Kurzweil 3000 in the UDL Classroom The Kurweil 3000 scan/read/write software has tremendous potential as a tool for supporting a wide variety of students in the universally designed classroom. Kurzweil Supports Universal Design for Learning, a document which can be downloaded from the Kurzweil Educational Systems website, outlines the many ways in which Kurzweil 3000 is compatible with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). SET-BC, a provincial resource program that provides assistive technology, normally supplies Kurzweil as an accommodation for individual students who meet its mandate. In SET-BC’s recent BC UDL project, Kurzweil was embedded as a “just-in-time” classroom support, available to any student who chose to use it. The BC UDL teams discovered that leveraging Kurzweil’s full potential requires well-trained students and classroom teachers, the ready availability of etext materials, and good technical infrastructure.

Making Kurzweil Available to a Wider Range of Students In British Columbia, Kurzweil 3000 (designed for students with learning disabilities) and Kurzweil 1000 (designed for students with visual impairments) are provided for students included in the SET-BC mandate. Kurzweil is provided as an accommodation by individual referral for students with physical disabilities, visual impairments, and autism. SET-BC’s Provincial Software Acquisition Plan (PSAP) enables individual teachers, schools, districts, and parents to provide Kurzweil for a much wider range of students.

As often happens in universal design, accommodations designed for those “in the margins” are discovered to be beneficial for a much larger group of users than originally intended. For example, ramps originally designed to accommodate wheelchairs are now used by people pushing baby strollers, pulling computer bags on wheels, or delivering goods. Teachers in the BC UDL Project discovered that Kurzweil 3000 benefits many kinds of learners, not just those with special needs designations. At one BC UDL Project School, grade 8 students with strengths in writing have discovered the advantages of editing with Kurzweil’s text-to-speech. Some teachers who participated in the project are using Kurzweil for whole-class instruction.

Training Classroom Teachers In order to use Kurzweil effectively, students and educators require training in using the software and access to the software after the training. Online training has been available for educators who received their copies of Kurzweil through PSAP. In order to help school districts build their capacity to support all students, SET-BC conducts district-wide workshops and makes its training materials available on the SET- BC website in the Learning Centre. SET-BC consultants provide training for individual students and their school-based teams who receive Kurzweil as an accommodation through SET-BC.

Teachers who participated in the BC UDL Project were supplied with laptops, projectors, Kurzweil software, scanners and training. It was somewhat surprising to discover that the vast majority of the classroom teachers involved in the BC UDL Project had not had a SET-BC student in their classrooms and had no experience with Kurzweil prior to their involvement in the project. Some schools had no copies

Mallory Burton [email protected] Page 1 of Kurzweil prior to the project. In schools where Kurzweil was being provided as an accommodation, teaching assistants and learning assistance teachers were often the most skilled users, presumably because they work closely with the students who use the software. Several teachers, especially at middle and high school, reported that their students went to resource rooms to use Kurzweil, but these teachers were unaware of the software’s potential.

Whether Kurzweil is used as an accommodation or an embedded support, classroom teachers need to have access to the software and training if they are expected to direct their students’ programs. Often, when Kurzweil is provided as an accommodation, the classroom teacher does not have access to the software. This makes it difficult for the teacher to learn the software, direct its use, or create support materials. Assistive technology providers can help by explaining the importance of training classroom teachers to administrators and school-based teams. Administrators can help by providing release time for training that occurs during the school day and ensuring that classroom teachers have access to the software.

Training students SET-BC consultants provide training for individual students who receive Kurzweil as an accommodation. SET-BC has also conducted all-day Kurzweil Kamps for larger groups of SET-BC students. In the BC UDL Project, teachers used a variety of strategies to train students. In one school, a group of students who had been using Kurzweil in the resource centre has taken a leadership role in training other students. Several teachers also conducted Kurzweil Kamps, complete with pizza lunch.

Teachers in the BC UDL Project were encouraged to use Kurzweil for whole-class instruction, teaching Kurzweil incidentally. One team created a lesson that can be downloaded from the BC UDL Learning Object Repository in which the Kurzweil bookmark feature is used to bookmark subsections of a text. The bookmarks are then used to quickly locate the answers to study questions. Another teacher uses Kurzweil to introduce “question of the day”. A different student each day is responsible for typing the question of the day into Kurzweil, adjusting the reading voice and speed, reading the question to the class and highlighting words that will used to answer the question. In these classrooms, the teacher is not only teaching students how to use Kurzweil but also modeling the use of the software as a support for reading and writing tasks. And, when Kurzweil is used in teaching, the students who use Kurzweil to complete the follow-up activity have one less transition to make.

Embedding Kurzweil in the Classroom In the BC UDL Project, Kurzweil was introduced as an embedded classroom support for multiple students rather than an accommodation for a particular student. Most UDL team members were provided with a minimum of 3 copies of Kurzweil. A few had access to additional school and district licenses. This does not sound like a large number of copies, but teachers did not have a large number of classroom computers for student use. Teachers reported a flurry of initial excitement in which many students tried Kurzweil. Afterwards, the students who used Kurzweil were mainly students who required support with reading or writing, though not necessarily students with high or low incidence designations.

Mallory Burton [email protected] Page 2 As Edyburn (2010) points out, when assistive technology is provided as an accommodation, recipients sometimes need to go to another location to use the accommodation. In a classroom where Kurzweil is available as an embedded support, the student who would benefit from using Kurzweil does not need to go elsewhere to use the software, missing in-class instruction. The student does not draw special attention to him or herself by being the only user. This is an especially sensitive issue at middle school and high school where technology is provided as a “one-of” accommodation and the student does not want to be perceived as different. When Kurzweil is available to all, especially when it is being used by the teacher for whole-class instruction, there is no stigma attached to using Kurzweil as a special needs tool; it is simply a tool available to anyone in the class. Making Kurzweil available as a general classroom tool may help address a problem in assistive technology known as “abandonment” in which well- meaning adults have strongly advocated for a technology that the student refuses to use.

