Kurzweil reader ?

[suzziesnowflake]

Hi all! I am wondering if anyone here uses a Kurzweil reader while hsing? I know Sherri uses it with Calvert. I am wondering if I could use it with another curriculum. I am thinking that ds would do better with Oak Meadow. He needs more hands on than what I think Calvert can give him but he also needs his independence. I ordered a sample from their website. If you do use it could you please tell me how well it worked out for you?

Thanks:001_smile:

[Paisley Hedgehog]

..

[RamonaQ]

Kurzweil can work with ANYTHING provided there is a scanned copy already available or you scan it yourself. I would ask OM if they have their texts in a format that Kurzweil can read. There is version of Kurzweil that let's you scan it yourself, however, it is $1000. (My son uses Kurzweil with Verticy--they supply us the text already scanned).

 

I am wondering if some of the Oak Meadow books/ content are available in different formats that would allow you to use either Text-to-Speech applications or there are audio formats. Such as, Does OM supply the text in a digital format (I think I saw that when I looked at OM-- some way you could get the curriculum in a digital format so that you could print out). If so perhaps you could use some Text-to-Speech application on your computer. Alternatively, is the text may be available on Bookshare (where you can have the digital version, and it is in a format a reader, available from Don Johnson, can read). Another source, that we have gotten many audio books, is RFBD (note these books are audio only, no digital text form).

 

Honestly, I would probably ultimately just ask OM for assistance. Finally, would you mind posting back if you do find that OM has alternative formats that could work with Text-to-Speech? TIA!

Edited August 1, 2010 by RamonaQ

[suzziesnowflake]

Hi Sherri- I am looking at 6th grade this year.

I am going to call OM today to see if they can help. I'll let you all know.:)

[suzziesnowflake]

I contacted OM today. The lady I spoke with was unsure even what a kurzweil reader was. She said the lady who is the learning specialist was not there today and she would forward my question to her. It is not on bookshare or RFBD. She thought maybe it could work with the online program so she is going to see if she can get me access to it for a week to see if it would work for my son and if it may work with the kurzweil reader. I hope to have access to it in the next few days. I am still unsure if it will work. I have never used kurzweil but I did get a 30 trial offer for the Kurzweil 3000. I hope it works, if not maybe I can get another program to read it. I'll let you know what I find out!

[RamonaQ]

Suzie-

 

So-I went to Oak Meadow and downloaded a sample curriculum. It is in .PDF format. I tried to read this in Kurzweil, with the "learn station", which is what I have (the cheaper option), .PDF documents are not able to be read (although the 1K version, why, yes, it can read PDF :glare: ). And for the record, our iMac does a lovely job of reading text but, as I just discovered, not .pdf (html, yes).

 

However, I did a quick search on the web and discovered several other TTS readers that could read .PDF ( naturalsoft/ natural reader being one of them...and it was free). These other readers may not have the nifty functions of Kurzweil (highlighting, text extraction), however, if your goal is having the reading done by a computer, then I bet you could meet that need wo/ Kurzweil. Ultimately, if you did wish to work with notetaking from the text, I wonder if you could work out a system, such as highlighting and copying text from the .PDF document into another "study page", which you could also use the reader to read. You would have to play with that to see if it worked for you first.

 

This is how I worked with my son, I first figured out how to meet the goal using the software (goal: notetaking from text--so, highlighting important aspects of text, extracting to a study document), and then taught the system to my son.

 

Hopefully the learning specialist will have more definitive and straight-forward solutions.

[suzziesnowflake]

Ramona-Thanks for doing that. I see that the reader from Don Johnston will read PDF,NIMOS,DAISY 3, BOOKSHARE, RICH TEXT FORMAT, TXT, HTML, XML and it is a little cheaper. I will have to investigate further.Utimately I want to be able to get ds to do assingments on his own and to be able to take notes from the text. Thanks again, I will keep you all posted.