Chilliwack Kampers Alex and Ms. Johnston, watch the Kurzweil 3000 Windows demonstration on how to navigate multi-page documents. Alex, a fan of computer games, had no trouble picking up tips on using Kurzweil 3000 to scan print materials.

Kurzweil 3000 can be used to support students throughout their school career. At the Chilliwack Kurzweil Kamp, James, a secondary school student, worked with his helper Mr. Franson, on finding ways he could use the program in different subject areas.

Laura helps by differentiating the various annotation tools….

• The Highlight Tool is for highlighting main ideas of the text. You can use different color highlighters to show more details, such as different topics.
• Sticky Notes help you remember things.
• Bubble notes are notes where you can put questions and answers.

When asked how footnotes are different from other annotations, Laura suggested…

• Footnotes are hidden and you have to click on them to read.

Mitchell has another set of toolbars for Writing. On his writing toolbar he chooses these items: New, Open, Go to the Web, Bookmarks, Toggle Word Predictions, Spell Check, Previous Page, Read. Mitchell tells me that since he has difficulty with spelling, the spell check is essential for him. Also he likes to hear Kurzweil spell the word out for him.

Carolyn, a vision teacher, discusses some of the benefits and challenges when using Kurzweil 3000 to support students with visual impairments

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Cathy

Cathy describes the benefit of using Kurzweil 3000 with high functioning students with autism spectrum disorder.

David

David describes the challenge of editing scanned documents and the importance of teaching older students simple document preparation skills.

Randy

Randy suggests having older students introduce the program to younger students and offers his opinion on the program’s most useful features.

Pat

Pat, a vision teacher, describes the type of students who benefit the most from using Kurzweil 3000 and the advantage of having the spoken text highlighted as it is read.

Shellie

Shellie comments on the ability to scan tests and worksheets into Kurzweil 3000 and have students who are physically challenged complete them in the program.

Students are learning how to make their own customized toolbar. Here Travis is saving his custom toolbar. Travis pretty much likes the default set up of the program, but has made a few tweaks to make it even better. For his Reading toolbar he added “fill in the blanks”, and added the “spell check” next to the definition tool item.

Travis’s top 3 Toolbar item are the Definition feature, Voice Reading and the Sticky Notes.

Kursten has never made a customized toolbar, and really loves this feature. For a customized reading toolbar Kursten says she must have next page, prev page, next sentence and previous sentence, but what she loves most is the Lookup feature on the toolbar.

Hayden’s favorite item on the toolbar is the “spell check” function. Hayden and his helper are working together to create his customized toolbar.

Chazz (below) likes to keep his custom Kurzweil toolbar as clean and simple as possible. He removes everything from the toolbar and rebuilds it from scratch. Items like Synonyms, Choice of Voice and font choices are removed. By removing the unnecessary items, he has more room to display the icons larger.