Capti Voice ATN Webinar (Session 1)
I know. Some of us couldn't uh who had registered couldn't, make it today so do. Rest. Assure that I'm going to send this recording, to everyone, in the room as well so, for any reason you have to back out before. The end we'll. Have the whole thing recorded, on and not make sure to email to everyone, that is currently. The room today as well, as especially those who can't, make it so. I'm just going to bring this back up here so. Yeah like I was saying I am a certified and experienced special ed teacher here in New York State but I also work, with Kathy and you know get my jobs talked to so many people around the country about ed tech and I, just want to thank Etienne, for. Organizing. This webinar today so I can talk to everyone here about about. Kathy and, about how Capp can help a lot of the problems that you. Know I I think are the most common, issues that. I'm seeing in disability, centers and in colleges, and universities around the country, but. First I do want to just get. Started here by going over what we're going to cover in today's, agenda. So. I might just back up a second here might make sense you know what, let's. Just go back to the full screen here okay. So yeah, today's agenda I'm. Going to give you a brief introduction about Kathy. Nothing and. I will, try and back. Away from the slides I don't want to put anyone to sleep right off the bat here I do want to give a little bit of context, about what. Kathy is about where we came from and how, we got to where we are I'm. Going to go over a few, key like. I said I do talk to a lot of people around the country about EdTech, and I have trouble. To put together some of the most common issues that I think they. Have you know common, issues that they have expressed to me directly in, which you know when we talk about Kathy, they're, looking for prop the they're, looking for solutions for specific problems, and I kind of wanted to accenture. This particular webinar on those, problems so, these are the problems that needs to be the, the this. Is the agenda for today, we're. Going to talk about PDF, accessibility. And how Kathy, is able to, allow. Users, to work with PDFs in a, variety of ways and, how to make PDFs. Which are probably. The most common, file. Type when it comes to. Digitizing. Materials, and. And and you. Know distributing, them through for example the accesstext, network we. Were going I'm going to show you how Cappy, handles PDFs and how it's, really great, with PDFs, and of course other document, types as well I'm. Also going to cover OCR, which stands for optical character, recognition and, that is the, ability to that. Kathy has to scan. Documents, perhaps, flat, images. That. You. Know might have been spit out from a scanner or Thapa machine or maybe you had a picture that you had taken with a phone or, some other device and. You want to do have that text read aloud perhaps. The student was looking to listen. To a particular, worksheet, or or, document. Or page in a book or a text book that's, not necessarily, on the computer for, them to access so. We I'm, going to show you how you can use Kathy to do so. We're. Going to talk about Kathy and Bookshare which is pop. You know one of the most popular, ways and one of the most common ways that, Kathy. And Bookshare, books here is being accessed a, lot, of teachers you know not. Just higher ed of course we work with K through 12 schools as well with. Teachers. Who have, Bookshare, account students, who have Bookshare accounts they're. Not happy with the conventional, ways to access the Bookshare library so. We wanted to make sure that we. Allowed, users to easily. And, efficiently, access, books, from the books your library because it is a great resource and I'll show you how to do that as well. Captain. Can be used to access the web any articles, around the web you can use Kathy to to. Access the text from articles, from various. Languages, and I'm going to go over how exactly to do that as well as share content, and how captain can be used to distribute materials, so, you don't, have to use a USB thumb drive anymore you don't have to you, know email students, and.
