Can I use Natural Reader at home?

Question:
Does Natural Reader have teacher take home rights so that teachers can use it at home?

Answer:
Natural Reader is free.  Download it from http://www.naturalreaders.com/

• Natural Reader is text reader software.  It enables the computer to read any text on the screen by simply selecting the text and clicking the read button on the floating toolbar
• More help with Natural Reader is here

Learn Skills-Feed Hungry..with flexible support

Looking for a way to help feed the hungry, develop academic skills and introduce students to free accessible technology all at once? Probably not unless you have run across FreeRice.com and thought to pair it with a free text reader as was done by teacher Keir Lewis at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. FreeRice has two goals: 1) provide education to everyone for free and 2) help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
Students answer multiple choice questions for a variety of topic areas (see below) that may have applications for elementary to high school students. For every correct answer, FreeRice.com donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program (“Though 10 grains of rice may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time.” – www.FreeRice.com).

A text reader like NaturalReader allows words to be read aloud for those who struggle with reading, a particular benefit with some of the grammar and vocabulary sections. NaturalReader is a free text reader program that is available in MCPS schools and for download at home - allowing teachers to model this at school and have students extend the benefit to home. A number of quick guides and instructional videos on NaturalReader are available on the HIAT website.

Freerice.com topic areas (as of 1/26/10):

ART: Famous Paintings CHEMISTRY: Chemical Symbols (Basic), Chemical Symbols (Full List) ENGLISH: English Grammar, English Vocabulary GEOGRAPHY: Identify Countries on the Map, World Capitals LANGUAGE LEARNING: French, German, Italian, Spanish MATH: Basic Math (Pre-Algebra), Multiplication Table

How have you used these resources to support learning and service? Do you know of other good websites providing similar benefits?

Handwriting Recognition with Inspiration and a Promethean Board

Inspiration can be an effective tool to model pre-writing, brainstorming and thinking with a group using the Promethean board. Inspiration has a handwriting recognition area that works with the Promethean board ACTIVstudio software, allowing a teacher to write on the board with the stylus and have it transferred into an Inspiration diagram.

To use this feature:
1. Start ACTIVstudio (or ACTIVprimary) and click the handwriting button on the tools palette to display the handwriting control palette.
2. Start Inspiration and open a diagram.
3. On the Utility menu, choose Preferences.
4. Click behaviors.
5. Select the Stylus Mode checkbox, then click OK.
6. On the Formatting toolbar, click the Handwriting Area button.

Now when you write in the handwriting area with the stylus, it will enter text into the organizer (provided you have trained the handwriting recognition tool in ACTIVstudio!)

Let us know different ways you or others have successfully used these tools!

K-Grade1 Clicker5 Word Banks

Do you work with emergent writers who struggle with incorporating kindergarten and first grade word wall words into their writing?

This grid with talking word banks may provide a ready-made resource to support students who struggle with handwriting (click on the word in place of handwriting/typing) and reading/spelling (can have word read aloud before selecting).

The main grid has all the kindergarten word wall words from the MCPS curriculum guide. The pop-up word bank has a more expansive word bank with the grade 1 word wall words highlighted in tan. For all words, students can preview the word read loud by clicking on the word with the RIGHT mouse button and then the LEFT mouse button sends the word to the document.

Click here to download the file: K-Grade1WordWallGrid.clkt

See this short video on how to use this resource.

Printable Quick Guides and video tutorials on how to use Clicker5 are available on the HIAT web-site.
This Clicker5 grid is also available in the K and 1st grade English LA folders on the UDL Share space as well (only MCPS staff can access).

Please post a response if you end up using this resource with students. How did it go? What improvements can be made to the Clicker5 grid?

Making MS Word a Talking Word Processor - for Free!

Does your child or student benefit from using a talking word processor (speak and highlight text), talking spell check, and talking dictionary to help support their composition and self-editing? Wordtalk is a free tool that provide these support at home:
http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/

For people with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful.
WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plugin developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 upwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate.
Sitting neatly in your toolbar it is highly configurable, allowing you to:
- Adjust the highlight colors
- Change the voice and the speed of the speech
- Convert text to speech and save as a .wav or .mp3 file so that it can be played back on an iPod or mp3 player.

Another free resource to make a word processor into a talking word processor is Natural Reader - see the HIAT Quick Guides and Videos on this topic.

What other free or low cost resources have you found to provide talking word processing at home?

Coverting PDF files to Word

Have a worksheet in locked PDF format that you want students to type into?
Found a great reading passage in PDF format you want to read aloud with text reader software(e.g. Kurzweil, Natural Reader)?

In most cases, you will need to covert it to a MS Word file that can be used for these purposes.

www.zamzar.com is a free tool that allows you to upload a PDF file, have it converted to a Word document, and e-mailed back to you (usually the same day)

You can find printable quick guides and videos on text reader software and flexible features of MS Word on the HIAT web-site Quick Guides page.

