiding the confusing rules of phonics and the complexity of whole language, The Sentence Master focuses on the most frequently-used words of our language (i.e. "the,""is," "but," "and," etc.) By truly teaching these "little words," The Sentence Master gives students control over the majority of text they will ever encounter.

Description: This beginning spelling program with animated movies and on-screen can help students with a wild range of ability level. It creates a spelling list for each student, then preset difficulty levels to insure a successful outcome for each user.

Description:Simon S.I.O. is a phonics instruction program designed to facilitate reading development through sounds, word construction, and word recall. It provides teachers with various resources such as assessment tools, activities, and full lesson plans.

Description: The Simon Skills Pack is effective solution for teaching phonics and spelling skills to struggling students. The pack includes two popular programs - Simon Sounds It Out and Simon Spell. Simon Sounds It Out teaches students phonics and phonological awareness through a friendly, patient on-screen tutor. The tutor instructs students on letter sounds and word families and helps students to use these sounds to construct words. Words are given context through pictures and animations. Simon Spells is an innovative program that helps students learn to spell. Children choose either Simon or Susan as their tutor, then are guided through individualized instruction and independent practice at their own pace. Throughout the program, the spelling tutor offers positive verbal and written feedback to aid in the learning process. Spelling lessons are tracked and timed to improve experience and prevent frustration.

Description: Speaking Language Master is a large screen educational tool that allows several users to play various language games together. It contains 130,000 words, 300,000 definitions, and over 500,000 synonyms to facilitate vocabulary development. It also includes a Grammar Guide and phonetic spell check. Drill and practice opportunities are provided through 12 word games. The help menu provides efficient navigation. The device also includes a headphone jack, automatic shutoff, volume control, and low battery.

Description: This program can help readers improve reading skills as well as reading speed with sequential reading activities.

Description: This collection use multimedia technology to present spelling instruction on rewarding format. It uses interesting barnyard characters teach vocabulary and language skills with friendly voices, amusing animation, and positive reinforcement for children to achieve the lesson objectives.

Description: This program is designed to support and encourage young students in their emerging literacy. Each instructional consists of exemplary literature selections provided through interactive, computer-assisted learning experiences, as well as a variety of off-line activity suggestions that support the process of language development.

Description: This program uses multiple choice questions to train 300 nouns from 20 categories. You select the categories to be covered, the criterion to end the lesson, and the question format. Twenty Categories helps children and adults who have traumatic brain injury or aphasia to build vocabulary, develop categorization, and improve reading skills.

Description: The Words and Concepts Series integrates language and concept training in a unique way. Each program uses a core vocabulary of 40 nouns in six related language activities: Vocabulary, Categorization, Word Identification by Function, Word Association, and the Concepts of Same and Different. This series can be used with non-readers, but there is also a text option for beginning readers.

Description: Word Munchers Deluxe is a program designed to build reading, grammar, and vocabulary skills, through a vast number of drills. This learning game has a 3D look, colorful animation, sound effects, and fast-paced arcade action. It is designed for children from grade 1^st to 5^th .

Description: Words Around Me helps students successfully identify 275 common vocabulary words and 186 plurals. With help from an encouraging character named Greenie, students learn to associate spoken words with a variety of visual representations, including photographs, drawn images and animations. To learn the vocabulary, students progress through a series of five activities&emdash;Word Identification, Plurals, Categorization, Sameness and Difference; four review games provide playful opportunities for reinforcement.

Words Around Me is designed for students with special needs, students learning English as a second language and early learners. A flexible management system allows teachers to customize the program for students of different ages and abilities.

Description: WYNN is a new literacy software tool that is designed to enhance the success of individuals with reading and writing difficulties. WYNN was developed with the help of special educators and individuals with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and aphasia.