Then Have them have to download it and open, it up in another program, if they want to access it using specific, supports. You'd. Be able to use Kathy to simply share a whole. Bunch of materials at once to a whole, bunch of students at once or maybe just one student and, then you'd be able that those students be able to access that material from wherever, they are using, all the supports that they need and. Then finally we'll talk about this. Brand-new feature that we've introduced. The Cathy called assignments, where, teachers. Educators, professors, are able to assign. Questions, to a particular, document. Or a particular. Track or playlist, which I'll get into in a moment in. The cap and inside of Cathy and, and students. Will be able to answer those questions and and be, able to submit. Answers, for the educator to see from their own account so I'll show you how that works it's, in beta form so it's not hasn't even been fully released so you're getting a very sneak peak on this one and, then finally I'll I'll. Get. A little bit into how you can get Cathy at. Your school how you can provide. Us the students at your disability, Center or throughout your campus and of. Course throughout the course of this particular, webinar. I'm going to be answering your questions, and. I do have. A. Slide, for that I believe okay, let's just back up a minute, there. We are okay. So yeah and submitting. I've seen some some, chat. Responses. Come up already. But if you don't know how to use it you can just take a look at the top of your screen if you're I think, you know most of you should see this at the top of your screen if you're using a browser, to access Cathy, or to access joining me today you. Will see a chat bubble icon and. You can open up the chat by hitting that chat bubble and then at the very bottom you'll. Be able to take. A look at the. You'll. Be able to take a look at the the, dimensions, who you can actually direct the question to so instead of sending it to everyone, in the room you can direct the question directly to me by changing, the app at the very bottom of that tap screen to. My, name Anthony matarese and, then I will be collecting questions throughout and then at the very end I'll. Spend some time answering, anything. I had not covered, and. Hopefully. I can get to as many questions as possible. Okay. So again just as a brief introduction, here you. Know Cathy is it. Is a flexible, literacy. Support platform. It. Is a, you know it helps, readers to overcome, their, learning disabilities, and their language barriers so there is a variety of. Supports. Here available for a lot of different use cases, you. Know we are based out of Stony. Brook University ourselves. Right here in Long Island New York it, was founded by a group, of professors. And it's. Still driven very much by research, and development by professors, here at the University, and. We have been in development for about five years now it's, won numerous awards including. The FCC, Chairman's Award in 2014, and most recently, something we're very very proud of is. The EdTech. Digest, named Cathy the best special, needs solution. For, 2017. So, that is the most recent reward that we've won so. If that was from EdTech. Digest, in their latest annual. Awards. From last month. We. Are also being used already in a number of colleges, so we're growing very very quickly and not only are we being used in Stony Brook University. We're. Also being used in James, Madison University we're, being used in corn. You know we are even being used throughout the New York City Department of Education for, example just locally here so. There. There's a lot of. Current. Usage going on in the higher ed in. The higher ed world and you, know I wanted to again Center this today's. Demo around, one of the biggest problems, or the biggest sets of problems expressed, you, know by 80 professionals. And and educators. And the various disability centers that I have had, the chance to talk with because. We believe captain can be a solution to too, many of these problems and the, first problem you know one of the most common problems and as we get right into the demo here I'm going to back out and, I'm going to switch my screen, so hopefully everyone stays with me here okay I'm. Just going to minimize this. Right. Maybe I can just move this over here okay. So, everyone should at, this point now see Kathy. What that's what I'm looking at right now I'm looking at my, Kathy. Account that I've opened up in my browser here and one. Of the most common problems that I hear, is how can you know how can Kathy make it easy for, educators. And disability, centers to provide you. Know PDFs, to students how you, know how, can how can you have to make it PDS more accessible, and the fact is PDFs have never been more accessible, when you're using it within the Kathy platform, cap PDFs, become very very versatile, in a number of different ways and I'm going to show you how so.
I Have, a slew. Of playlists, here on the left I'm actually going to turn on something, I forgot to turn on here where's my, my. Magic, my. Magic wand, here, okay, so you should see my I'm. Going to try and point, out a few key, areas of the screen as I click on them so, you should see a blue streak, following, my mouse. