MyStudyBar is now available in Spanish ‘Mi Barra de Estudio’ to download.  I’d like to thank my colleague, Filipe Betancur at the Todos Podemos Ayudar Foundation in Colombia, for being the inspiration behind a Spanish version of MyStudyBar.

Felipe wrote to me a couple weeks ago to say that he had downloaded MyStudyBar and thought it was a great piece of software…but it would be even better if it was in Latin American. So after a couple of emails, and a thorough translation from Felipe, including the open source licence agreement, here it is, Mi Barra de Estudio!

MyStudyBar in Spanish

Having MyStudyBar available in Spanish made so much sense, not just for the Foundation in Colombia but for those students who have English as an additional language. Of course the other useful benefit is that many of the programs on Mi Barra de Estudio support multiple languages too.

Many of the programs on MyStudyBar support multiple languages.

I’ve also included a Spanish SAPI 4 voice and a Spanish dictionary for Balabolka to support spelling and the pronunciation tutor – both require to be installed.

Just as an addition, and again with the help of Felipe, I’ve also translated MyVisBar to Spanish – Mi Barra de Vision.

MyVisBar in Spanish.

If you would like MyStudyBar to be translated into other languages please get in touch to discuss.

You can download Mi Barra de Estudio by selecting this link

You can download Mi Barra de Vision by selecting this link

Great news!

The counter on the EduApps site clocked a half million pounds of money saved on MyStudyBar downloads. I know that some of you are familiar with MyStudyBar but just in case you’re not:

MyStudyBar – consists of a collection of freeware and open source software which is specially selected to help students with literacy difficulties (planning, reading, writing, vision and voice). For learners who need such help, MyStudyBar can make the difference between participation and exclusion, even between achievement and failure.

Many thousands of individuals and organisations have downloaded MyStudyBar from the website of the Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East. As the commercially equivalent price of the apps on a single MyStudyBar download is around £120, the maths is simple: total number of downloads multiplied by commercial price tag is now more than half a million pounds saved. That is, half a million pounds saved for the public purse.

The big secret – that the RSC is pleased to share – is that MyStudyBar offers tools that are functionally no different to the best paid-for products. In these economically-difficult times, this is very good news indeed.

What they say:

Andew Edis, ILT Co-ordinator, New College Nottingham

We have already distributed 16,000 USB sticks containing free and open source software from the RSC Scotland North & East, right across the college. I must say I’m impressed with this – in times of financial squeeze the fact that MyStudyBar is open source is a major plus

Lorraine Cochrane, Additional Support Lecturer, South Lanarkshire College

I am continuing to promote MyStudyBar in my job as Additional Support Lecturer at South Lanarkshire College and as a trainer for teachers for AOK Learning Ltd. I think the software is excellent, with tremendous potential for supporting learning across the school and college curriculums.

Anona Scott, Lecturer, Carnegie College

I think MyStudyBar is fantastic. This tool really empowers our learners with literacy difficulties, particularly those students who don’t receive extra funding. We are rolling out MyStudyBar throughout the college.

Alan Gurburt, Dyslexia Lincoln

I test drove MyStudyBar and it’s brilliant! MyStudyBar will provide a real solution for our dyslexic E2E students (there’s no funding available from the council). I can visualise having it installed on every computer in our learning centre. A USB version is great for students’ personal computers.

Gerry Kennedy, Inclusive Technology Consultant, Melbourne, Australia

Congratulations on releasing MyStudyBar. I’ve been experimenting with it today – both the XP version and the Vista7 version with Speech Recognition. They both work like a charm! There is already a buzz in Australia about this exciting new literacy toolbar – and well deserved. It will assist such a wide range of users.

Garth Ritchie, Ministry of Education, New Zealand

Just my positive feedback on what you have achieved in the MyStudyBar application. I think that this will make it easier to get assistive technology to the students in schools for whom it would not be considered otherwise. Your work has direct spinoffs for inclusive education around the world. Many thanks from the New Zealanders who will benefit.

Felip Betancur Posada,Fundcacion Todos Podemos Ayudar, Colombia

Hello my name is Felipe Betancur. I am the director from the foundation TODOS PODEMOS AYUDAR, translated is something like   “We all can help” and we are working hard helping people with disabilities like blind users for libraries. We loved the MyStudyBar, is so great and simple to use. I am writing to tell you a lot of schools and universities are interested in installing it, is so great so simple to use.

For more information on MyStudyBar or on any of the software collections that make up the EduApps family of products, go online to www.eduapps.org

I’d like to thank Roger Tucker of Sonocent for his guest article on Audio Notetaker. I’ve used Audio Notetaker for a couple of years now, since it was released and found it to be a useful tool for dyslexic learners – although it would benefit all learners!

Introduction

If you’ve ever tried recording a lecture or seminar, you’ll know what a painful process it is to go back through the audio afterwards. It’s OK if you just listen from beginning to end whilst in your car or cooking the tea, but if you want to be in control of the listening process its nigh-on impossible.

Not anymore, thanks to Audio Notetaker from Sonocent. This is a software package designed to make listening back to audio easy and even fun. It does this by turning spoken phrases into a series of blue bars which you can navigate, edit and colour. More than this you can structure the audio into paragraph-like sections using the Enter key, like you would text.

More than a tool for just listening to audio

But Audio Notetaker isn’t just a tool for listening to audio. It’s a multi-media note-taking tool. You can add written notes and if you have access to the PowerPoint of your lecture, you can add that in too.

Sounds like all that’s a lot of work to do for each lecture? Nope. For an hour’s lecture it takes about 15 minutes to add some structure, type brief notes summarising each section and add the PowerPoint if you have it. All good re-enforcement of the lecture material, but if you don’t want to spend even that time, you can take your laptop into the lecture and add the structure and brief notes as you listen.

