Access to Knowledge and Expression: Multimedia Writing Tools for Students with Diverse Needs and Strengths

This paper explores the proposal that some nine and ten-year old children with serious writing problems do not make progress because much of their instruction is centered around their weaknesses rather than around their strengths. Many children who cannot read or write well by the time they are in the fourth grade are able to learn from visual and aural sources in relevant contexts, but their work in school relies mostly on textual sources as they progress through the grades. Images and sounds can provide children with information in cultural, social, and emotional contexts that are readily accessible to them. The lack of access to such resources is especially acute for children from backgrounds that differ from the culture assumed by school but also occurs for some children from mainstream backgrounds who work better in visual and aural than in textual modes. Since some of the functions of written language, like providing information and means of expression, can be served by other symbol systems, it is worth exploring children's use of a variety of symbol systems and relationships between visual symbol systems, aural symbol systems, and text. Recent developments in technology make it possible to create multimedia environments in the computer including images, sounds, text, and tools for manipulating and transforming these symbol systems. As children gather and study pictures and sounds on a relevant topic, they may be able to use these images and sounds as springboards for writing and extending beyond familiar contexts. But, there is little research to determine whether and how children use such multimedia tools to build bridges between their lives and the world of text, which they must inhabit to be successful in school.