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and. Click. On and, open up this up, I'm getting, some audio. Complaints, here. Okay. I'm seeing some audio complaints. Testing. Testing. Hello. Testing, I have no trouble with audio okay I'm having some people tongue into this trouble with audio I hear. You and see the blue line okay if you are having trouble with audio, like, I said try backing out and and. Restarting. It and coming back into and, to join me hopefully that work for you but again like I said I will have this fully recorded and the audio should, absolutely be, should. Be fine in the recording, so. Back to tap to hear so I'm going to go ahead and open up this. This. Particular playlist, here. This. English, 210, playlist, that I've created now we centered Kathy around this idea of playlist we think it's very very easy to. Manage workflow, when it comes to this, idea of playlists, right so students know what playlists, are you, know pretty, much everyone knows what a playlist is and in the idea of of how, playlists. Can be used to organize materials. So. I created, this particular, playlist called. English 210, so you can name playlist whatever you want you, can organize it however you, like and. I've added some materials. Here for this particular class, I'm taking but. Now I have, I know I have a PDF in my in my on. My computer, that I'd like to add to my my, English 210 playlist, so I'm going to go ahead and open this up here and, click look by clicking the plus button I'm. Going to head and select local, file okay. So I'm going to go into my computer here and I'm. Going to choose, this particular PDF, that I have. It's. Just an article, about Aztec, so I'm going to open this up. And I'm going to select import. So. You can see when, I try, and import, this PDF into capti it gives me two options right off the bat it says hey do you want to use the rich text version of this PDF which. Will just focus on the text and allow you to do a lot more with the text itself or do. You want to import the original layout which will you, know maintain, the look and feel as the author intended, as if. You had just printed out the PDF yourself, and. Then import, it into Kathy that way well, I'm actually show you what both looks like so I'm going to start with rich text so let's say I want to import rich text because you know as a student I like I like. To listen to text. I like to use text-to-speech too to, access the text itself so, I'm going to and. Of, course because. I also. Have dyslexia I'm going to change a few things about the text cosmetically. To, help with that and help, me to better access this particular PDF, so. As you can see I import, this PDF and you get an orange notification. Here telling you that something's loading so you're never in the dark here you always know when something's going on when something's being loaded into a playlist and, you can see right here it opens it as a brand-new track in this. Particular, English 210, playlist. Okay. Then only took a few seconds didn't think that long at all so I'm going to go ahead and click on it and, you're. Going to see here. Is the PDF file but, again it is only focusing, on the text, itself it's not, focusing, on the structure the. Margins, the headings, the typefaces, any sort. Of tables, and in there it's just going to focus on the text and this, is for a couple of for a couple of reasons the biggest of which is that it allows me now to customize. The text in a myriad of ways so. In order to do that all I would have to do is click on this key, button here up top this. Is called text view options, and then will allow me to individualize. The look and feel of a, lot of different things I can change the colors so, for example if I prefer to higher contrast, between the. Text and the, background I, can, apply, that higher contrast, and as you can see it darkens, the entire interface, here so it just makes it the text a little bit easier to read. If I, wanted to go ahead and. Change. The font I could do that as well so. As you can see we support, us a handful. Of extremely, readable fonts, and. And these fonts are hand-picked because you know we wanted to make sure they were readable when they're zoomed in and the magnification, levels are higher, and for those students with vision.
Impairments, And as you can see we also support, a font called open dyslexic so for individuals with dyslexia this. Is a fantastic, resource it helps, to ground the words a bit more increases. Readability, and allows, them to easy to access, the text, much. Much easier you. Can change of course the entire document, to this just. By switching to the to the font in the text view options, screen here and then. Of course finally I can adjust the margins as well so depending, on how far uses in zoomed in you can widen. The margins a bit and ain't. You know focus. The reading into the middle of the page if I, wanted to I could also hide. This playlist', sidebar, here on the left if I wanted to have more room to read I could. Use the contextual. Icons, here on the bottom right to. Zoom, in to the text as far, as I need to and then, I can of course zoom. Out. And, if. I wanted to listen with text-to-speech it's, as simple as double-clicking. Anywhere, in the article or in, this case the PDF to change. My reading position and you'll. Notice that it changes, the highlight or the highlight follows the word where the, reading. Position will begin so where the text-to-speech will begin to read I should say and it will give you an icon indication, as well in the margins, telling. You exactly where you are so now what I can do is go ahead and press play and listen with a high-quality voice modern knowledge of the alt text comes from both archaeological. Fieldwork and a historical, document, so, as you can see it highlights, each word as it's being read we call that speech tracking, and if you click on the T button again the text view options screen you can also turn, that off if you wanted to you could turn off text, view options so, there are a lot of different, color, combinations as you can see you can apply. A cream background, or just a plain white background, you can of course change. It to, back to arial if you wanted to go to a more standardised font you. Know why. Narrow, in the margins a bit more to push the margins. Back to the corners of the screen or the edges of the screen so there's tons of different ways for you to personalize, the look and feel, of the text but there's more things you can do with. With text inside of Kathy it's not just about text, to speech but. Text to speech of course is very very easy to access you don't have to do anything special to turn on Texas speech as. You can see all I did was use the playback controls here, in, the top, left.
