ictsan

The space in the market below a full laptop running Windows is being squeezed more and more as the price of a Win XP laptop falls. The most successful device in this niche has been the minimalist Alphasmart range. From the original Alphasmart, the 2000, the 3000 and now the Neo (pictured above) they have been the device that offered the least in terms of features. The Dreamwiter had far better spellchecking; The more expensive Windows CE (Compact Edition) had the good quality spellchecker in MS Word; but these have Even the Alphasmart Dana with smaller text has not really caught on very well.

The Alphasmart 3000 could be bought with the predictive typer; Co: Writer, which made it a more useful tool for some pupils with literacy difficulties. The most recent model, the Neo has overcome, to some extent the problem of the small amount of text visible within the screen, by offering smaller text. The text that you could see on the screen has been 4 lines of 40 characters. The Neo offers a range of options - including 6 lines of 52 characters.

The Alphasmart range probably owes its longevity to its simplicity, long battery life and lightness. They give a good amount of work for three AA batteries.

All these devices have had a great advantage over al Windows laptop that they are ready to use very quickly. There is a start-up time of only a couple of seconds and you can be writing. In the school situation, this is a very important advantage.

There is a newcomer in the sub-laptop niche which may prove to be very useful long term.

The RM Asus Mini notebook. should be available from November 2007. It is a small laptop with a small screen 7 “, where a laptop might have a 12″ or greater screen.

How can it be so cheap? Well it runs Linux the cost-free open source operating system. The main software installed is Open Office - a free equivalent to MS Office. It will read and save files with the .doc (MS Word) , .xls (Excel) and ppt formats. The Firefox browser is installed and there is wi-fi connectivity. However, it is not clear how pupils will gain access to the internet through school networks.

Pupils will probably transfer their files to a standalone or networked computer using a USB memory stick (pendrive).

From the point of view of supporting pupils with literacy difficulties, there is not much good news in this development. The Alphasmarts have always had a poor spell-checker compared with MS Word - See the CALL Centre report. From a brief trial of the spell-checker in Open Office - it manages almost as well as MS word on the errors below by pupil with a mild spelling difficulty. On the other hand, using my favourite test sentence “I liyk to vist forin playsis”, it does not perform nearly so well. Also, there does not seem to be any way of having a talking word processor. There seems to be no option to add software that might become available.

The Mini Notebook reads SD cards ( used in many digital cameras) and comes with some picture editing and sound editing software. Useful for creative work!
The RM Asus Mini Notebook is definitely aimed at the almost the same price range as the Neo. It could gradually push the Neo out. However, if the Neo’s price is reduced, it may continue to survive in this niche. I’d certainly welcome that!

All the above comes from reading. More, if and when I get my hands on one. Any comments form anyone who had had some experience of one. Details of how much use you get between battery charges would be very useful.

The best review I have found is here; http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4044 

Certainly the screen looks really good. However the keyboard does not sound very good. The small size may suit children better than adults. One thing to note; what is being reviewed here is not the actual RM version which will be marketed at schools.  There may be significant differences - especially in terms of memory size. Take care before ordering.

Strange but true…………….. When you write a DVD using Pinnacle Studio, you are almost certain to find that it will play correctly in a hardware DVD player. However, you may well find that you cannot play it in Windows Media Player. What you need is Media Player Classic (for Windows). It is a cost free piece of software with no padding, themes etc. It does however player CDs and DVD very well!!! You can find it here;
http://www.free-codecs.com/Media_Player_Classic_download.htm

There is a good entry about it in Wikipedia.; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_player_classic

Basically; Put your DVD in the drive. Load up MPC by double-clicking. From the Menu Bar Choose; File-> Open DVD. Or press the combination of keys; Ctrls+D. It works well!

Here is another piece of writing, this time by an S1 pupil. What do you think would be a good strategy for this pupil? 

My name is Mark. I live in a town called Hawick. I have a mum, dad, tow brothers. I have a pet dog calld Buddy, tropicol fish, Gold fish and a stick  insect. I was born in the BJH. I was born on the 3 Desember 1995 I thinck other people see me as funny.

My hair coler is blond. Myn eyes are green. I wode lock to chang my appearance

Continues …………………..

Not all spellcheckers are equal. The last comparative study of spellcheckers that I am aware of was published as a study by the CALL Centre, Edinburgh University. I made a small contribution to the Document; Supportive writing software. The performance of various spellcheckers can be found here.
Take a look at the graphs on pp. 144 & 145.

To try out a spellchecker you need texts written by youngsters with literacy difficulties. You’ll find some here

The intention is that you can copy and paste these texts into a word processor and see whether the author of that text is likely to be an effective user of a spellchecker.

There is also a printable version of some of the texts here.

Here is another text, written by a pupil with dyslexic style difficulties. He was in P6 and he had a reading and spelling age both at least two years below his chronological age

How to bild a longhouse
It shod be hiy abuv water anb flat lanbscap.
Then to cut don the tree for the longhouse and the tools will be a acx and ads and laders lumberjacs. Mijer the lenths of the wood stics and logs to mace the wals and to poot watil and dob is a clay ,hare, muck .

Sume house have turf or fahc for turf you ned to get sum grass for the roof and mace som laders ut of wood. Lev a holl in the top of the roof to let smock escap.

There are 8 real word errors; ’shod’ for should; ‘mace’ for make; smock for smoke, etcOf the remaining errors the spellchecker in MS Word suggested the target word in 13 cases while it failed to suggest the word in 6 cases.

The new set of assistive software; Penfriend and Wordtalk is now available for installation in schools.

The initial explanatory document is here;

Accessibility for CC3 (v1.0)

Penfriend has a website - www.penfriend.biz There are also some very useful video clips demonstrating the use of Penfriend here; http://www.assist-it.org.uk/assets/content/penfriend_tutorials.html

WordTalk is the software that allows a word document to be read back to a user in a variety of ways. It has its own site www.wordtalk.org.uk where you’ll find documentation about its use. It is freely copiable and can be installed at home by pupil’s parents.

Teachers need to be very clear why they are using a particular strategy with a pupil with spelling difficulties. There is a range of approaches that are aimed at improving a pupil’s awareness of phonics, word attack skills and fluency including

For pupils needing a high amount of magnification, Supernova is one solution. It now comes as a pendrive.

The pendrive can be inserted into any Windows XP computer. Some modules are installed and Supernova is available on the computer. With networks it’s all a lot more complicated!

Supernova has a large number of facilities. In reality most users only use six or seven. They use these through the use of shortcuts. It’s sometimes necessary to change the shortcuts - especially if you are using a laptop. Also it is necessary to disable or change a shortcut because it might clash with the shortcut used by MS Word - such as CTRL+A to select all the text in a document.

Actually, this is the hard bit;  disabling the key press combinations to allow the desired shortcuts of MS Word to be available  to the user. The good news, is that you should only ever have to do it once.

Take a backup of the pen. Make extra backups. You can copy the settings to a new pen by doing the following;

Here’s a document showing how we set up the keyboard shortcuts

Hot_Keys-Word+Supernova _Magnification