 presented this in front of 300 teachers and principals. Students' story. Before the laptops, I couldn't get my ideas out. Sometimes my brain worked faster than my hands could write it. Now, I feel like I can get most of my ideas written down and I don't have to have someone help me do it. I think some teachers think students who have trouble reading or writing are dumb or lazy. I am not dumb or lazy. About four years ago, we started to introduce technology into our classrooms as a means to creating a more inclusive learning environment within our classrooms. Our hope at that time was that we could create a classroom setting where all kids could experience success academically. Reading and writing has changed significantly in the 21st century compared to how it was in the past. Previously, students to acquire information had to read the textbook. That could be a barrier to learning for a lot of students. Whether they had dyslexia or a learning disability, they couldn't gain or gather the information in that method. The technology provides an opportunity for students to have those barriers to reading removed. So we provide them with things like text to speech where they can listen to the text rather than having to read it. Same thing goes for writing. Technology, we have opportunities for students to record their voice where they speak and the text is then typed for them. So again, reducing the barriers to reading and writing that students previously may have faced in the past. Parents, there was a little bit of resistance at the beginning to technology. Some concerns expressed about are we no longer teaching kids to read and write. If they're using the computer to read, then they're not going to learn to read. We've seen certainly our reading results improve over the past three or four years and they become really independent confident learners because they're not always dependent on another student or another adult to read and write or to be pulled out of the classroom to have a scribe or a reader. They can work independently within their classroom. One of the ways that I knew that having the technology in my class was really making a big impact was having one of my parents come and say that her child wanted to come to school. He comes home and he's so excited and he said, Mom, I wrote and you know what, I did it with a pencil because he had been so confident using the technology that he had chosen one day to try and write with a pencil to see if he could do it and he had gained so much confidence and he had gained so much vocabulary and spelling ability from using the software that it overflowed into his writing without the software. I see these technologies as leveling the playing field because the kids with learning disabilities are starting off behind everybody else. Yes, they do need to learn to read and it doesn't replace reading instruction but in certain situations when I'm assessing their science skill it's not fair to penalize them for their reading ability. It starts off with what does the school have in terms of technology. We have to work from where they're at so I would look at what type of devices are available and what can we add to those devices to support the students in the classroom. For many of the tools that I recommend they are on the device already or they can be easily purchased and installed. I played in my first soccer game. And often students are amazing with technology and they pick up the technology quite a lot faster than we do because they're born with it. One of the challenges that we're facing is continuity in programming so we look at our grade six students who have become very successful with particularly tools like text to speech and speech to text and how can we support those students and the schools where they will be attending next year in ensuring that they can continue to experience that success. We would give somebody with bad eyesight glasses and we need to give them the tools that they need to be successful. When kids are accomplishing things and feeling success the whole atmosphere in your school is full of excitement and when they're able to put things on the bulletin board that they've produced themselves when I haven't had to describe I haven't had to do anything and they get to put that up on the walls for people to see. There's that sense of pride of success and it's an atmosphere in the school. You can feel it in their school. When a student who was not able to read never read for pleasure begins to read and begins to identify as a reader we know that we've been successful.