Of The, screen if I, wanted to personalize, the voice you, have plenty of options to do so I can click on voices here at the very top to, change the. Voice so. We have a lot of different, voices to choose from and I should say right now I'm using Kathy, in my browser all I did was, go to Kathy voice calm, I logged in and I started to use it I didn't download or install anything, Kathy. Can be accessed just strictly as a web application. So. It's great for Chromebooks in that regard if you have any students or or if, your disability Center uses, Chromebooks, which are fantastic devices. You can use Kathy, on a Chromebook easily. Simply. By going to captive voice command logging in because there's no installing, needed and it's, not just a Chrome extension either, Kassie can be used across any browser that. You have access to it works great in Firefox, right now I'm using opera, not many people use opera but it. Works great in Opera you can use Safari, and. You, know Internet Explorer whatever you have available to you Kathy will, work great, you'll. See that, right. Now I'm on my voices page, here and the. Reason I'm saying. To, you right now that I'm using the web application, is because I don't have to download or install any, of these voices either I can just go ahead and choose between the. Voices that I have access. To right now so. I wanted. To choose from let's, say it's currently, set to share Tracy, maybe. I would just want to choose let's go to the lease outlet Lisa has she's, an Australian English voice and all these voices that you see here are English. Speaking voices from around the from around the globe so you have different accents, we. Offer different demographics. Multiple. Languages, as well, we support if you check up check, out this drop box this drop menu here on the on the right we, support over 20, foreign language voices for text-to-speech and. I will show you in a moment how that works with foreign language text but. Right now I'm going to change we're just going to change it to Lisa and as you can see right, at the top of the page we, allow you to change the speed of the voice as well so you can set five words per minute its, default, and set the default is set to 160. Words per minute here, but. You can click and drag this. Slider with a mouse or if. The student is using, a keyboard he. Or she can just simply type in the. Particular, word per minute setting. That they'd like to set the speed to I'm, going to set it to the default for now and then go back to my playlist just to show you how. Easy it is to go ahead and pick, up with, a new voice and. Historical, documents the.
Edge Like. Many other Mesoamerican. Cultures, used, a limited form of writing that consisted, of pictorial, representations. Painted, on bark paper and animal hides so. It does a fantastic job is a very naturally, sounding voice very. Natural intimations these, are voices that are designed for long-form, reading and long-form engagement, you might be used to voices Texas, few choices may be like theory, for example on your iOS device. And I do see a question pop up in the corner of my eye I didn't want to address it of course it is accessible, with screen readers. It is captain, was originally designed as a screen, reader actually so. You'd be able to like like, I was mentioning earlier if you the student is using a keyboard, they. Could use the keyboard to adjust the words per minute they can navigate using, the keyboard shortcuts, that capti has to get, you anywhere, in the user interface and, that includes, with, the screen. The, screen reader keyboard, shortcuts as well so you can use both Cathy's shortcuts, and the screen readers keyboard shortcuts, whatever, the compass student or the user is most, comfortable with. So, again with the screen readers we do support, you. Know software. Like NVDA and. Jaws and the like. But. In terms of of. Course the text-to-speech voices as I was mentioning you, know you could again. Adjusted, on the fly it's, very easy to to, set your preferred voice but. It's it's, not just with text-to-speech you can do many other things with text here with. This particular PDF document, that I'm working it excuse. Me again again I am working with a PDF. Document that I had uploaded. From my from. My computer and. I use the rich text version of this PDF so, right now let's say I wanted the students who actively read or as a student myself I wanted to highlight. And take notes as I read I can simply select text, right click and, annotate. And highlight and, this, would allow me to take a note perhaps, I want to say this, is something that I need to remember, I. Can. Even listen to my notes using text-to-speech so. If you do work with students, who do rely on text-to-speech, more heavily than others, you, should be comforted, by knowing that you can listen to pretty much anything in Kathy just by clicking on this icon here. Is important, and it will even use, the same voice that you set at your preferred voice oh it's very consistent and. If I wanted to go ahead and highlight it as well I could do that so I can create a highlight, here I could even perhaps, I wanted to bookmark. This particular, source I can simply select the word and hit, bookmark, and you. Would see a bookmark, icon appear, here as well you. Have some more tools available for you too let's, say I wanted to, right-click.
