DisplayNote improves learning for visually impaired students.

Matthew Carr, Training Director at Blindability uses DisplayNote to improve teaching and learning for students with visual impairments.
“Imagine this; you are 9 years old, sat in a numeracy class listening to the teacher talking about fractions. Whilst the teacher is quite engaging, you quickly lose interest because you can’t see what is on the LCD screen. Why? Because you are partially sighted. “This is more common than you might imagine, with almost 25,000 children in the UK who suffer from sight loss, 70% of which are educated in mainstream schools. Because of the challenges they face, many become disillusioned and fall behind with their work and fail to reach their potential. DisplayNote is a fantastic way to overcome some of these issues. I am Matthew Carr, Training Director at Blindability“.

“I have been working with a number of schools who are integrating iPads into the classroom in a bid to raise standards, engage pupils and provide extra support to those who have Special Educational Needs (SEN). The iPad is a phenomenal tool in the classroom”.

With over 40,000 apps specifically designed for the education market it provides teachers with an ideal platform to enhance their lessons and keep pupils engaged. For students who have Special Educational Needs the iPad has a host of built in features that aren’t always known about. VoiceOver and Zoom are great tools for people with sight loss. These features allow either the entire screen to be magnified to a high level or for those with little or no useful vision VoiceOver will narrate what is on the screen to allow navigation, production and editing of documents and having written materials read to them.

There are also accessibility features for people with hearing loss, dyslexia and dexterity disabilities. “Of all the apps in the app store the first one I always recommend to every school I visit is DisplayNote. DisplayNote allows teachers to radically change the way they teach by giving control to the pupils in the classroom and allowing them to take a whole host of learning materials away with them to fully ensure they have understood what has been taught. I recently worked with a Primary school in the West Midlands who have purchased a number of class sets of iPads”.

The School also purchased an iPad for a partially sighted student, Alex, to enhance his learning. DisplayNote was installed on the teacher’s PC and Alex’s iPad which allows him to see what was on the LCD screen from anywhere in the classroom. “Since getting his iPad, Alex has become a lot more independent in the classroom, more engaged in the subjects being taught, and with the help of DisplayNote his grades have significantly improved. When I first saw DisplayNote I was blown away by the range of features it had and the tasks that it could do”.

“The ability to display learning materials across a whole host of devices from the teachers computer, allowing the pupils to remotely take control of the teachers screen to annotate the materials in real time enabling full collaboration across the entire class, the ability to take screen shots and share learning materials in a number of different ways and a feature I particularly like is the ability for a teacher to send a private message to a student to say “Well Done”. I think DisplayNote will revolutionise the use of iPads in the classroom”.

“Blindability is the UK leader in providing accessibility training to schools, individuals and businesses. We are specialists in iPad accessibility and usability training with a specific emphasis on their use in the classroom.

You may also be interested in our blog post Quick Tip: Real-time collaboration with DisplayNote