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

I am still a little bit confused about what your teacher wants - I think she's looking for word problems for him to do as differentiation, but that don't require him to write much?

Aleks has word problems - the way you answer is putting the cursor inside a box, clicking on it, and then typing the number etc. I think it would work ok for a beginning typist.

A few notes: when our ds was learning to type, we were encouraged to let him figure out his own typing system rather than require that he use traditional touch typing. Apparently it's a lot easier for children to type faster if you just let them try and come up with their own key-finger rules - I've heard that some kids can type fast using just their thumb and first finger, similar to texting. If you want to let your child use their own inventive typing, you can still use touch-type teaching software, just ignore the directions for which fingers to use.

Aleks - it's easy to go in and create "quizzes" with any number of problems on whichever subjects you want to choose for the student - so that's one way a teacher could custom-design a set of problems for a student to work on (or you could do it as the parent if he had a home account).

There's a software package called "MathPad Plus" which was recommended for my ds when he was in elementary school - it allows kids to type in addition/subtraction/multiplication etc equations with plus/minus top-down/borrowing like they would calculate them on paper. My ds didn't ever actually use this, and I don't know if it's still available, but it's a nice tool.

My ds has always scanned in worksheets. On the laptop, he scanned to pdf format with a portable scanner (Doxy) - it's easy to use and easily fits into a backpack. He used Adobe Pro to type on the worksheets simply because that's software we already had at home. Paperport was recommended as an alternative. On his iPad, he uses JotNot to scan to pdf and has an app that I can't remember the name of that allows him to type in a pdf file.

He's also gone back and forth over time between using the computer and using handwriting to complete his math homework.

polarbear

I read mon's reply after I'd already typed mine, so I'll add a few notes:


There are a few Efofex modules already in production for Macs, and it runs really well. Prior to the Mac modules being released, my ds ran Efofex on his Mac laptop by using Parallels to run Windows (can't remember which version of Windows), and Efofex ran on the Windows OS.


This is exactly what MathPad Plus does. As I mentioned, we never used it, so I can't tell you anything about it from personal experience, but it was recommended to us for this purpose. I think I've seen similar attempts on a few iPad apps, but nothing that our ds was interested in using.

polarbear

Great resources Polarbear! Thank You! I am defintiely going to look into MathPad Plus sounds just like what my DS would love. It's a software for the computer, right?

Question about EfoFex - when should I look into getting that for my DS? What grade? Just want to be prepared and I am not sure when the "pre-algebra" starts ...

master of none, that's interesting about Mathpad! The tutorial for Mathpad Plus that I saw made it look like it would work well for this, but we're a Mac family so we didn't bother with trying it because, as you noted, it wasn't supported for the latest version of the Mac and they had no plans to upgrade it (this was several years ago). I had a feeling it might be headed in the direction of no longer being supported.

Irena, our ds started using Efofex when he was in Pre-Algebra (which is the course taken the year before Algebra in our school district). Our ds never used the equation module much, but he used the graph package a lot.

polarbear

Ok, I just took a worksheet, scanned it in as a jpeg and then opened Paint and was able to type in the answers by clicking and making boxes. It was a bit fussy and I wouldn't want to do it all the time but for worksheets with a lot of writing involved it is an option.

I can't imagine how it would work in a classroom though. DS's teacher doesn't even remind DS to use his slantboard.

My DS's math class is entirely online but they often have PDFs or docs that he has to do the math in. He uses daum equation editor, which is a Chrome app. Then he saves each equation as a jpg and pastes it into the doc, or the PDF. It isn't lightening fast, but it does work well!