Mark is the founder of ATHelp.org and ATTrain.org and has over 35 years’ experience utilizing assistive and instructional technologies in educational and vocational settings.
“If all pre-schoolers saw tools like yours [Clicker], they would know it’s acceptable to interact with learning in alternative ways… I don’t think any student should leave school, who has any challenges whatsoever in our curriculum, without a tool that helps them in life.”
Vanessa Simons is a parent of an elementary school student with a variety of learning challenges. Vanessa explains how she uses Clicker to help support her son's learning at home.
"Clicker is a great tool which can scale support and challenge. It can help in many ways, not just if the child has a special need or a diagnosis. If a child struggles to get their words together, they struggle with spelling or building sentences, if they don't understand a pattern, Clicker can help. Oliver can now confidently build and self-correct his sentences, which is not something I could have imagined just four months ago."
Julie Osherow is an AT Specialist with a focus on literacy support. She is using Clicker to support students with a wide range of special educational needs.
"If you don’t already have it, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend adding Clicker to your AT toolbox – it is such a comprehensive tool for literacy, with features and customizations to suit all students, regardless of cognitive level or physical ability."
We sat down with Christy Hagy and Diane Witte at Northview High School to talk about their experiences with Clicker and how they are using it to support students with a myriad of learning needs.
"We record baseline data for our students on areas like visual engagement and motor targeting. The use of Clicker to support students in these areas has shown quantitative improvements of 20%-30% on these scores, which is fantastic."
Marianne Baird is an Assistant Principal and Special Education Coordinator for Sunny Bank Primary School in the UK.
"The best thing about Clicker is that it boosts students’ confidence and allows them to see themselves as writers. It removes barriers to writing, and it takes away some of that cognitive demand and overload, so children can record their ideas and gain confidence."
Anita Clarke is the Special Education Coordinator at Cringleford Primary School in the UK. We recently spoke with her about the successes they are seeing whilst using Clicker 8 with their students.
"We committed to a whole-school approach to literacy difficulties, so we’re not just using Clicker with our learners with special needs. Because we have a Site License, we can roll it out across the school, so that all our students can show their potential and abilities."
Ellie Bennett is a teacher at Gorseland Primary School, working in the Specialist Support Unit where they support children with moderate learning difficulties and complex needs.
“Clicker has developed our children’s confidence in their own abilities to write and we have been able to share many proud moments with them through their achievements of using it.”
Emma Gorton is a member of the senior leadership team and a 3rd grade teacher at Micklehurst All Saints. She is also the Key Stage 2 phase leader and the SEND Coordinator. We recently spoke with her about why the school decided to upgrade to Clicker 8 and how Clicker is removing barriers to success for the students.
"Clicker has truly transformed the writing experience for our students. The children love that they can use it to create narratives, reports, explanations – anything they want to write, they can do it with Clicker. Clicker has raised their self-esteem beyond words and revolutionized how they feel about their writing."
Erika Lye is the founder of Mountain Movers, an inclusive education charity that supports children with complex needs. We recently spoke with her about the positive writing outcomes they are seeing since they started using Clicker 8.
“We focus on children with additional needs, but we always make sure we’re including everybody who wants to participate. For children who may otherwise feel disengaged by literacy tasks, Clicker is a real confidence booster because it gives them a medium to express themselves."
Betsy Caporale has been working in the field of AAC/AT for over 25 years. She has worked with the California Department of Education and is the owner of Augmentative Communication Solutions. She has been using Clicker with a student whom she has worked with for 14 years, with great success.
“Jane has made incredible progress in just one school year – from using Sentence Sets to writing a speech for her public speaking class with support from Clicker Word Banks!”
Carol Allen, Education Advisor for ICT and Inclusion, and John Galloway, Advisory Teacher for ICT/ SEN and Inclusion, recently joined the SENDcast podcast on the ‘Low Cost, No Cost Technology Ideas’ episode.
“I would say Clicker is the gold standard piece of software to support reading and writing for any age; primary, secondary, higher education.”
Andrew Simpson reviews Clicker 8 for Access: technology north, an AT consultancy service that works with children who are disabled to provide technology solutions that support and enable communication, entertainment, learning and independence.
