Having dyslexia had a significant impact on my learning throughout school and college - and it still does to this day. Areas in which I am severely affected are spelling and reading.
I recently joined the Crick Software team as an Education Consultant, and now knowing all the products inside out, I’ve realized just how useful Clicker and DocsPlus would have been during my time in education!
The development of the standard word processor helped massively with my spelling. However, I trusted the spell checker more than my own ability. This led to some very weird and wonderful sentences! It would have been really helpful for me to have had access to the speech feedback feature of Clicker and DocsPlus to help with not only my spelling, but also ensuring that my sentences still made sense.
One spelling I still struggle with is definitely and defiantly. If I’d had a spell checker that was able to read the word back to me, I would have been able to hear the word and recognize if I’d used the correct spelling or not.
During my younger years I knew that spelling was not a strength of mine, and as a result I kept my words shorter rather than taking a risk. If I’d had access to the word predictor feature that Clicker and DocsPlus provide, it would have empowered me to try and extend my vocabulary; knowing the support was there but also being able to identify words that are spelled phonetically, as that was how I spelled.
Another prime example was that I often got told my brain worked at 100 mph, but my writing was at 1 mph! This meant that I would start writing one sentence and end with a completely different sentence. This again caused great confusion for teachers and myself. The Voice Notes function would have really helped me to get all my ideas down, while ensuring I was able to focus on one idea at a time and refer back to them as I worked.
As someone who has faced challenges throughout my education, I can truly see the transformational help and support that Clicker and DocsPlus offer, and I wish I had been able to use them when I was at school.
If anyone would like to speak with me further about the ways our software supports learners, please do not hesitate to contact me at marcus.dux@cricksoft.com.