Providing Etext Edyburn (2010) also points out that when assistive technology is provided as an accommodation, there is often a lag in receiving needed resources such as Braille or etext versions of curriculum materials. This was certainly true in the days before the Accessible Resources Centre British Columbia (ARC-BC), when school-based teams across the province were all attempting to scan the same textbooks and novels for use with Kurzweil. ARC-BC has made it much easier to obtain etext for required curriculum materials for students with print disability designations.

Access to etext was problematical for the BC UDL Project Teams. While all students could use Kurzweil for writing, only students with print disability designations could use etext from ARC-BC for reading. Since students other than those with designations also struggle with reading, this created a great deal of frustration for teachers and students alike. In order to embed Kurzweil as a support available to all, etext must be widely available for all students regardless of designation. Since ARC-BC must adhere to current copyright restrictions, widely available etext must eventually come from publishers or from free sources. Administrators can help by locating and supporting publishers such as BC Science series publisher Edvantage Press that provide etext. They can also help by allowing their teachers to purchase non-traditional materials such as online subscriptions or other commercially-available etext.

Networking Kurzweil Since schools can purchase Kurzweil directly from PSAP, district IT may be unaware of the numbers, versions, and locations of Kurzweil across the district. The trend toward network and web-based licenses should improve the ability to keep track of and maintain district copies while providing more equitable student access. For example, if a school has 10 individual license copies of Kurzweil installed on 10 different computers around the school, students may have to leave their classrooms to use Kurzweil, and some copies may remain unused for large portions of the day. Upgrading these individual licenses to a networked license and installing Kurzweil on a central server allows up to 10 students anywhere in the school to sign on to Kurzweil at any one time. One district involved in the BC UDL Project converted all 65 of their standalone licenses into networked licenses, simplifying tech support and greatly improving access to Kurzweil for all students. Another is planning to migrate 165 licenses to the web-based version which will allow access at school and home.

Mallory Burton [email protected] Page 3 Implementing Kurzweil successfully depends on solid support for the technology infrastructure. In order to use the software effectively, the computer, software, scanners, network, and Internet must be installed and working. Users who must wait too long for installs, repairs, or computer availability will soon give up on the software. In order to provide universal accessibility, teachers, administrations, and tech support all need to be committed to the same shared vision.

Evaluating Kurzweil Several large-scale studies, available on the Kurzweil Educational Systems website, have demonstrated the effectiveness of Kurzweil 3000 for students with learning disabilities. In the classroom setting, informal Action Research studies may be more helpful in evaluating whether Kurzweil is making a difference for students. For example, a teacher may compare writing samples completed with pencil and paper with writing samples completed using text-to-speech feedback in Kurzweil in terms of length and quality. Or, a teacher may informally evaluate students’ ability to work more independently and participate in the same curriculum as peers when using Kurzweil to read novels or textbooks.

Teachers can also observe which features are most useful for particular students. For example, a student who keyboards quickly may find that using word prediction slows him down. Another student may find word prediction so useful that an investigation of more powerful software that specializes in word prediction is warranted. For students who only need the text-to-speech capability, the teacher may locate a free text-to-speech tool that the student will be able to use at home.

Developing a Shared Kurzweil Action Plan SET-BC initiatives such as PSAP, ARC-BC, the SET-BC Learning Centre, and the BC UDL Project have helped school districts build their capacity to offer Kurzweil to a wider variety of learners. Individual teachers, schools, and districts have the flexibility to determine whether the use of Kurzweil should be restricted to students with particular designations or whether to embed Kurzweil as a “just-in-time” support available to a wider range of users. Having made that basic decision, they are in a better position to decide who should receive training and what type of Kurzweil licensing will work best. The following questions are designed to assist individuals, schools, and districts assess their current use of Kurzweil and their future direction.

What is your current inventory of Kurzweil? (location, version, type of license, SET-BC or district copies)

Which students have access to Kurzweil (low incidence, high incidence, all)?

Which educators have access to Kurzweil (classroom teachers, teaching assistants, resource teachers)?

Which teachers and students are proficient Kurzweil users?

How are teachers and students trained?

How do teachers and students access etext?

How is technical support for Kurzweil provided?

Mallory Burton [email protected] Page 4 Do teachers, teaching assistants, administration, tech support, parents, and students share a common vision for the use of Kurzweil?

References:

ARC-BC at http://www.arc-bc.org/

BC UDL Project at http://www.setbc.org/setinfo/BCUDL/

BC UDL Learning Object Repository at http://www.setbc.org/bcudl/

Edyburn, D.L. (2010). Would You Recognize Universal Design for Learning if You Saw It? Ten Propositions for New Directions for the Second Decade of UDL. Learning Disability Quarterly, 33(1), 33-41. At https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/edyburn/www/UDL2ndDecade.pdf

Edvantage Press at http://www.edvantagepress.com/pgs/index.php

Kurzweil Supports Universal Design for Learning at http://www.kurzweiledu.com/files/Kurzweil %203000%20and%20UDL.pdf

Kurzweil Educational Systems at http://www.kurzweiledu.com/

PSAP at http://www.setbc.org/psap/

SET-BC at http://www.setbc.org/

Mallory Burton [email protected] Page 5