AlphaSmart 3000
with Co:Writer Smart Applet
Talk to any group of teachers about ICT and they’ll tell you they need more computers.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that what they really need is some way of processing text. The AlphaSmart 3000 with the Co:Writer Smart Applet from Don Johnston software could be the answer.
Four years ago, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) announced a two-phase scheme called the Key Stage 1 Literacy Evaluation Project. The researchers found that “low-cost word processors had a positive effect on writing skills”. Infants improved their keyboard skills and, because the work was neater and easier to read, they could share their writing in groups.
For children with special needs, this new version with Co:Writer may have dramatic effects. Physically disabled children find the weight of a conventional laptop makes it awkward. If you are in a wheelchair with a heavy weight on your lap, you are likely to be too uncomfortable to concentrate. However, until now it has been a problem to combine a lightweight PC with a predictive word processor.
For children whose typing speeds are measured in letters rather than words per minute, prediction is a powerful tool. Type the first letter of the word and the program suggests the vocabulary you need.
I tried out a sentence to see how many key presses I could save. As I was in holiday mood, I typed: “Next week I want to chill out, go to the cinema and catch up with my friends.” This sentence took 77 keystrokes with spaces between words. When I used Co:Writer, it took just 40, nearly 50 per cent less - a real saving in both time and effort.
The prediction is intelligent, so the more often you use a word, the higher up the prediction list it goes. It took several presses to get “chill” and “cinema” to appear on the list, but if I was writing about film studies, both words might appear sooner as they became high-frequency words.
You can also assign abbreviations to long words, phrases or even sentences to reduce keystrokes.
Why type your address in full each time you write a letter when you can set up the program to do the hard work for you?
The collected words facility allows you to type in an abbreviation and then write it in full. Once you have done this and saved it, the program will expand your abbreviation each time.
Take the sentence: “Last night I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
This has 51 characters with spaces, but once I had switched on Co:Writer and put in “mnd” for the short form of the play’s title, it only took 14 key strokes to produce the same sentence.
You can create your own topic dictionaries. For example, you might need vocabulary for chemistry, but you don’t neceesarily want it to suggest sulphate each time you type “su-”. So just set up a chemistry topic dictionary and switch it off when you go to other lessons. You can have up to five topic dictionaries.
There are some pre-loaded dictionaries: Vikings, football, dinosaurs and Treasure Island - all valid topics, but perhaps a little biased. Come on Don, girls can type too.
Sally McKeown
AlphaSmart 3000
with Co:Writer Smart Applet
Price: from pound;189 +VAT(pound;230 + VAT with Co:Writer Smart Applet)
Discounts for class sets, etc.
Available from TAG Learning
Tel: 01474 537886
www.taglearning.com
www.alphasmart.com
www.donjohnston.com
