By Richard Finegan
Kurzweil 3000 is a word processing (text-to-speech) program with some neat features and real value for some students.
The manufacturer, on its website, calls the 3000 a “comprehensive reading, writing and learning software solution for any struggling reader, including individuals with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder or those who are English Language Learners.”
I don’t know that I’d say any struggling reader, but I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks with two different students, and am reasonably impressed.
Kurzweil will read aloud anything you can type into it or cut and paste from another document, in one of eight different voices. I like “VW Kate.” Even cooler, you can copy text from the internet (Firefox recommended for that). For a kid who struggles with reading, this can be a real learning tool. He can have Kurzweil read aloud to him the article he found but couldn’t quite understand.
For students who struggle with spelling (and how many of the kids we work with don’t?) it has not only your typical Spell Check feature (called ABC, with a tiny icon on the bottom blue toolbar) but also a Word Prediction feature (another a tiny icon that looks like a crystal ball).
Word Prediction, while you are typing, will suggest (in a floating box) a number of words you might be trying to spell. Biggest problem with it is that, once you’ve misspelled the word (how about “typiccal”) and hit the space bar, all those possible choices disappear and you hear VW Kate say “tip-pickle.” You think that doesn’t sound quite right, glance at the Word Prediction box and it’s empty. So you have to use the Spell Check anyway to see your error.
Still, the fact that Kurzweil reads aloud what you have just typed as soon as you hit the space bar gives you immediate feedback that you may have misspelled it. And if you’ve garbled the word so badly that VW Kate can’t even attempt a pronunciation, “she” spells it letter by letter, a dead giveaway that your spelling is way wrong.
You can start the read aloud from any point in the document, to listen and see if you typed what you meant to, or left out a word, or didn’t complete a thought. If Kate doesn’t pause where you think she should, it probably means you left out a comma or a period.
I think the program will be most useful for revisions and final drafts of documents that were written without the special features, possibly on MSWord or even Notepad.
The reason I say that is I often find that a child who knows he can’t spell and tries to use spell check features in the beginning step of writing will get so bogged down, word-by-word, with the spelling that he loses the thought. He produces, very slowly, a string of correctly-spelled words that make no sense.
Kurzweil 3000 has many useful features, like choices of read mode and speed and four-colors of highlight, and other features like Bookmark, Column Notes, Note Snippets, and Word Lists which I haven’t had occasion yet to try out. I don’t recommend using what seems to be a redundant “Spell” feature on the top red toolbar because it didn’t seem to work for me.
(Joint posted on www.paraeducatorcentral.com)
