A laptop in class, but worksheets on paper: what if the worksheet became truly digital?

For many children with dyspraxia or dysgraphia, a laptop changes everything. It spares them what professionals call dual tasking: when forming each letter takes so much attention, there is none left for thinking. At the keyboard, the child can finally show what they know.

Provided, of course, that there is something to fill in on that laptop.

The paradox: the laptop is there, the exercise isn't

The laptop was requested, the paperwork done (an EHC plan, or the school's own support plan), touch-typing learned (often more than a year of occupational therapy sessions). And on Monday morning, the teacher hands out… a photocopy.

So pupils and their families improvise. A Year 7 pupil explains:

"For a gap-fill, my English teacher lends me her USB stick: I copy the text onto my laptop and fill it in there."A Year 7 pupil

It works, with a teacher who has time, a file that exists, a USB stick passing from hand to hand. But one missing link is enough for the child to give up on their laptop in that subject and pick the pen back up.

📄 Paper worksheet→ 👩‍🏫 Teacher's file?→ 💾 USB stick→ 📋 Copy and paste→ ⌨️ Fill in→ 💾 USB stick back

Six steps, and any of them can break. With DysAdapt: 📸 photo of the worksheet → version to fill in.

Other solutions exist: a portable scanner, a scanner mouse, a photo of the worksheet. An occupational therapist who works in schools notes that photocopies of lessons, when pupils have to sort them out themselves, almost always fail, and recommends a portable scanner instead.

The scanner solves part of the problem, but it creates another.

Scanned is not usable

A scanned worksheet is an image. The child sees it on screen, but can't do anything in it:

• no box to click in to write;
• to fill a gap, you have to add a text box on top, put it in the right place, adjust its size… for every gap;
• the text spills over, overlaps the line, shifts when you zoom;
• matching two columns, circling a word, filling in a table: nearly impossible with a PDF's annotation tools.

For a child whose difficulty is precisely movement precision and spatial organisation, we are asking them to do, with a mouse, layout work even finer than on paper. The remedy becomes a new difficulty.

The real need is not to have the worksheet on screen. It is to have an exercise designed for the screen.

An example: the geography map

Take a Year 5 or Year 7 worksheet like thousands of others:

Label the map of Europe with the names of these countries: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Portugal.

On paper

Scanned, filled in as a PDF text boxes added by hand

Now imagine the same worksheet turned into a web page. The content is the same: same map, same six countries, same instructions. But the way of answering adapts to the child. The demos below are hands-on: give them a try.

Version 1: boxes to fill in with the keyboard available now

Each arrow leads to a real input box, big enough and well spaced. The child clicks, types the name, moves to the next box with the Tab key. Nothing to place, nothing to draw. It is the simplest version, and it is already enough to make the exercise doable.

Write the name of each country in its box.

Tip: press Tab to go to the next box

Version 2: labels to drop in available now

The six names are in a bank of labels under the map. The child taps a label, then taps the box: it goes in. On a tablet, with a finger, without needing a precise drag and drop. For a child who struggles to write even at the keyboard, or who makes a lot of spelling mistakes on proper names, we finally assess what we mean to assess: do they know where Poland is?

Put each label in the right box.

Tap a label, then a box (on a phone, swipe the map)

Version 3: a truly interactive map vision

What if we went further? What follows is not yet a DysAdapt feature: it is an idea, which we show to open the discussion.

• Zoom in on a region without the labels shifting.
• Select a country to highlight it, with thick, high-contrast borders, for the child who struggles to find their way around a diagram.
• Hide everything that isn't needed (neighbouring countries, rivers, relief) for the child who is easily distracted.
• Hear the name of a country by pressing its label, for the child who reads slowly.
• Choose how to answer according to their profile: by keyboard for one, with labels for another, on the same map.

Mock-up: the map that adapts to the profile

🔍 + 🔍 − Hide neighbours Thick borders

🔊 France 🔊 Spain 🔊 Italy 🔊 Germany 🔊 Poland 🔊 Portugal

Tap a purple country to select it.

Other worksheets, other possibilities

The map is just one example. With a little imagination, here is what other everyday exercises could become. Some of these ideas already exist in DysAdapt, others are ideas.

• Matching two columns idea: instead of drawing lines that cross, you tap an item on the left, then its partner on the right, and both turn the same colour.
• The timeline idea: events to drop onto a timeline, which grows when you zoom instead of becoming unreadable.
• The science diagram to label: labels from the bank go onto the parts of the diagram, as with the map. One mother says her son, in Year 12, explains to his teachers himself that if they give him the diagram on his laptop, he can label it.
• The reading comprehension text idea: each paragraph has its own audio button, and the question points to the right paragraph instead of "reread the text".
• The verb table idea: input boxes lined up, one row highlighted at a time so you don't lose your place.

What doesn't change

Making an exercise interactive does not mean turning it into a game, or doing it for the child. The same principles as for the paper version apply:

• It is the class exercise, not an invented one: same questions, same order, same expectations.
• No answer is given or hinted at: the boxes are empty, the labels are not pre-placed, there is no "well done" or red "wrong".
• The marking stays the teacher's.
• The adult prepares the worksheet: the child does not chat with an artificial intelligence, they work on a web page, as on a worksheet.

See also: Adapt, don't replace: why DysAdapt doesn't mark homework.

What about paper?

The screen is not better for everyone. Many children, especially in primary school, prefer paper, and a laptop only makes sense if the child types fast enough, which takes real learning. An adaptation tool replaces neither that learning nor the occupational therapist.

And some children, especially at secondary school, do not want to get their laptop out in front of the others (see how others see them).

That is why DysAdapt produces both: a printable version and a web version to fill in. The same profile, the same worksheet, two formats, to choose according to the child and the day. The child does not have to choose between getting help and going unnoticed.