In my educational technology course we each have to give a presentation on "new" technologies that can be utilized in the classroom. I signed up for the first round of presentations and I thought it went pretty well. Mine was over Ning - a social networking site where you can create your own social network and make it as private as you'd like. I think it has a lot of potential for classroom discussion/blogging.
My friend, Amanda, did her presentation on WordQ and SpeakQ. These are computer programs that aid the user in writing assignments.
http://www.goqsoftware.com/They can be used together or separately. SpeakQ is used with a microphone and when a the user comes upon a word that she does not know how to spell she simply says it aloud. The application (which is used in conjunction with Microsoft Word) will then enter the word (or phrase) for the user. WordQ is similar in that it will give suggestions of what word the user is attempting to write. The user can then choose from a drop down list the word that they are looking for. You can also have it read back what you have written, which can be very helpful in locating errors.
A great thing about this technology is that it comes in Spanish!!! (It even breaks it down to Castellano - Spanish from Spain - and Español.)
I think that this technology could be extremely useful for any high school student who struggles with language learning. Students who maybe don't take a language because of disabilities may be able to find more success with a tool like this.
I think a disadvantage would be the price of the tool (although you can get grants) and the fact that it works best when it is only dealing with one specific voice. Having multiple students use this program with varying accents may diminish its accuracy and helpfulness.
I would be interested in researching the current use of this technology in high school classrooms.
Please feel free to leave feedback. And if you have used either of these programs I'd love to know what your experience was like.
:D
