Math Applications for Automaticity/ Math Fact Fluency

There are a variety of educational applications available for students who need support with automaticity and math fact fluency. Automaticity or fluency is defined as having the basic skills to quickly, accurately, and effortlessly process content information. Applications that can help to include the following (all examples can be found on pg. 125 of Assistive Technology in the Classroom):

1. Addition and multiplication charts
2. Calculators
3. FASTT Math: This is an intervention program for math that helps students acquire math fact fluency. The program operates by assessing students’ command of basic facts by measuring response time and then generates customized activities based on the results.
4. Timez Attack (Big Brains): This focuses solely on multiplication facts, teaching the 2 to 12 times tables. Designed by video-game creators, this program is highly-engaging and contains high-tech and high-quality graphics.  A free Base Version is available for download and a Full Version with additional game environments can be purchased; however both versions are fully functional.
5. ArithmAttack: This program can be played online or downloaded free to your computer and played off-line. This program is designed for  students to practice basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. This program also allows the creation of customized problem sets to target specific problem areas of individual students.
6. Academic Skill Builder: This program is designed to increase automaticity in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, integers, fractions, and ratios. This online program can be played in either multiplayer or single player form.  As with ArithmAttack, customized problem set can be created to target specific problem areas of individual students.

Dell, A., Newton, D., & Petroff, J. (2012). Assistive technology in the classroom. (2nd ed., pp. 3-22). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Key Questions to Consider when Selecting Educational Applications

When selecting education applications, educators should consider the following series of questions to help make sure that the applications help to meet the student’s goals and objectives. 

Questions to consider:

1. What is the intended outcome of the use of the educational application?

2. Is the educational application likely to fulfill its stated purpose?

3. Can the educational applications be used as an alternative to traditional classroom activities to enhance students' participation?

*it is also important to consider student’s interest during the selection of an application. If an application meets their interests, they will be more likely to dedicate their attention to it.*

Assistive Technology for Math

It is now time to shift our focus to my favorite subject, math. I understand that this is not a popular opinion, and many students dislike math because of the difficulties that they can face within the content area due to a variety of disabilities. Luckily, there are also ways that we can use assistive technology in math to help meet the needs of students who struggle in math for a variety of reasons. There is a myriad of educational applications, interactive web-based activities, and applications that are specially designed for students with disabilities that grant students with the opportunity to make general education mathematic accessible to students with a large range of disabilities. In the following posts I will be reviewing a few different assistive technology resources in math.

Assistive Technology for Reading

As part of a class assignment, we completed the webinar “Assistive Technology Solutions for Reading” from Tools for Life: Georgia’s Assistive Technology Act Program (Which can be found HERE). This presentation provided a number of great resources that teachers can us to help the students in their classrooms. Below I will review and explain three of the resources that I found to be helpful!

Audible.com
I have found that Audible.com is a great program for audiobooks! I have personally used audible for their FREE 30-day trial in the past to listed to course required novels. This website is run through Amazon and provides over 150,000 different books in audio format. I think that these audiobooks are a great resource to have in the classroom for students with a variety of disabilities including visual impairments and specific learning disabilities in reading. These can be used alongside the hard copies used in the classroom or as stand alone versions of the text. These are a great resource to incorporate into a UDL lesson! After the free trial, you can access Audible.com for $14.95 a month.

Rewordify.com

This website is another great resource for struggling readers, ELL students, and students with a variety of disabilities. As its name implies, this website makes sentences, passages, webpages easier to read by rewording difficult vocabulary to make it more understandable. This gives teachers the ability to provide the same information on different reading levels! The display of information is also customizable. Students can have the passages’ words completely replaced with simpler words, they can have the words highlighted and then click for the reworded version, or they can have both displayed at once. The best part of all: Its FREE to use!

Visual Schedule Planner

The Visual Schedule Planner was an amazing resource that could be really beneficial for students with a variety of disabilities. This application allows the creation of task lists for the students to complete either through daily, weekly, or monthly task lists. The students then use the application to complete the required tasks on the list, checking them off after they are complete. Another great feature is that the application has a timer built in to help students stay on task! Also, this application has a feature that reads the events to the students. This app is really great for a variety of students for helping stay on task, helping break down directions into smaller steps, and for the overall simplification and organization of daily tasks. For those of you that may be interested in the Application, it can be bought through Apple products for $14.99.