Audio Notetaker for revision

The real benefit comes when you have to revisit the material for assignments or at exam time. Whilst everyone else is trying to decipher their notes, you can “re-create the lecture theatre in your room”, as one student put it. Except this time you only need to listen to the useful bits!

You can download a free trial version from audionotetaker.com, and there is a YouTube channel with some useful videos at audionotetaker.com/youtube.

Contact

If you’d like to find out more then get in touch with Roger at: roger@sonocent.com

If you would like to contribute to the e-inclusion blog, e.g., write a guest article or highlight new software to support inclusion, then please let me know.

Some of the most powerful yet underutilized tools for making a computer easier to use, particularly for learners with additional support needs, are the built-in options available in a Windows Operating system. In Windows XP, Accessibility Options allowed users to slow down the keyboard response rate to help improve typing for individuals with fine motor difficulties. Other options included High Contrast colours to make information on the desktop easier to see for partially sighted users.

With the advent of Windows Vista and Windows 7 and the Ease of Access Centre, the built-in options have greatly improved, for example, accurate voice/speech recognition, full screen magnification and a resizable on-screen keyboard with word prediction.

Although Microsoft has attempted to promote awareness of these features they are often overlooked and rarely used to their full potential. Windows 7 Ease of Access Guide is a colourful, step-by-step guide which highlights the main options in the Ease of Access Centre in Windows 7.

The Guide covers a wide range of features including changing colour schemes, making the screen easier to see, as well as magnification and the resizable On-Screen Keyboard with word prediction and switch scanning.

The Guide is available in different formats including an accessible PDF, digital talking book, MP3 and Large Print. And as always, with all my publications the Guide is  licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: License.

Download Windows 7  Ease of Access Guide in Word

Dowloand Windows 7 Ease of Access Guide in PDF

Download Windows 7 Ease of Access Guide in Mp3

Download Windows 7 Ease of Access Guide in digital talking book format

Download Windows 7 Ease of Access Guide in Large Print

What is OCR

Last week Google Apps launched a feature that converts images of text into editable text, otherwise known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR text can be a useful feature for those learners who need to scan information from a book or other text based sources into editable text which can then be used alongside text-to-speech software to read the text back. Scanned editable text can also be used in combination with text extraction software. This allows the user to scan large amounts of text and extract the bits they need, thereby cutting down the amount of text to be read. This feature often uses colour highlights to select the required text and then an extraction tool which retains the chosen highlighted text in a new document (see the last blog entry “Literacy Support using the Quick Access Toolbar“).

OCR in Google Docs allows you to upload JPEG, GIF, PNG and PDF files which are then converted to editable Google documents. Supported languages include English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, with more languages and character sets on their way.

For OCR to be beneficial to the learner it must be accurate when it converts a document to text. Accuracy can often be problematic particularly if the document has a complex layout (eg, side columns) or contains unusual elements such as Roman numerals or other symbolic text. There are a number of commercial OCR programs which over the years have developed into powerful and accurate products, for example, OmniPage and Abbyy FineReader.

How accurate is it?

So how does it perform? Well I tried a number of file formats and unfortunately the results were disappointing. First of all I uploaded an image of a PDF document. Google docs failed to convert the file. I then copied some text into a PowerPoint slide and saved the slide as a JPEG. Although Google Docs converted the JPEG to text there were numerous mistakes and inaccuracies.

Example of OCR conversion using Google Docs

Are there free alternatives?

Personally my favourite is TopOCR which is a free download from: www.topocr.com/topocr.html.  As well as offering a basic OCR feature TopOCR also comes with built-in text-to-speech and saves scanned text to MP3 format. TopOCR will give decent and accurate results if the original text image is just plain without columns or images. TopOCR will struggle with more complex documents so it’s probably best to use simple linear text.

Another online alternative to Google OCR is Free OCR which is offers free OCR conversion. Although the file upload size is limited to 2mb I’ve been impressed with the results, although it really only works well with simple image layouts. Unlike Google OCR, Free OCR doesn’t convert text into the document – you’ll need to copy the converted text from teh Free OCR window into your document.

Free OCR online image conversion

For other free OCR programs it’s worth looking at Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text which provides a useful insight into some readily available and free tools.

There is a great way of custoimisng the Quick Access Toolbar in Word 2007 to reflect some of the features available in commercial (and open source and freeware) literacy support tools such as text-to-speech, homophone identifier/checker, look up word meanings, text extraction etc. This means that it is possible to make custom toolbars for different learning needs. It could be useful for those students who aren’t eligible for a DSA or just require some basic literacy tools to get by.

The feature will be much improved in 2010 allowing users to you create a customised ‘tab’ in the Ribbon with their own tools. There will also be an option to export the customised ‘tab’ so it can be used on other computers.

From what I’ve read it should possible to export the customised tab to a USB drive so it can be easily accessed on different computers, at home, college etc. Once we get a working copy of 2010 I’ll put a demo/trial version together so you can download and test it.

By simply highlight text in Word the ‘Speak Highlighted Text’ will use the default voice to speak back text. The ‘Identify Confusables’ does exactly what it says – highlights words such as ‘were’ and ‘where’, ‘there’ and ‘their’ etc. There’s also the ‘Look Up’ feature for finding the meaning of similar sounding words. Detailed meanings of the homophone can be found buy using the ‘Look Up’ feature.

The highlighting option allows you to select large amounts of text and then extract the chosen text to another document. The text can then be checked using the grammar options and/or the ‘Identify Overlong Sentences’ option.

It’s easy to do and replicates some of the great features in Chris Stringfellow’s FX Toolbar for Word 2007 but without the required installation.

Watch out soon for the ‘how to’ tutorial!