Recognizing Text (OCR) in PDFs with Adobe Professional

Having trouble highlighting and having NaturalReader or WordQ read text aloud in a PDF?

Tech Mod 10 or later schools have Adobe Professional which allows you to recognize the text in something you scanned. Follow these steps and then re-save the document:

1) "Document" from top toolbar

2) "OCR Text Recognition"

3) "Recognize Text Using OCR"

Adding Comments in PDFs

How to create PDFs with supported stickey notes for prompts and student responses.

Text description of this process is available at this link.

E-Reader Physical Access: Kindle vs. Nook

When considering the use of an E-Reader for a student with a disability, it is important to know that each device may have a combination of features that can simultaneously present barriers and supports for a specific type of challenge. This appears to be the case for physical access for two of the leading E-readers at this time: Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.

I don't have first hand experience with the Nook and have obtained the information below from the user guide. Look forward to other people's comments who have first hand experience.

One key difference is that the Nook has touchscreen navigation and keyboard that must be accessed with finger touch and not stylus/pen/adapted pointer touch. I would assume this requires less pressure to select than the Kindle mechanical buttons for navigation/keyboard. It may be more intuitive in that more of your visual and motor points of interaction are the same vs. the Kindle with buttons on the bottom to move through screen on the top for everything but "Home" and page turn.

I am not sure about the size of the Nook touchscreen buttons but assume the size cannot be adjusted. The touchscreen keyboard size for the Nook is also fit within a 3.5x1.5"(approx.) space which would present issues. Considerations for kinesthetic keyboard input need to be made with the Nook (touchscreen) vs. Kindle (mechanical buttons). Page turning options with the Nook include mechanical buttons or finger swipe on the touchscreen but no finger swipe option exist with the Kindle. However, some have reported the finger swipe can be motorically complicated.

What have other people found in terms of motor access for these two devices?

Speak Q Purchasing

Speak Q and Word Q have now been updated to version 3. There are no more free upgrades to Word Q when you purchase Speak Q. If you buy Speak Q licenses you will also have to buy Word Q licenses. For example, if you buy 6 licenses of Speak Q 3.0 then you will have to purchased 6 upgrade licenses of Word Q 3.0.

Speak Q and Word Q must be the same version. Please contact Speri Silverman at 301-657-4959 if you have any questions.

Audio to Use in Presentations

For places to find digital audio to use in presentations, these are some we often recommend from the HIAT website: http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/websites/graphics.shtm

Some others from MS Media Specialists Diane Omans and Andrea Christman include:

Creative Commons Search - Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Their portal provides access to search services to find media licensed under the creative commons license.

Discovery Education Streaming - MCPS has a subscription to this huge databank of graphics, video, and sound. All the media is aligned to content standards. MCPS staff can ask the media specialist for the login/password. You can attend an MCPS training (put "streaming" in the course title field of the PDO) or view the professional development resources within DE Streaming. Student can be provided their own accounts for home and school use as well.

Jamendo is a great place to find free music to use in your presentations. all music is free and legally usable. To find music that suits your needs, search descriptors of the tracks. From the "Music" menu, choose "Tags."

Soundsnap contains many sound effects and loops, organized in an attractive and easy to use interface. You can download 5 files a day with a free account.

Teacher's Domain - an extensive library of free digital resources from public television and other leading media producers, designed for classroom use and professional development. You can store and categorize materials that you find. You must complete a free registration process to download materials

Wikimedia Commons - This site is a repository of graphics, sound and video uploaded by the users. The vast majority of files are either in the public domain or under a liberal copyright license which allows you to use them as long as you give credit back to the authors.

What sites have others found useful for this purpose? Any better than others for students to interact with directly (e.g. only safer, controlled content)?

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?

Copying Images from Inspiration

You can copy images from the Inspiration image library to use in other programs.
Open Inspiration and pull the image onto your organizer from the Symbol Palette.
Right mouse click on the image and select "Copy".
Open the Paint program in Microsoft Windows (on all MCPS computers). Paste the image into the Paint program.
Resize the image or frame around the image if needed. Save the image where you want to access it later. When you save, choose ".jpg" or ".bmp".