kurzweil, palsprogram, read and write gold

I just attended the TRLD conference and I'm glad I did.

Have you used the following products? Any feedback? I'd rather hear from real users ; )

Kurzweil 3000 http://www.kurzweiledu.com/

Palsprogram http://www.palsprogram.com/

Read and Write Gold http://www.texthelp.com/products.asp?q1=products

Thanks!

I have used Kurzweil 3000, WYNN and Read and Write Gold. They each have their advantages but they are all talking word processors with incredible capabilities. What I like best about Read and Write Gold is that it is less expensive than the other two programs and includes speech recognition. Also, it works within Word which is very important as students what to work within programs that their peers are using. You don't need to have a separate window open when you open the application.
These kinds of programs make the curriculum accessible to kids with learning disabilities. My son uses Kurzweil 3000 because that's what the school provided and he uses it often (in fact he's listening to Catcher in the Rye with it right now for homework.)

Sue,
I have NeoSpeech Paul and Kate on my computer so they show up on the list of voices within Read and Write Gold. It is possible for me to select either of those voices which I believe are excellent quality computer voices - do not sound robotic like Microsoft Mary, Sam etc.

Scifi,
Did you know that you can customize the length of the word prediction list with WordQ? You can also customize the font and the font size which is a great feature.
Returning back to voices, it is so important to offer choices and let the student customize what works best for them in terms of voice quality AND speed.

Hi Sue,

When I visited the SpeakQ booth the guy that demonstrated said "vertebrate" but it came out wrong on the computer. He did say that it's because the environment was noisy, which is true. I'm so new at this technology. What's the state of the voice recognition softwares? Are they close to perfecting it?

Thanks.

My 18 yr old daughter uses Texthelp Read & Write Gold at college. It is fantastic, but, I feel she needs Kurzweil 3000 because she has a workbook that she can't get in alternate formate, so the publisher said IF she could scan it with a scanner into Kurzweil & listen to it in her laptop with Kurzweil that would be the way to go! Then the charts and everything on the pages would remain the same. I don't see how she can purchase Kurzweil at this time, so it looks like I bought the 2 workbooks for the course for nothing. The textbook for the course was available in alternate text format, but for kids like ours, workbooks are critical, especially if the student is willing to do the work. The textbook was required for the course, but I suppose the workbook is just considered " available for some kids." This is so frustrating for us.

Do you mean she should try scanning pages from the workbook using her read & write gold as a PDF? Will the charts for accounting show up the same? I'll call her & have her try this.