Hello,
I am dyslexic! :-)
Dyslexia is a polymorphic condition that affects more than just reading
and writing and is thought to be caused by poor short term memory, where
short term memory is the length of time it takes to turn a key in a lock
or less. A common analogy is the CPU is good but the buffering on I/O is
not good enough to keep up with the CPU. For example it would be like
having a keyboard or scanner with a buffering system that mixed up input
or output and sometimes lost characters. This would also make it
difficult to rapidly change from reading to writing and explains why
doing things like reading, writing, listening, speaking and transcribing
at the same time are more difficult for a dyslexic than a non-dyslexic.
I think this can make software carpentry a difficult way for a dyslexic
to learn how to write programs as it requires multi-tasking a variety of
activities that are separately quite hard for a dyslexic but which are
rapidly changed to and from.
On top of this nearly half dyslexics have another condition, visual
stress that 10% of non-dyslexics also have. People with this condition
do not handle the high contrast of a white background with black text
well. There are indeed fonts that are considered good for dyslexics,
they tend to be similar to the Arial and Helvetica fonts but they have
very slightly more spacing between the letters.
In my opinion dyslexics benefit from spending more time setting up their
environment and understanding/documenting what they have done. Setting
up an environment means getting everything so that it is working
technically as it should as well as setting up fonts and background
colours on their preferences. They will be slow to read and so configure
the system on their own, especially if programming is new and they do
not understand the vocabulary. If they have to do this at the start of a
course they may well fail to ever catch up with the class. I think they
would benefit from being offered help the day or week before to set up
their environment.
Dyslexic are also more likely, especially initially, to like text
editors that open up in their own window rather than one that takes over
their shell. They are unlekely to remember ho to spell things that are
in the shell and will have to keep on opening and closing the text
editor to get the sytax and spelling right. This will disrupt learning.
A dyslexic will have to repeat and practice more than a non-dyslexic,
they are less capable of surface learning and will need to deep learn.
This will take time and they may prefer to work at their own speed and
repeat concepts and exercises. It may be good to have a summary of what
you will learn at the beginning, then exercises and then another summary
at the end. There is a fair amount of evidence that some dyslexics are
not good at multiple choice exercises so self-assessments which have
multiple choices are not good.
Having one consistent reference text book for an entire programming
language maybe helpful as this lays out all parts of the language in one
place so that the learner can go back and identify areas they do not
know over the first few years of using that language and so gradually
fill in the gaps. I have seen some short programs that are the length of
a page in a text book that can be used to document the main parts of
syntax used in a language. These are good reference for the main syntax
and functionality of a language. The classic example program is a
program where the user inputs a radius and the program uses a function
or class to calculate the area of the circle with that radius.
A dyslexic will probably benefit from being able to ask lots of
questions and chatting about programming - social learning. They should
try to get one or more technical mentors who they can go to with
niggling questions.
I hope this helps
Joanna
On 04/04/2017 15:46, Neal Davis wrote:
I don't have experience with this.
With that caveat in mind, I am aware that some work has been done
towards dyslexic-friendly typefaces, such as
http://opendyslexic.org/. These weight the font deliberately to
increase recognizability. This is worth trying with coding to see if
it helps, at least anecdotally for now.
Sincerely,
Neal Davis
/Teaching Assistant Professor · Department of Computer Science
2229 Siebel Center · 201 North Goodwin Avenue, MC-258 · Urbana, IL
61801-2302
217·244·4181/
2017-04-03 8:20 GMT-05:00 C. Titus Brown <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Hi all,
at the JGI User Meeting two weeks ago, I met someone who wanted
some advice and/or lessons on learning to code while dyslexic. Any
resources or opinions would be welcome - I don’t know that I’ve
heard it discussed by any of the Carpentry folk or in the context
of lesson design. Curious!
(E-mail me privately if you’d like a summary of what I find.)
thanks,
—titus
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