Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil 3000 is a program that I've been briefly introduced to but haven't actually used with a student. I can see it being a very powerful tool, but at $1000 per license, one that you'd better be sure is what's right for your student. Starting in grade 3 or 4, it is being used for some students to provide access to information, in other words, as a compensatory tool. In some boards it is being used as a remediation tool, with students beginning to use it in grade 7. Kurzweil would be considered a next step from Classroom Suite. Most students who use it would be required to have a diagnosed learning disability. This program is reading, writing, and translation.

The biggest point that I took away from our walk-through of Kurzweil today is that is a UDL - universal design for learning - which provides ACCESS TO INFORMATION (I had that in bold a whole bunch of times in my notes). I liked Barb's point that the UDLs we are using now, such as digitized textbooks, are designed not to change the student who has a disability, but to level the playing field and make our curriculum accessible for everyone. 

We looked at the toolbars found in Kurzweil (main, reading, writing, study skills), and were introduced to many of the main features of the program. One feature that was pretty cool was the ability to insert bubble notes into the text. Here were some ways to use bubble notes that we came up with:

 Bubble Notes: 5 (or more) Different Uses

1. Assessment – will automatically read the question, don’t have to go outside to another document. Could give the questions to the EPA and have them put them into doc.
2. Engaging and interactive
3. Chunk assignments
4. Attention, self regulation (when student sees the question mark, automatically attend more – know it’s going to read back to them, etc.)
5. Make study questions (even highly motivated students could use this)
6. Elicit background information 
7. If bubble note is large, gives and indication to student that they really need to attend.

To replace Kurzweil, we can use Dragon or Text-Speech on an iPad or iPod Touch to name a few programs. iPads are definitely a cheaper option, but Kurzweil has some pretty amazing features for struggling readers and writers.