"For those who are unfamiliar with Clicker, it is a child-friendly word processor that’s jam-packed with assistive features to facilitate extended writing and help to develop literacy skills, available on Windows, Mac and iOS."
Mike Davies shares his thoughts on Clicker 8 for Teach Primary magazine.
“While not only aimed at struggling writers, you can really see how Clicker 8 can provide valuable support to students who fall into this category, as well as those with accessibility issues or for whom English is not their first language.”
Lauren Woolf is an elementary school teacher with a passion for literacy and uses her site That Little Outfit to provide a hub for teachers, parents, and carers to help children develop a love of reading and their literacy skills. Here, she gives her verdict on Clicker 8 and how its supportive features benefit students and teachers alike.
“Having thoroughly tested the software with different tasks, Clicker 8 appears to be ideal for all primary school aged pupils as it offers such a varied amount of support and challenge for learners, no matter their writing ability. It genuinely does help children to create meaningful pieces of writing, one sentence at a time.”
Cheryl Gaughan tells us how Clicker is raising enthusiasm for writing and giving a voice to children at Talbot Specialist School.
"Although I use it a lot with children who have special needs, the good thing about Clicker is that you can use it with both children who have special needs and those who don’t. A child doesn’t have to have a disability or a need to use Clicker because it’s useful and engaging for every child. I think that’s the nice thing about it - it’s not seen as something that only special education students can use, but all children in any setting, too."
Sheila Roberston is a Lead Teacher at Wallacestone Primary in Falkirk, UK. She works on the management team coordinating their Pupil Equity Funding as well as with a variety of children with different educational needs.
"I can understand that for teachers who have been teaching for a number of years, the thought of using any kind of technology can be daunting, but this is something that is so user-friendly that anyone could begin using it. The school management team has a vision that this will definitely fit into, so I would absolutely recommend Clicker to other schools."
Julie Tipping is the Acting Principal at Garnock Community Campus. She told us how Clicker was being used as part of a school initiative to close the attainment gap and help disadvantaged students.
"The real success of Clicker has been the way that it gives our young people who struggle to access the curriculum due to literacy challenges the confidence that they really can produce extended pieces of writing. It’s such a motivational tool, and it’s really helping students to reach their potential."
Recently, June Howard sent us a message to share how Clicker has made a world of difference to an eighth grader she works with – not only in terms of his learning, but also his behavior in school and at home.
“He has behavior and learning difficulties but since using Clicker his behavior has improved immensely and he is now above target in 8 subjects - all the teaching staff are amazed at his improvement!"
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Ricardo Morais is a classroom teacher at Oaktree Special School. He shares with us how they have been using Clicker, and the difference it has made to the students' writing confidence.
"When I consider the positive impact that Clicker is having, there’s one particular student who comes to mind in my class. Tom* was a very reluctant writer when he joined our school... But with Clicker, being able to customize the program so much gave Tom the confidence to give writing more of a try. It’s fantastic that Tom has gone from writing very simplistically to wanting to write lots more."
Anne Harris shares how St Joseph's is using Clicker to target dyslexia and increase writing confidence across the curriculum.
"For me, the best thing about Clicker is how it increases writing confidence. He knows that if he accidentally skips typing a word or misspells a word, it doesn’t matter because he can give it another try. He knows that there is something there to support him and help him get it right. Not only did this improve his writing within Clicker, he has since been able to write much more with pen and paper too."
Kate McKay is using Clicker to support children of all ages at Dunnottar School, which caters to children with a range of physical and learning disabilities including cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and autism.
"Within a day of their training, teachers were telling me of activities they had tried with their students and the fantastic success they were having along with the interest being shown by the students. They could see student self-esteem rising with each push of a button."
Emma Dibden has been using Clicker to increase student motivation and make writing more accessible for learners with literacy difficulties.
"From the anecdotal feedback from the children, there are several of them who were previously totally turned off by writing, but absolutely rave about it now that they have Clicker! We’ve had their parents come in celebrating the amount of work they’re able to produce now, and the ideas they’re finally able to get down on paper. Clicker has really inspired and excited these children about writing, which is exactly what we had hoped for."