Numbertable in use

Numbertable is a new  activity in the Doorway suite.

Practise sequencing numbers by placing counters on a table. Users are shown a complete number table, then after some numbers are removed, the user fills in the blanks using counters. The number tables can be set to specific ranges including: 1-10, 1-20, 1-50 and 1-100.

First Sounds

Identify the first sounds in words. Users see and hear the word before attempting to pick the starting sound using the keyboard. Pressing the keyboard allows the user to hear the letters and diagraphs. Choose from 56 words, starting with vowels, consonants and the diagraphs “ch”, “th” and “sh”.

FirstSounds in use

Access all the Doorway activities here;

www.doorwayonline.org.uk

It can be used by anyone wanting to learn to touch type.

There are some basic rules;

• Get into a comfortable position. with the keybaord placed centrally
• Locate the home keys. F and J have ridges on them to help you find them
• Do not look at your hands. All the information you need is on the screen. The letter to be pressed, the finger to use.
• Do not hurry. There is no advantage in going fast. It is acuracy that matters.
• Type at a steady rate. Do not speed up for the easy bits and slow down for the tricky parts. Try to type to a slow even beat.
• You need to score 94% on an exercise twice before going on to the next one. If you go on without mastering the previous one, it will just be too hard.
• At the start, do not try to to type too much. A single exercise at one session is enough. Use it on a ‘little and often’ basis.
• Do not look at your hands. If you look at your hands, you are practising a different skill. You will always need to look at your hands.

Touch typing is a motor habit like riding abike. Once you have learnt it you can use it any time again in your life.

It has been shown that computer users who are forced to use just one hand can reach a very high rate of entry if;

• they use a method that has been specifically designed to give them an efficient method to move about the keyboard easily
• they start early in life and have not started hunting ang pecking, finding their own way.
• they practise on a little and often basis.

Which is the best OCR software in the world. Which is the most annoying to install on a stand-alone system? The same one, I think.

OCR Software is pretty essential when you are creating accessibile texts for user with disabilities; visually impaired, motor impaired, dyslexic. There will be a document, probably prepared using a computer but the original file has been lost. OCR can help you reconstitute the document.

Four years ago iansys.com were very helpful in doing a comparative review of OCR software available at the time. It was fascinating. It emerged that Abby Fine reader was the best available. However, none of the packages did everything they said they could. The developers ticked their own boxes.  In a particular all the packages failed to recognise correctly texts in European languages which use accents or non standard characters; ß, Ñ, François etc.

Abbyy Fine reader got this right in version 8 and I have stuck with them since. I’d be interested in anyone else’s recent experiences. Is Abbyy in fact still the best?

However, if you want to install it in a stand alone system, be prepared to waste a lot of time. There are on line forms and you can send an email to a server, but these do not work. Only sending  an email to European support brought a helpful answer from a Norwegian support person. You can also run up phone charges to Holland on a support call. As I recall, they speak pretty good English on that helpline too.

The next problem is that you are sent an activation code with 78 characters. Yes, 78. Here is an example of what it might look like! Is this really necessary?

697973-930566-558156-627071-318120-962720-622555-687533-155011-784308-108480-936009-983444

The Left Handed Typing scheme is probably the most effective way for someone to type who can only use their left hand. It is based on work between myself and an OT at Motherwell college – all done by telephone. We never actually met.

Here is a young girl using it for the first time. You can see that the stickers on the keys match the colours on the sheet of exercises. She is using only the central row of keys. Howver, soon she’ll have the stickers on all the letters.  For the first sessions, it’s a good idea to have the stickers on your nails as well.

This scheme definitely works!

At last, the chocolate mouse!  (and keyboard)

Doorway First Words is the second piece of software in the Doorway suite to come to the site;  www.doorwayonline.org.uk.

It presents pupiks with the opportunity to learn how to spell, and test their spelling of over 40 level A words. Those that can be represented by pictures.

The target words are CVC words, words woth ‘oo’ ee’, ‘ch’, ’sh’ and ‘th’. The on-screen keyboard includes ‘keys’ to represent these digraphs. The words are spoken by a recorded voice.

To keep up with developments. follow the Doorway News blog;

www.doorwayonline.org.uk/news

Here’s a new text that I collected from a dyslexic youngster recently – She is almost approaching nine years old with a reading age about the same, but comprehension well above this. She is in P4. She is trailing in spelling by about a year and two months

‘I put my foot dawn in froow the door. I was cold but my foot was lickr it was sumer. it was so I stept in. I sore buterflis in the garden I did not under stand it was winter  at home bet it was sumer at the garden.

I notest it was time for school. So I ran awte. So that I wood not be late wen I got to school  I told my frends abwte the garden. At the end fo school I went and shode them it thaye were ameramasd  at it so evry day we plade there. We went fishing, we plad tennis and bamigton.’

This pupil, clearly,  has a fair amount of phonic awareness. However she seems to have poor visual memory.  Just read the text out as she wrote it, especially – ‘I notest’. Yet this is a word that a standard spellchecker could not help her with.

Interestingly, the new Ghotit spellchecker scored well with this text – Microsoft Word fared less well! Here are the scores; 

• Ghotit; 18 corrections suggested  out of 21errors in the text.
• MS Word; 10 corrections suggested out of 21errors in the text

Remember that there are three real word errors in the text; ‘dawn’ for down; ’sore’ for saw; ‘bet’ for but. Only a spellchecker with context spellchecking can spot real word errors, which can be as common as 20% of some dyslexics’ spellimg errors.

Take a look at the trial version of Ghotit; www.ghotit.com

I expect that the release version of Ghotit will score 20 or 21 out of 21. It should do!

Powertalk is now available for CC3 networks

Powertalk is a very simple utility to use. Once it is is installed, all you have to do is right-click on a Powerpoint presentation. Choose the new option; Narrate with Powerpoint

Powertalk will read the text that appearrs in the slides of the presentation. 

If you load a presentation in the usual way, a double clcik on the file, the presentation will be silent in the usual way.

You can set the voice that Powertalk will use to read the text. What really happens is that the utility -’Speech options’ will set the voice of your choice as the default voice for the user of the computer. This cannot be done in any other way on an RM CC3 network.  Most people will choose to use Heather , the  Scottish Voice, of course, if they have it available. Cereproc Heather has been licensed for use in all Scottish schools. Powertalk is a free utility.

The use of symbols is a vital tool within Additional Needs, especially for staff working people with communication difficulties.

The Mulberry Symbols are is a set of free symbols – over 500 of them, which have been really well designed. They are particularly good for food in Britain. The commonly used PCS symbols clearly reflect US eating habits, not of which are common here. It’s good on clothes, household technology and some tools.

This is an excellent free resource. They are well worth downloading from here;

http://straight-street.com/

They are .wmf format and the .png formats; vector drawings, so you do NOT get blocky pixels if you enlarge them. They are available in colour and as black outlines. They are highly recommended.