Using antiquated software

I am all riled up and TICKED RIGHT OFF this morning.

I got an email from the SERT (two actually) this morning indicating that the Board has accepted her request to send S’s scanner home so that he can scan his school work at home. Score one point!

The second email asked for more details about what is wrong with the version of Dragon Naturally Speaking on S’s system. I guess she needed some more details for the Board’s IT people. Anyway, I responded to her email right away and within a half hour, I got an email back telling me that “they” felt that it was just likely that S’s voice has changed and that he needs to take the time to ‘retrain’ the program.
I just about lost it.

I emailed her backr – which I also cc’d to the Superintendent of Special Education – and explained that in the past 3 years the program has never worked to the ability that the newer version (without any training) did over the summer. I went on to further explain that when he is constantly required to say “delete that” and “correct that” it takes away from his ability to speak naturally and let the thoughts flow as they should.
Then, my final argument toward a newer version of the program was that it would end up costing the same – if not more – to have a consultant come in and provide training as it would to just update the program. I also stressed that the funding is available from the Ministry of Education and that I didn’t see why the Board would have a problem with providing updates to antiquated programs.
I’d love to know if anyone at the Board is still working on Windows 98… betcha they are all using the most up to date version of Windows, yet they expect the kids to not have updated software.

So, yeah, I’m a tad riled today. I think I am going to give our instructor from the summer training program a call to see if she has any advice on how I can further proceed with this. I know it is available – why are they giving me such a hard time about this request?

I may just call the Superintendent… this is gonna bother me all day.