On A word a. Particular. Word here, and then select define. You. Can define, words right within the platform captain. Gives you a definition you can listen to the definition, you, can click through into, the definition to do. Some more research here, oftentimes. You're given a picture companion. As, a. Resource, but, you're given far more context, and background. Information on the particular word when you click through so. It's very easy to access, more, detailed. Vocabulary. Through. Cactii. By defining, the word but. Finally, last but not least when, it comes to tools and right clicking tools again. I'm just selecting text, here, and I'm. Right clicking right, and all the tools appear for me right in front of me I don't have to go back and forth switch. My the. Toolbar, on my cursor, you. Know and have to switch. Every time I want to change tools all I have to do is select, the text right click on run up on what I like to work on and then, I have all my tools here, now, for example now I can go ahead and translate, text, so. If I wanted to go ahead and change it to one. Of the hundred plus languages, that we offer for translation, I can do that, including, you, know for example let's. See where is Spanish. Of course so here's Spanish and. And I can even listen to the translation, as well in the native language by clicking the speaker icon I press. Tipos, principales, echo, descent mulattos, historic, owes alma novice 3 to alla sinistra, stay, with us so it is a really great job again, pronunciation. And, with the all kinds, of you know whatever, spanish, language or a foreign language voice that you're using you, know while we do support, over, a hundred different languages, for text. Translation. You, know most of them do have voiced companions, that you'd be able to do this with and listen to the translations, and you could go into the voice settings for the Spanish language voices, and slow voices down as well if you'd like to do that too so, the translation function, is great students. Who are learning the language for the first time students. Who might be visiting or or have. Come to the country and are attending, a college or university and, are not comfortable with totally. Comfortable with the English with English their English yet they can always rely on these types of language supports, to, help them access text now. Again this is all within, the rich text version of the PDF but you, know this is nice but what if I wanted to actually look at the PDF as if I had printed it out how, could I do that well it would be the exact same process I would go into my click. On the plus button here in my playlist to. Open up all of my sources and, I'm. Going to go ahead and select local, file to go back into my hard drive. And I'm, going to open up the same PDF. And instead. Of rich-text, i'm going to go ahead and select original, layout. You'll see right away that. It. Will go. Ahead and import this PDF, you have an orange notification, telling you something floating but it only takes a few seconds and you'll see it appear as a brand new track in my, English 210, playlist. When. I say track I should say I am referring to really any text, document, that you can put into a captive, playlist you'd be hard-pressed to. Find a text file, type that you cannot use as a track inside of Kathy so, here is the PDF file here and as. You'll notice right away it looks, much different than. The rich text, version of the PDF that. You saw. But. I'm going to open it up here and you can see here, it is all I did was click on the track.
But. The. Best part is I can still use a lot, of the same tools, that I could use my rich text, file the version of the PDF so if you don't have any reason to use the rich text version and it makes more sense for you to use the original layout you can go ahead and double, click anywhere in the text and press, play if you'd still like to use text-to-speech you can tech culture slashed in the highlands, of central Mexico, then. You can still use text-to-speech it still speech tracks for you could highlight each word as it's being read you. Can still select text, using your mouse right click. And you. Can still highlight, and take. Notes now. You can see as I highlight here. And I can do some more highlighting, down here perhaps. I want to use a different color. I can. Go ahead and you, know you're probably wondering, where are the highlights or the notes that I'm taking all of my notes and highlights are kept track of inside. Of the playlist sidebar, here on the left and now I can access those notes for this particular, track by opening, up the track with, this arrow and. You can see I have a few options here I can go ahead and select highlights. To, see all of my highlights, it tells me what pays the highlights on it tells, me the color I use if I took a note the note would appear right underneath and I. Can go ahead and select these. Highlights, now and it will automatically, change the reading position, to that highlight I can double click and. And it will automatically. Read text-to-speech, so it's very easy they, kind, of acted like the de-facto bookmarks, in a way so. The, biggest thing I wanted to highlight here of course is that you can use PDFs, in their original layout, but, you do not have to sacrifice tools. And. Active. Reading tools and even the translation. Works the definitions, you can still do all these things with these types of PDF documents in this particular, format. Now. PDFs. Are great and all but what if I had, an. Image what if I had a picture of a document that I had. Not. Necessarily. OCR. Scanned yet and I, wanted to use it to read. Aloud to assume, that I would, like to have students listen to that to that text while. We allow, with. Captain users can upload, images. Whether it be a jpg. File a tiff, you. Know these are common file types that oftentimes, come from scanners, or or copy, machines you, can bring them in to Kathy by, doing the same thing as if I were just uploading, a standard PDF so watch, what I do here I'm going to click on the plus button and open.
