HayU Blog

We welcome Mary O’Malley, educational therapist and owner of Green Door Learning, as a curriculum and professional development consultant at Hayutin this summer.

One of Mary’s favorite assistive technology tools for reading and writing is Kurzweil.

We asked, Mary answered…. 

Why Kurzweil?

Let’s first talk about reading. When educators say a student is a “struggling reader,” we need to break that down. We can be talking about a student’s word attack skills, phonological processing and awareness, vocabulary development, reading fluency and reading comprehension. One or more of these areas can be remediated and some might remain, or will not be as automatic as the student’s same-age peers. Kurzweil supports all areas of reading, fluency, word attack, vocabulary development and comprehension while allowing the student to choose the text.

This makes Kurzweil a comprehensive support tool. It allows users to read the web, PDFs, e-books, and their own writing. Users can set the speed, how the program will track words or phrases as it reads, and there’s a wide variety of voices and accents to choose from. As the program reads, users can access dictionaries to explain words or provide a picture of a word. The annotation tools allow the user to highlight and color-code, write sticky notes, and circle text. These notes can be pulled out and organized to help review for a test or write an essay. Kurzweil also supports the writing process by transitioning a mind-map into an outline and then into a draft. I really appreciate this component for teaching and supporting the writing process. Everything that supports writing in Kurzweil can be turned into a PDF or transferred to Google Drive.

What type of learner would benefit from Kurzweil?

This is a really interesting question! We all struggle with reading speed and concentration at times - so this program can meet the user where they are in that regard. It can enable anyone struggling with a complicated text to better access it for comprehension. I have used Kurzweil with second graders, middle and high school students, graduate students who need to keep up with volumes of reading and annotations, and students who did not speak English as their first language. The student’s learning profiles ranged from having a reading disorder to neurotypical. Rather than thinking about the student’s learning profile, it’s more relevant to consider the type of learning that needs to take place. 

How does it apply to writing?

Kurzweil’s support of the writing process is honestly one of my favorite aspects of the program. Students can mind-map or brainstorm a concept or essay and then draw lines connecting each idea. Once they’ve done that, the program uses those connections to create an outline for the student. I know many of us have watched eye-rolls and groans when we asked a student to brainstorm a topic, then write more and outline a topic, then write MORE and draft the topic, and then they have to revise it and they officially hate writing by this point. Kurzweil supports the stages of the writing process by demonstrating how the ideas get transferred into the different structures of the writing process (brainstorm, outline, draft, final). Students do not have to rewrite or even copy and paste the information, and they can use precious working memory to focus on the content. 

This is similar to Inspiration and Kidspiration. These programs also support turning a mind-map into an outline. However, users will need a separate app or program to address text to speech, and perhaps even another one that supports annotation and highlights. 

Do colleges use Kurzweil? 

A lot of colleges with robust learning programs use Kurzweil so high school students who already are familiar with it are ready to go when they get to school. CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization, has a framework to ensure “all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.” While Kurzweil doesn’t meet every component, it does provide a robust way to support users with accommodations. Some colleges will offer Kurzweil as a part of their student support technology, so students who go to college already using this program are at a distinct advantage.

Resources

What-is-Kurzweil-3000 from Kurzweil Education on Vimeo.

• Kurzweil Academy - video tutorials, past webinars, and helpful documents 
• Kurzweil Professional Development - self study courses, workshops, and curriculum alignment

-Mary O’Malley, M.A., ET/P