Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Math sites to replace worksheets for dysgraphics

DS7 has dysgraphia and his math teacher is trying out math sites to replace worksheets for his homework, to accommodate both E's. I'm delighted by this and thought I could help out by canvassing the wisdom of this board. I've read threads on various math programs, but I don't know how/if any of them would work as worksheet replacements. He's doing grade 3 & 4 work and could go higher. Suggestions?

ixl.com isn't bad, but it is difficult to do calculations for some of the problems on that site. For instance say the problem is 836-797. There are boxes in the correct columns to type in the numbers in the correct place value, but no place to show borrowing. So DS has to do all that in his head and it's easy to make errors (esp. in DS's words, if he has to "ship things over from a far-away column"). Hopefully someone has a better suggestion. Someone suggested to me getting a laptop with a scanner, scanning the worksheet and then have software where you can click where the answers go. Then the worksheet could be printed or emailed to the teacher. But I'm not a techie and have no idea what software or how this would work. Let us know if you figure out anything that works since I have the same problem with my 6 year old. The teacher is willing to give him third grade math but the print on the page is tiny and he can't write that small. Even if he is able to write large, his writing is pretty poor.

ALEKS would work fine for that I would think. Of course any such thing is going to a bit different from a paper worksheet, but ALEKS at that level worked fine for my DS when he was very unwilling to write. Questions pretty samey, but likely less so than the worksheets they're replacing!

We are doing a trial of ALEKS and many/most of the problems have to be copied onto scratch paper in order to solve them. DS is in the middle of third grade on ALEKS. I don't know what the higher levels are like. So in a way, it is even worse than a worksheet where the problems are already there and the answers just need to be written.

That's definitely a ymmv thing then - I was always trying to get DS to write things down, but he never would, and just solved everything in his head (with more exceptions creeping in in later courses, but I mean much later). Might be worth doing a trial to see how your DS finds it, OP.

We have the same problem with this site. It's annoying. DS uses graph paper and has to re-write the entire problem (e.g. long addition or long multiplication) solve it then type it in... a little too much writing and lookign from computer screeen to paper. He actually slowed on using it for this reason. I wonder if their isn't some sort of software, site, etc. that would allow for this, ykwim? I wonder if there is an ipad app (they have awesome apps for dysgraphia on there you'd think there'd be something). Anyone know of anything?

Oh there is! Polarbear has it... and my husband knows of it too .. it's acrobat something but it is expensive (well I guess that is subjective but I beleive it is over $100) that is why we haven't gotten yet... We have less worksheet homework this year for some reason so we are still holding off on it but I fully intend to get it eventually. If polarbear doesn't chime in I will check for the name of it with my hubby....

Yeah, Adobe Acrobat can do this, and yes, the full version of Adobe Acrobat is expensive.

But there's another way... OCR, otherwise known as Optical Character Recognition. A lot of scanners ship with software that does this, allowing you to scan a document and translate it into, say, Microsoft Word. So that would be a feature to look for when shopping for the scanner.

If it's not part of the scanner, there are 3rd-party apps that do this. I can't vouch for any of them personally. I can say with authority, though, that if what you're receiving are poor-quality pages, your experiences with any OCR technology will be incredibly frustrating.

For a low-tech solution, you could always:

1) Scan the documents in as an image, and open in Paint.
2) Show your son how to create text boxes to write in his answers.

Paperport from Nuance is what we use. It has been improving.

You scan in the page and then you can click where you want to type and you type on the line or anywhere on the page. My DS does it and loves it. Then saves it as PDF and prints or hands it in on flash drive. You can also just email it to the teacher.

We are finding that a lot of PDFs now allow you to type on them too. Though printing can be flaky--sometimes the stuff you type doesn't show up. So, if you scan and save to PDF, you may --with out the software you have to pay for--be able to type on your PDF.

If you get really fancy, you can carry around a hand held scanner that has paperport on it (neat receipts). We are not that fancy at this house. Instead, we looked for a printer/scanner that already has paperport installed (Brother MFC 7840 W is ours). There are cheaper ones, but we needed waterproof so laser was our best choice. If you get the software with the printer, you can put the software on all your computers. If you buy Paperport separately (maybe this is changed?) you are limited, and it doesn't update. And it costs about half the price of our printer.

If you read reviews, they say Paperport is awful, but for our purposes--which are not mentioned in any of the reviewers purposes--it has worked flawlessly and been fantastic.

If you have a Mac, I believe there's something called "form typer". It seems to be exactly what you want, though we have a PC so never investigated it.

Efofex is the math program kids use once they reach pre-algebra and are starting to type equations. There are free trials and you can get it free for 10 years with a letter verifying disability. It is an add in for word so goes right into the word documents. However, my stick in the mud prefers to not use it in word and to save as a PDF directly from Efofex. It should be available for Macs within the next couple of years. They are still developing it.

For elementary school math, there's nothing yet that lines up the numbers for you. Many have tried. We looked at some stuff and are always looking to see if there is an app yet. Some have claimed to have it solved, but we haven't seen one good yet. We relied on the kindness of the math teacher to stand over DS and ask him what he was writing. Lots of people have made Excel work for them. We were lucky to never have to go down that path.

Thanks, everyone. We're looking for a new printer/scanner, so I'm glad I asked this question before purchasing.

I've had another look at the math teacher's last email and it seems to be the word problems, specifically, for which an alternative process is sought. DS7 is still painfully slow at typing. Typing on worksheets will be our way forward once we get his speed up, but right now it would try the patience of a saint to supervise that kind of homework.

Oddly, I think I'm asking for word problem sites that don't involve words! At least not words typed by the user. Does ALEKS fit that strange description?