Up My local file again and go. Into this hard drive that I have because I have a picture here and. If. You can see this picture I hope you can it doesn't, look at you know doesn't. Look perfect it was it's not a perfect, picture by any means it's a little off-center there's. Some shadows, on the bottom here but. I'm going to just, still, I'm going to go ahead and upload this. And I'm, going to import it into, this. English 210 playlist and again. I didn't do anything different I'm just uploading a file I get. A notification telling, me something's loading same thing but, what's going to happen now is that cavity will recognize, that it is a image and it will OCR, scan it it's already OCR scan and as you can tell it's already appeared in this playlist now I can go ahead and open up. And here, is that same picture, that, I took with my phone this is a picture I took with my iPhone. Shadows are gone it does a great job of identifying the, structure of the text it will, read straight or you know won't read straight across the the page and it understands, that there are columns here and I can double click anywhere, in the text to change my, reading position just as if I were reading a PDF and then press play to listen with text-to-speech the, first Native, American group to build month in what is now the United States often are called the a-team and you. Can even see that it identified, the fact that this was a URL and now I can go ahead and click on it so it is a really really great job of picking, up the, text in this particular, view when, you're taking a picture of it but. You know what. Would you you're probably a little skeptical, right you're probably not sure if I had. Taken the perfect, picture and and this is what I'm this is what I'm showing you today maybe, I had some lighting and some assistants helped me out with it now so what I'm going to show you is I'm going to show you what it looks like when, I take it with my iPad so I'm going to switch to my iPad. Okay. We're. On my iPad screen here hope I didn't lose anyone all right so I'm going to go ahead and show. You what it looks like to take a picture of a document with Kathy and have it OCR scan live right here so what. You're seeing here is the capti iOS, app it can, be used on iPads and iPhones simply. By downloading cap down the app stores Capt, I searched for it on the App Store you can download it for free, once. You download it you can sign in using your Cathy credentials, and you're, going to you're going to be greeted with the screen here this is the all, of you the playlist, that you have on your particular account so now I'm using my student, account before I was using my teacher account but now I'm going to use my student account just to show you a little bit different perspective so, I'm going to open up this particular playlist called the Writing Center and now. What I'm going to do is I'm going to add a track to this playlist so as you can see same, green plus button here. Same. Set of sources that you can access from the desktop and then the laptop versions but I'm going to go ahead and take use. The camera. That is directly, on my device to, take a picture of a worksheet that I have next to me right here so, I'm going to go ahead and open up the camera and I'm, going to stand up and, I'm. Going to go ahead and take a picture of this worksheet, this is a little, bit of a writing exercise worksheet. That I got from a local college. Round. Here and I'm just going to go ahead and take a picture. Okay. So you snap a picture then you say use photo down here on the bottom. So. Now what I can do is I can name the track whatever I'd like so maybe I'm just going to name it sources. And then hit add. So. Now you have a track loading into your queue, I'm. Going to go back hit close. And. You're probably like okay so where is it okay, so it is currently, loading, and you can see what is currently loading if you go ahead and and take, a look at the upper right corner you see this little arrow icon. Is blinking, that's telling you hey something's, currently happening so I can even click on that guy and it. Would say all my loading tracks right there but as you can see it doesn't take long at all and now, what I can do is I can just tap on the tap. On it there and you can see right away it took. A picture of the of, the document, I could. Just simply hold, my finger down to. Change you, know to jump to this particular, word and then you're not going to be unfortunately, you're not going to be able to hear the. Text-to-speech. Because. The way my iPad, is hooked up but believe me you.