What other tools do you use to convert PDF files to make them more usable?

Reading Bubble Notes Automatically in Kurzweil

Trying to set-up Bubble Notes in Kurzweil so they pop-up automatically when it reaches a certain point in the text?

Not able to make it work even though you have tried all the settings and options related to notes?

Make sure the reading mode (in yellow tool bar) is set to "Continuous" and not "Self-paced" - this is the most common solution to what can be frustrating problem! The notes popping up can have the effect of self-pacing the reading if inserted at predictable intervals but may need to decide which feature is more essential on a case by case basis.

How are you using bubble notes to support reading comprehension in Kurzweil (e.g. provide information, refocus the reader, support comprehension)?

Word Pronunciation Settings in Clicker 5 Grids and Documents

If a teacher creates a grid and edits the pronunciation of a word – does that save with the computer login, the grid, or the specific computer?
The edited pronunciation of a word will always save to the computer only and not within the Clicker 5 file.

What if the student is simply using Clicker writer (e.g. writer document) and edits a pronunciation? Where will that be saved?
The edited pronunciation of a word will always save to the computer only regardless of using the Clicker Writer or the Clicker Grid.

Once a user has changed the pronunciation of a word, this setting will always be saved on the computer only, therefore the user will have to make the same changes if they wish to change the pronunciation of a word on a different computer.

Sharing Multimedia Files Home

Have you created some materials in Word or PowerPoint with multimedia supports (e.g. voice notes recorded in document as prompts/feedback, great images in a PowerPoint to explain a topic)?
Want students to use these documents at home?
Middle and High School staff can use Edline to post these larger files and have students or parents open them at home. Students can also use multimedia supports to respond if needed (e.g. recording their own voice notes for answers), and e-mail to the teacher (usually if under 10 MB in size) and bring to school on a portable USB drive. (see prior posts on adding voice notes for teacher prompts and student responses)

For Elementary School staff who may not have access to Edline, you can use a tool like http://www.schoolnotes.com/ to share instructional web-links and smaller files with parents and students at home. To share larger files with multimedia, you can use a file and folder sharing tool like http://www.box.net/ - a video is available to describe some ways to use this for educators.

How have you used Edline to share multimedia files with home? What has worked? What challenges have you encountered?

Why are there so many files created when I download a book from Bookshare.org and what do I do with them?

Question:
When I download a book from Bookshare and unzip it, a bunch of files appear in a folder. Why?

Answer:
The downloaded book is in a couple of formats so that you can access it with a variety of software programs. The rest of the files are "helper files" and are needed by the book files in order to open and view properly.

Question:
What do I do with them?

Answer:
The easiest thing to do is just leave them there.  Or, if you'd like to learn about more options for dealing with the files, see the quick guide on using Bookshare files with a text reader.

Locked Boxes in Inspiration

Many people ask how to create a "locked" box in Inspiration so you could use it as a frame for a word or image bank - allowing students to drag words/images out of the frame/box and into the correct place in the diagram.

First, add the box or shape you want to use as the frame for the word/image bank. Next, click on the box/shape and choose "Effect" from the top toolbar and then choose "Send to BacK" (* click on the image above to enlarge it*).

Now you can add words in symbols/images to the framed "bank" that students can drag into place. Please post and let us know if this works for you!

Discovery Education Videos and Inspiration

*Before* downloading videos you want to use in Inspiration from DE, you need to first change the download type to "Quick Time" format so they play in Inspiration (see image above). If you just want to hyperlink to the video (i.e. have it play outside of Inspiration) and not have it play inside your Inspiration diagram, you do not need to change the download format in DE.
Also, do not forget the printable quick guide and video tutorials on how to use embedded video and many other features of Inspiration on the HIAT website.

What creative ways have you used video to support learning with Inspiration?

Using WordQ to Read Promethean Flipchart Text Aloud

click here is you want a larger display of this video

Save your voice! Recording prompts and directions into students’ worksheets and writing.

Recording your voice into worksheets or to provide feedback for students' writing can have benefits for those who struggle with:

• reading - permanent feedback can be provided for students who can't easily read your comments
• focus and memory - students can have on-demand directions of feedback read aloud as many times as they need them
• engagement - students often respond differently to their teacher's voice than written prompts

In order to do this, you have to add the "insert sound object" button to your tool bar.  You can use these templates to open a document with the button already positioned in the tool bar for you.

• Word 03 Voice Notes template 
• Word 07 Voice Notes template.

Here's a video on how to use them.

This strategy can also be applied to:

• Inspiration graphic organizers (Quick Guide and Video)
• PowerPoint (Quick Guide)
• Clicker5 (Quick Guide)

Have you recorded you voice to support student writing? How did it go?