A New Perspective – Colbie and the CloverBook

Meet Colbie. She is a grade 5 student at Thornhill Elementary School in School District #82. What’s cool about Colbie is, although she has Cerebral Palsy which impacts her left side and low vision challenges, in her view, she is just a regular student like everyone else. She enjoys participating in all subjects with her classmates. To support her learning, Colbie has been using a CCTV, PRODIGI Connect and assorted magnifiers for years. She has also begun to use other accessibility tools such as a Kensington Turbo Mouse and various accessibility features on the computer to accommodate physical ease of use.

As Colbie has progressed into the intermediate grades, the school team including TSVI Nici DeCario, EA Paula Pottle and classroom teacher Deborah Bailey, wanted to provide Colbie with more portable and multipurpose tools to access curriculum alongside her peers. So, they applied for SET-BC support. The team investigated alternative tools for typing, apps to support reading and written output, as well as digital magnifiers for vision support. They landed on the CloverBook Pro for near and distance viewing. To support both reading and writing, Colbie is using an iPad Pro to capture images, enlarge material, access files (Google Classrooms, ARCBC, CELA), customize vision and keyboard accessibility features, and demonstrate her learning with apps like ClaroPDF Pro, SnapType, and Voice Dream Reader.

One of Colbie’s favorite tools is the CloverBook Pro because of its portability and ease of use. The entire team including Colbie has commented on how she is more independent and due to the portability and minimal footprint of the technology, she can be more “visible and present” in the classroom.

The following video highlights some of the features of Colbie’s technology and how it has increased inclusion in her classroom.