Monday, July 16th, 2012.

Kurzweil

It was nice to finally put a face to a program I had heard of but knew nothing about.  I would hear the resource teacher in our school talk about getting it installed on the computer in her room for a specific student, but I did not know the program could be of benefit to soooooo many students.  When I think back to the class of students I taught this past year, I am wishing that I had access to this program on the LCD in my classroom.  The text to speech part is great, but Kurzweil is so much more than that.  The ability to highlight text, and insert the bubbles really added more to the program than just being read aloud to.  It is unfortunate that it comes at such an expense that students and teachers have to jump through so many hoops to get access to it, and that is what AT is all about, access to the information.  I can see that I will not be getting a copy of Kurzweil loaded onto any of the netbooks in my classroom, so I will have to settle for second best, managing to get an ipad for my classroom.  Apple products come with so many universal access applications that any of my students could adjust the settings on the ipad to meet their needs.  Now, I just have to figure out how to get one for my classroom.  If I was really smart I would figure out how to get one for every student in my class, but I think that is setting the bar just a little bit too high.  I will set my goal for one, and that is a long shot.  I think I will start with taking my ipad to my school and doing some demos for our staff and then go from there.  My principal is retiring in June, maybe he will want to go out on a high note!