Can Use text-to-speech and, it's as simple as clicking on, the. Play, button here on the bottom you have the same set of voices available to you on iOS, as you, do on your, desktop in your laptop so, that's really kind of what sets Kathy apart from a lot of the other similar software out there in a lot of ways that. It's the same tool set you know a lot of the same tools are available to you on mobile as they are on on. Desktop or laptop so if the student has to use an iPad for whatever reason or maybe they just prefer to use their phone on the go they, can listen to text they could, you. Know they'd be able to still, take notes highlight. And rotate. Translate. Text, all the you, know all these tools are available on. On, mobile, as well and of, course this. This this, can also be synchronized, so, if students are highlighting. And they are taking, notes and. They are. You. Know they are translating. Words. And things like that this. Work would be synchronized, across. Across. Devices if they're doing this work on an iPad they, can go on to a desktop, the next day desktop, computer or a laptop and, a completely different location sign. In to Kathy and they'd still see all their notes and highlights etc, so it's really really easy to, synchronize, it it, does it by itself and of course it doesn't, interrupt the workflow it just from it keeps out that consistent, experience, nothing. Is really broken in transition, when you're switching between devices. So, we're, going to go back to my desktop account, here and again. I'm on my teacher account, on. This particular, web version of Kathy on my laptop. So. Another, problem that you know many, disability. Centers Express, to me is the fact that you know they're their, professors, their students use Bookshare. But. They're, not happy, with the, conventional. Means of accessing, the Bookshare library so it oftentimes goes unused, and. Now Kathy, is a, fantastic.
Resource To access Bookshare with BarNone it is one of the best if not the best and, Kathy. Is, frequently. Recommended by Bookshare we're partnered with them you, know we have a great relationship with them and they've given us access directly. To their Bookshare library, right, within the platform so, if your students require these types of supports, if, they'd like to use text-to-speech high-quality. Text-to-speech. Voices if they don't want to use the read2go app on their iOS device, to access this material they, can use the caveat to do it but, of course they can also do it on the laptop so let me show you what that looks like so what I'm going to do is app do now is I'm going to click this green plus button again open. Up my list of sources and this time I'm going to select Bookshare. To be taken right into the Bookshare, library and as you can see the last thing I was reading or the last thing I was looking at was a this. Category, which. You know they butcher does a great job of categorizing. Book, the books for you and this particular, category here is called College. Juniors so this is the material they think are appropriate, for college juniors and but. You know actually. Know what I want to do I'm going to go back one one step and, I'm, going to I'm going to go into a different playlist here let's, go back let's go back and, I'm going to go ahead and open up I have a playlist for my sociology class here and I'm, going to go ahead and open that up and as. You can see I've already added a book here called getting started in sociology I'm, going to open this particular playlist, up and I'm going to add a Bookshare book for. My sociology, class. And. How do I do that well you know butcher. Does a great job of categorizing, books for me but what if I wanted something a little bit more particular what. I could do is I can search for the, particular book I'm looking for right, in the title bar right in the search bar here if I, knew the ISBN, number of the book the, author you, can search by a lot of different criteria but I'm just going to use title and I'm going to search for you. Know I'm going to type, sociology. And. Then. Here. You are all the books that have, to, do with sociology. In the, cat in the Bookshare library, so, all I have to do, is. Select a, book, and then. Go ahead and click post, I'm. Taking. A book from the Bookshare library and I'm, creating a track out of it and putting, it into Kathy, so now I'm going to go back to the playlist by, selecting, playlist. And you're, going to see something's. Currently loading and if, I click on loading you can see exactly what is loading, so if you had multiple things loading at once you'd, be able to take a look at them as you, can see again no matter the book size it only takes a few seconds, and you, can see right off the bat I can go ahead and select it so here is religion and sociology, I, can. Scroll down here to get past the pages or I, can, use the the buttons, here to turn, the page or. Even. Easier, I can open, up the book by selecting, the arrow here, and. Select. Sections. The book has sections. Here that I can choose from so I can select each, chapter, and cycle. Through the chapters that way, you. Know same thing with the other book here if I wanted to open this book up I would simply click the arrow. And this, particular book is also separated into chapters, so Kathy recognizes. That it's a chapter book so I can simply select the chapter that I want to work with and it, will take me right to it if you, look closely it will even tell you how long it would take to listen, to the chapter, excuse.
