Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil 3000 is essential a program that allows you to scan in documents so that they can be read out loud. This is supposed to be especially effective for students with learning disabilities or ELL students. Once I opened the program, I felt completely overwhelmed. After clicking around for a few minutes, I realized if I really wanted to learn how to work with this software, that I was going to need to look at a tutorial. I went to the link suggested by my teacher, Chris, www.kornreich.org/KTC/onlinetraining/aspx. (Thanks, Chris!) This tutorial really helped me figure out how to get started with Kurzwiel.
The document I was working with looks like this:



I didn’t have to scan this document myself because we used one that was provided. Since that was done, I started reading a little bit about the Zone Editor which allows you to include any text that wasn’t recognized by Kurzweil. What an awesome feature! I tried this out in question 1. I added in, “There are 10 glue bottles in each box” because that had not been read aloud by the program and that information was crucial for answering the first question.
Then I realized that I really should do this across all of the items on the table because it was not read aloud. The student would need to know how many glue bottles were in each box, paintbrushes, and crayons. I then decided it would be most appropriate to do this prior to the question being read and then again after the question was read for the most support, so I made this change to my document. It was a little tricky at first, but after trying it a few times, I think I got the hang of it. To do this, I had to use the zone editor to change the order of the reading order. This is really important because if things are read out of order, that would be really confusing for a student trying to complete the work.
I thought this program was really amazing. I could picture students that I have worked with using this successfully. I have tried to make similar pages on a Dynavox by typing in the questions that are on the page, but it definitely does not have the same feel as when you get to see the worksheet that all of the other students are using right in front of you. The best part is that the Kurzweil could be uploaded to a Dynavox and used in that manner! I absolutely love this program and suggest you try it out. You can find more information and free downloads at:
http://www.kurzweiledu.com/