Kurzweil Implementation

A group of MCPS teachers met yesterday to talk about how using Kurzweil is working in various schools across the county.  Some of the major points that were discussed:

• There are many different ways to make it work depending on administrative support, number of Kurzweil licenses that you have, and buy-in from the staff.
• The critical piece is communication.  One person said that although she is not tech-savvy, she is successfully coordinating the use of Kurzweil in her building because she has good communication skills and is able to connect different departments in her building: IT support, special ed teachers, general ed teachers, paraeducators, and administration.
• It doesn't matter who you are.  The people in our discussion group who were taking the lead in implementing Kurzweil usage were paraeducators, special ed teachers, and even speech/language pathologists!

Two issues that people were interested in networking and learning from each other about were:

1. How to increase the use of Kurzweil despite the fact that many classrooms only have one or two computers.  We discussed several strategies:
• using the LCD or Promethean board as a teaching tool to model strategies that you want students to be able to do later when they are using Kurzweil at the computer.  In this way, their experience with Kurzweil is not limited to those few times that you can get the class into the computer lab.
• making use of computer hubs in the back of a lab or in the media center.  Setting up classroom routines so that students know when and how they are allowed to go to a computer in a different room.
• Advocating for a more convenient distribution of computers around the building.
• Making use of netbook or laptop carts that are available in your building.
2. How to manage testing situations better.  There was a lot of confusion about what is permissible regarding storing tests on the school server, whether password protection of the digital file was sufficient for test security, what media you can copy a test to - flash drive or CD, and whether digital versions of tests should be sent to others by email.  See the October 21 post about password protected documents for one tip on this topic.

What works well at your school?  What more would you like to know about how others are implementing Kurzweil?

Delivering Password Protected Documents to Students

Are you struggling with how to deliver teacher created quizzes and assessments for students to access? One method is to: 1) make a password protected document for each class with its own unique password, 2) add the document into the appropriate folder (e.g. "McGrath" and "Period 2") on the school's "handout" folder. Provide the students that period's password and have them open the document. This can be done in Adobe PDFs (you will need to open the PDF in Adobe Professional, which is on the school network), Word docs and Kurzweil files. Click on the prior links to learn how.

Kurzweil v10 Bubble Notes - Settings for Motor Access

Many teachers use Bubble Notes in Kurzweil to set-up multiple choice questions to automatically pop-up as text is read. Students select the correct answer, select "OK" and the text continues to be read. All their answers are recorded and can be extracted as a separate document for a study guide or to hand-in as a comprehension check.

2 important settings to make this work well for students who use alternative input methods to the mouse (e.g. AAC device emulating the keyboard):

1) In order for the Bubble Notes to pull up automatically, make sure the reading mode is set to "Continuous" ("self-paced" will cause the note to not pop-up automatically)

2) If the student needs to make selections for answers in the Bubble Note using "tab" or arrow keys and "Enter" key to select, you need to make sure the type of Multiple Choice question is set to "Radio Button" and not "Checkbox".

Comment below and let us know how you have used Bubble Notes!

Example of Using Kurzweil for Reading and Note Taking

Looking for ideas for how to use Kurzweil to read and take notes for an outline, focus questions or study guide? This video provides an example of how a student used Kurzweil to read a book for their law class and extract key text to support the study guide questions.
How have you used Kurzweil to read and take notes? Share your experiences and ideas by commenting below!

Making Kurzweil USB version 10 and Windows Vista

If you have a student who is using a portable Kurzweil USB (version 10) on a home computer that runs Windows Vista, you may need to follow these steps to make it work properly:
1. Open the Kurzweil 3000 USB contents.
2. Open the Kurzweil folder.
3. Right click on the icon for the "usbsentinel" and select "properties"
4. Set the options on in the "compatibility" tab to : a) Run in Windows XP mode, b) Disable visual themes, and c) Run as administrator
5. Click apply and ok.
6. Follow steps 3-5 for the "Kurzweil 3000" application file as well.
Lastly, may want to add those 2 files to any kind of virus scanner exception list. Please share any experiences you have with making the Kurzweil USB (version 10) work with Windows Vista operating system!

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)?

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.

Converting a page in the curriculum guide to Kurzweil

Now that the curriculum guides are in a digital form in the MCPS curriculum archives, it's easy to convert a page from the digital .pdf of the instructional guide to Kurzweil. Students can then use Kurzweil to read text selections from the instructional guide or fill in worksheet from the instructional guide. ( If you want to convert multiple pages, indicate the "print range" on the "print" window.)

Click on the link below to view the short video which demonstrates how to convert a page in the curriculum guide to Kurzweil.

video

Using PDF files with Kurzweil 3000

Question:
Can you please tell me how to put Adobe PDF files into Kurzweil 3000?

Answer:

1. Go to the computer that has the professional scan version of Kurzweil installed.
2. Open the Adobe file in Adobe Reader.
3. Print the file – choose the printer “Kesi virtual printer” (if the file is many pages, just print the pages that you need)
4. It will take a few seconds for the document to process, so wait and watch for Kurzweil to open with the file loaded
5. Save the file as a KESI file
6. You will probably have to clean up the file for it to read correctly, depending on how complicated the layout was. See the section “Editing Your Document After Scanning” in this Quick Guide