Supermarket technology helps children learn to read - bar code scanning device

Children Today, Sept-Oct, 1990

A device similar to the bar code scanners used by supermarket cashiers can help children learn to read, according to an Arkansas researcher. The device relies on a light-sensitive pen to scan a series of bars that appear beneath the words in a text. A computer-assisted voice synthesizer pronounces each word as the light pen passes over the corresponding set of bars.

Alan VanBiervliet of Learning Express, Inc., in Little Rock, Arkansas, is using the device in his work with students in the Pulaski County School District in Arkansas and in the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind in Tucson. Supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), VanBiervliet is working with slow readers, children who have learning disabilities, children with mental retardation, and blind children.

In their initial studies, VanBiervliet and his co-workers used the Magic Wand Speaking Reader, developed by Texas Instruments for use as an educational toy. Because Texas instruments no longer manufactures this product, the researchers have switched to a similar device, referred to simply as "O" and produced by a company known as AISI.

In a formal reading lesson, teachers usually provide a brief introduction to the material their students are about to read. he teachers also help the students learn a list of the words they will later encounter in the lesson.

For slow readers and learning disabled children, VanBiervliet and his colleagues have developed sample texts in which bar code entries appear beneath the words in an introduction and in a glossary of unfamiliar words. Using the light pen, the students can proceed at their own pace, rather than relying on the teacher. VanBiervliet notes that "Our method isn't designed to replace the teacher but to help out teachers in overcrowded classrooms who don't have the time to deal with each student at length."

Students using the light pen scored an average of 10 percent higher on reading comprehension tests than did students who learned to read using conventional techniques. Similarly, students using VanBiervliet's method also made 10 percent fewer errors than those who did not use it. The technique also had an unexpected benefit: the students were so intrigued by it that they spent much of their free time using it to teach themselves to read.

Children with mental retardation were able to use the system to learn words like "entrance" and "exit" and other terms important for functioning independently. VanBiervliet also adapted the method to teach braille. Like the system for sighted children, each braille entry has a corresponding set of bars beneath it. The children locate the beginning of each set of bars by feeling for a raised dot. "This is the only method for teaching blind children," VanBiervliet observes, "that doesn't require an instructor who knows braille."

Further information on the device can be obtained by contacting Robert Bock, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland 20892.