Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

Texthelp Blog - Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

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In the run-up to the public sector mobile application accessibility deadline, learn more about how to make your app accessible.

Accessibility Regulations: 3 weeks to go until the mobile app deadline

Accessibility Regulations: 1 day to go until the mobile app deadline

In the run-up to the public sector mobile application accessibility deadline, learn more about how to make your app accessible. 

3 Small But Rather LARGE updates for EquatIO Mathspace Customers

In this blog we take a look at the latest updates to EquatIO. Read on to see how to make the most of the new features. 

Not long after I started teaching, I remember laughing at a bit on tv (I can't remember if it was on Saturday Night Live or another show), where a student gets an essay back from their teacher. The only comment in big red letters across the page was "ambiguous."  And the student sat there, mystified about how to proceed.  

Too often, I think, that's how students feel about our feedback.  We're rushed. We have 100 essays to correct and only a few days to do it. So putting comments on every paper in all the spots where you see room for improvement is at minimum difficult and often near impossible.  So our comments are sometimes...ambiguous!

With WriQ, our goal has always been to help teachers speed up and improve the feedback loop.  The faster a student gets suggestions for improvement, the more valuable and impactful that feedback is.  

So to help speed up the process and give teachers a more in-depth way to get their ideas to students, we are excited to add a Voice Notes feedback feature to WriQ.  Now, on the summary screen where you already can leave some typed feedback, you can add up to a five-minute voice note for your student.  This allows you to give more insight, encouragement, and a more positive tone than what can come across in written feedback.

WriQ update, send your students feedback using a voice note.

In this latest blog we take a look at updates that have been made to WriQ. Now you can send your students some feedback via a voice note. Check out this blog by product evangelist and expert on all things WriQ - Mark Schwartz.

Learn why web accessibility is important. And gain 7 tips to help you optimize an accessible website.

7 Effective tips for optimizing your accessible website

In this guest blog learn why web accessibility is important. And gain 7 tips to help you optimize an accessible website.

This is a fun & easy way to get involved, and will bring some positivity into your teacher's classroom! Feel free to get creative or download one of our templates to colour & share. 

teacher-appreciation-day-flower-pot-colouring-poster-us-size.pdf

teacher-appreciation-day-donut-colouring-poster-us-size.pdf

teacher-appreciation-day-light-bulb-colouring-poster-us-size.pdf

teacher-appreciation-day-rainbow-colouring-poster-us-size.pdf

Send your teacher a card with all the reasons why you appreciate them and show off your writing skills at the same time. Use our template to get started and then either send it to your teacher directly or upload it to your digital classroom environment. 

teacher-you-are-a-_class-act_-because.pdf

thank-you-for-being-a-great-teacher.pdf

teacher-you-are-amazing-because.pdf

If you're thinking of gifting your teacher, here are some ideas they'll appreciate! Digital gift cards are a great option. You could take your teacher to the movies with a free movie on Amazon Prime, support a local restaurant, or subscribe to a service like Teacher’s Black Box or Teacher’s Crate. Think about what your teacher would enjoy. 

If you haven’t been able to arrange a gift, don’t worry - you could record a short video message for your teacher instead. They will really appreciate the thought & effort, and parents can join in too! Here’s a video that our Texthelpers created to give you some inspiration:

It's 'Ofishal'!! Teachers are a great catch!


Award your teacher with a digital certificate or sticker

It's time for you to become a teacher for a day! Choose from our selection of digital stickers and award it to your teacher in recognition of all their hard work.

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We’d love to know if you try out any of these ideas. Share your finished masterpieces with us on Twitter @texthelp or on our Facebook page. 

National Thank a Teacher Day is on 23rd June and is the perfect opportunity to thank a teacher in your life. We’ve put together some of the best ways to thank your teacher.

Celebrating National Thank a Teacher Day

What a year it's been for teachers! Adapting to new ways of teaching, juggling work and family life, dealing with constant uncertainty... the past twelve months have been a steep learning curve for educators everywhere. 

Wednesday 23rd June is National Thank a Teacher Day, and we think this is the perfect opportunity for students and parents to thank teachers for everything they do. We've put together some ideas for how you can thank your teacher, either remotely or in person. 

Assistive technology is quite an ambiguous term. The way modern technology has been applied across sectors is typically in a bid to assist the user – such as fintech-fuelled, one-click payments, or building-less neo-banks – in many ways.

Reverting to its origin, assistive technology in its very core form is technology designed to help people with specific needs in some way. An obvious use decades ago may have been support of certain disabilities with the likes of a mobility scooter or hearing aid.

Learning and communication disabilities, however, didn’t necessarily have a technological support system through which assistance could be provided 30+ years ago. Our CEO and founder Martin McKay discovered this first-hand in the early 80s when his father suffered a severe stroke. He was left unable to speak, read and write, which effectively gave him the inspiration to explore tech as a force for good from a young age.

Thankfully, society has since recognised the power of assistive technology in supporting learning and it has become highly regarded as a tool for special educational needs (SEN) learning within schools. Due to its enabling power, there’s room to explore its potential as the market, and user age of the user, grows.

Coming from a Northern Irish business, it hasn’t escaped my attention that the local education system has been challenged in the SEN area. Roughly one in five students across the country has special educational needs and an independent review of how the Education Authority supports those pupils has been declared. It’s easy to see how this issue can be amplified countless times on a global scale.

Yet, this predicament grows further still. The past year has made the potential of assistive technology, which can help with the likes of literacy, speech and writing, abundantly clear through the mass adoption of remote learning and home-schooling.

Learning loss is a regular occurrence during school holidays, but extended school closures meant that students went without the typical face-to-face, communication-driven routine their days are structured around and transformed their education process. While many studies have observed teens, the Education Endowment Foundation has revealed that reception-age children have been negatively impacted, with many more needing additional language support. Tech can assist here with simple tools such as subtitles which link language and voice together.

“The past year has made the potential of assistive technology, which can help with the likes of literacy, speech and writing, abundantly clear through the mass adoption of remote learning and home-schooling.”

Lockdown learning has meant that assistive technology isn’t (and wasn’t) just something isolated for SEN pupils, but broader education technology at large is in effect an assistive technology. This presented another challenge to overcome, since remote learning conditions weren’t always evenly distributed because this depended greatly on the individual circumstances of a student’s household. We know from our research that poorer students in the UK were unhappier during lockdowns than their wealthier peers, which aligns with the former having less access to technology. In a scenario where a SEN student may be from a lower income household, the problem can quickly escalate.

In observing the space through this lens, I want to flag that at no point do learning disabilities just stop overnight. So this is a message not just for educational institutions to take note of, but workplaces too, recognising that these pupils will grow into adults with similar, if not the same, learning challenges.

Nine is the average reading age in the UK and corporations should be mindful of this fact, not just in supporting staff, but in customer communication. The opportunity here lies in recognising the place of assistive tech as a tool to support with language barriers and promoting accessibility as standard, in turn creating an inclusive culture where teams can thrive while still protecting the bottom line.

Everyone has the right to understand and be understood, so businesses have a duty of care to recognise their employees are supported accurately. If schools and companies can collaboratively connect these dots, we can collectively work towards solving learning throughout entire lives – not just younger years.

Assistive technology can benefit every learner, not just SEN students

Once the domain of SEN learning, assistive technology is now for everyone

Assistive technology can benefit every learner, not just SEN students 

Assistive technologies empower all learners. This article was originally published in Education Technology on 12th June 2021. 

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