NEWS

UNC licenses innovative software to teach children with disabilities to write

By CATHERINE HOUSE
For the Office of Technology Development

CHAPEL HILL -- Software being developed with expertise from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers may help children with disabilities become competent writers.

The university, on behalf of Dr. Janet Sturm, assistant professor of speech and hearing sciences in the School of Medicine, and colleagues, has just licensed this knowledge of how a successful writing tool should be designed to Don Johnston Inc., a Volo, Ill.-based company that develops and commercializes literacy learning tools.

The software, based on years of literacy research, will provide instruction in all phases of the writing process from kindergarten to sixth grade for the general education classroom. It will also enable children with severe disabilities to participate in the same kinds of writing activities that children in general education classrooms use when they write.

Take Colin, a kindergarten student with cerebral palsy whom Sturm sees regularly in her clinic. He knows his numbers, colors and letters of the alphabet, but because he can’t physically grip a pencil or type on a traditional keyboard, his teacher is unsure how to teach him to compose sentences and paragraphs.

But with the right tools, Colin can learn to write like other children. Because Sturm works one-on-one with children who have severe physical disabilities, she knows, for example, exactly how big the pictures and words on the screen need to be and in what way they need to be categorized.

Such knowledge has helped Sturm and her colleagues make a better writing software tool that incorporates many different modes for accessing a computer. Colin, for example, needs to use an infrared sensor to navigate the menus on a computer screen. He wears a reflective dot on his forehead, and when he moves his head, it moves the cursor. Stopping on an item indicates his choice.

"We wanted the learning environment to be obvious for students and teachers, so we put a lot of thought into how things should be displayed," Sturm said. This helps reduce the burden on teachers so they don’t have to spend time setting up special programs for each student with a different need.

The agreement between UNC-Chapel Hill and Don Johnston Inc. allows the researchers to continue adding their knowledge of the best writing instructional strategies as the software program is constructed and then marketed by Don Johnston Inc.

Because the tool is geared to different abilities and ages, the input from researchers is key to success, Sturm said. "In first grade, for example, we don’t want children to pay attention to editing something they’ve written," she said. "So we don’t ask them to revise. We just want them to write and then write some more."

Mark Crowell, director of Carolina’s Office of Technology Development, helped negotiate the deal. "Mark Crowell was invaluable in helping us understand intellectual property and filing it as an invention," Sturm said. "We didn’t want to just hand over what we’d been studying for the past decade and not see it become a useful learning tool for children who have serious literacy learning difficulties."

Don Johnston, founder of Don Johnston Inc., said his company’s collaboration with Carolina will benefit the entire education community. "UNC is doing research work for students who struggle with writing, and no one else in the country is doing that right now," Johnston said.

Along with Sturm, the research team includes Dr. James W. Cunningham and doctoral student Kathleen S. Cali, both in the School of Education; Drs. David E. Yoder and Karen A. Erickson, both at the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies; and Dr. Stephanie A. Spadorcia of Leslie University.

Funding for the research was provided by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Don Johnston Inc. provides technology interventions that help struggling students and students with disabilities achieve literary results.

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Note: Sturm can be reached via e-mail at jsturm@med.unc.edu. For more information on Don Johnston Inc., go to the company Web site, http://www.donjohnston.com/.

News Services contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593