[Oz-gifted] Assisitive technology fo uni

[tony nolan]

G'day

Sorry for my short and slow replies. Between trying to get gifted things on 
the political agendas with two ministers and a shadow minister, am also 
talking to the professional counselling association about raising the 
knowledge of counsellors to the issues of Gifted Teens and Gifted Adults, 
so there are some more support resources in the community for our gifted 
community, Unfortunately, this takes ups a lot of my spare time as well.

I am ADHD, as well as a semi disabled in both hands and forehands, as well 
as a slight dyslexic. ( You can add in the extreme VS as well if you want 
as well), either way with a short concentration, difficulty in writing 
neatly and i have trouble with the linear side of study.

What I found a help.

Colours and colour coding with a filing system for my notes on the page as 
well as different subjects, was a big help. The colours aided my memory 
recall as well as helping me to cluster things together with study. I used 
to also use a form of symbols or codes at the beginning to mark if some 
thing is important, if it is primary or secondary information, did it come 
from a lecture, or a text book, etc.

The ADHD used to put neurological noise in my head as a ty[pe of 
distraction, and i was also very fidgety, so I had to develop a quick 
recording system to add to my notes, because it is just too hard to write 
things word for word, you miss out on so much of the body language as well 
as the over heads, when you have to write all the time. Plus it was 
important to know where the source of the into was from, eg lecture, tutor, 
book, class mate, journal, etc

I found that the earlier and better you can code a source and quality of 
information, the less pressure later on when study and doing assignments.

I had to use very Visual techniques because of the ADHD, I had a 
concentration of only under a few minutes, to around 10 minutes at 
university. SO I used Mud Maps, or concept maps - to put the terms 
together, or i used a diagrams.  -  What i found useful was a book , where 
I would write in the right hand side, and draw on the left hand side. The 
diagrams and words ( ie both sides of the page ) helped me get the whole 
thing down, before the ADHD took over and I just lost track of what was 
happening.

For word process, I like the MS-Word for the voice recognition and the text 
to voice option. When I write some thing on the computer, i like to get the 
text to voice to read it back to me, to see how it sounds. It might not be 
the best voice, but you get used to it, and it can help a lot. The voice 
recognition gets better as you use it, and over time it gets very accurate, 
and it saves time in many ways. But it does take its time to get it to work 
well.

im sorry, i dont know what OCD is as a term.

Hope this has helped

As usually, always happy to help
Regards
Tony







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