As technology advances, tools for studying and staying organized are moving from old fashioned pen-and-paper to electronic and high tech. Creating hand written flash cards, jotting notes on loose leaf paper, and hand writing essays are becoming tasks of the past. Help your child update his study and organizational habits by using the tech-based options below.

Writing

For many students, writing an essay can be a dreaded ordeal.  They may have poor handwriting, weak fine motor skills, or simply find the task of writing tedious. With voice recognition programs such as Dragon Dictate, students can dictate their ideas as the computer types them. In doing so, students avoid the physical limitations of writing and tend to elaborate and add more details and than they would with handwriting. Once their writing is complete, the program can read the it out loud to them, allowing the student to catch more mistakes and‎ self-check them.

Study Guides

Power Point can serve as a helpful tool for creating study guides. Students can create a Power Point presentation using material they need to learn for an exam – a task many students enjoy more than hand writing flash cards or study guides. The computer can then read the material out loud as the student listens and absorbs it.

Reading

Instead of reading a print-only version of a book for school, students can listen to books on CD (or digital versions) and read along with the written copy. They can also use sites such as Learning Ally, which offers thousands of digital novels, textbooks, reference materials, and newspapers that can all be downloaded.

Interactive Study Tools

Interactive text-to-speech programs, such as Kurzweil 3000, combine the reading of text with engaging study tools. With these programs, users can scan and import text or transfer in web pages and learn how to actively interact with the material. They can use multi-colored highlighters to identify key information, take digital margin notes, and even write electronic “sticky notes.” Students can take read or listen to text, organize information, and learn important vocabulary words, all in one place.

 As technology advances, encourage your child to update her approach to studying using these tech-based tools. She will enjoy the interactive process and will ultimately feel more confident and successful in school.

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