Me Using text-to-speech, so. It does a really good job of. Giving. The user information it, tells you even how long it would take to listen, to a particular, chapter using. Text-to-speech, with. The the you know set at the specific. Speed, words. Per minute setting that you set it to so it's a dinah it will change dynamically, based on your preferred voice and speed. So. In terms of us. You could do this as well on iPad so again if I go back to my iPad just to show you the parody I can. Open up my list of sources by. Clicking on this green plus, button here. And again. You'll have the same list of sources that you have on desktop, and you can access the Bookshare library, right from your iOS device, as well in the same manner you would select Bookshare, and in. This particular case you. Would log in with your book share information, and you'd be able to get into the Bookshare library. Now. When you upload, a, book. Into, the butcher library, from any device, that. Those. Types of books can you know they can also be synchronized, between, devices so it really, as long as they're a track inside, of Kathy, it can be synchronized, between devices and you can be and they can be accessed from from anywhere at any time. But what you know what. If a student is not using Bookshare that's you know books here is great if they're fantastic, resource but if the student is not using Bookshare the teacher or the professor does not have access to Bookshare it's it's, essentially useless for them so what we wanted to do is make sure there were plenty of other options to access materials, so you can press the viewer. Into a playlist here let's go back to my sociology playlist. I can, go ahead and click, this plus button here and you can see a whole slew, of sources, available to, me including all the, major cloud storage, services, like Dropbox and. Google Drive. Project. Gutenberg is, very similar to Bookshare it has a whole list, of. Classic. Literature. That. Has been digitized, it's an open source platform so, it's it's free to use you know you do not need an account to access Project, Gutenberg and, as you can see when you click on it you're given the same type. Of categories, and you can access a variety of content. For, free for absolutely free and there's again it's a lot of classic. Literature that's great, for the college level. If, I want to go back I'm. Going to go ahead and create one more playlist, here for. My Spanish class we're gonna go ahead and click, this plus button and, I'm, going to name. It after my Spanish, course and, I'm. Going to go ahead and press create you can also see that you can assign keywords to it and. You can describe it as well and that really comes in handy when you have a lot of playlists, as you as you can see the playlist stack up very quickly so you want to be able to make sure that you can search through them efficiently. And you can do that by searching, for particular keywords in this field, so if you add keywords, to a playlist you can search for it a little bit easier I'm. Going to go ahead and now open up this Spanish, playlist, and, I. Have a Spanish. Article. That I wanted to add to this particular, playlist here so I can use text-to-speech, to. Help my my. Ears pick up on on the, Spanish verb, tenses and the like so what I'd like to do is is is, hit add track, and then. At the very bottom you see an option called web page. What. This is going to ask you to do you only have to do this one time is add, what we call a bookmarklet, to, your browser which will allow you to, add, content, from a variety of, sources a variety, of web pages and create, tracks, out of that text, so that would extract, the article from the web page create, a track and put it into your Kathi playlist whatever captive playlist you'd like to add it to so.
What I do is you know you would just click and drag this add to cap add to Kathy bookmarklet, into, your bookmarks, toolbar so. Every most browsers have this toolbar, where you can click, and drag it to the very top and now. As you can see it's already been added and I never have to never, have to do that again it's the last time I have to do that and it, will remain in my Bookshare. Excuse. Me my bookmarks. Toolbar here in my browser until. I get rid of it and now, what that will allow me to do is open. Up a whole new tab and I, can go to any website that I want so right now I'm on the BBC, Spanish. Language website and I, found an article that I want to import here. So how do I do that well you can do it in a couple of ways you could select, all the. Text and you, can right-click and, you can copy and paste it into a Word document and, then, you can you know if you didn't want the pictures you would have to give her the pictures you have to make sure not to highlight, the advertisements. And and the, navigation, and make sure that you know it's it's a pretty little article so you have to scroll and make sure you're copying everything you. Don't have to do all that what you have to do with, Kathy's you just have to hit the Add to Kathy button that we've just put in our toolbar. And what's, going to happen it's going to intelligently, extract, that text, put, it into your Spanish 205 playlist and what. I do is I go back if. You, don't see pop in right away you can always use the synchronize, button here to, help push it through a little faster and you can see it appear very very, soon after as a brand new track it, will strip away all the unnecessary. You. Know the ancillary content, the navigation, the, pictures. You know the the distracting, material the advertisements. And it, will just focus on the text the meat potatoes, of the article and now. What I can do is I can do the same thing and double click anywhere in the text tap, you will recognize, that it is now a spanish-language, document. And read it to me in my preferred Spanish, language voice. Hey. Listen arias a repeater cada mañana yell, dilemma, where their products, it and it will still highlight each word as it's being read and you, have access to all the same tools if, I wanted to change my spanish-language voice I would just go to the same voices screen, here and like we were doing, earlier I can simply hit the drop down menu, and then, select Spanish and I'd. Be able to change, my spanish-language, voice, from. The voices available to me so as you can see there, are lots and lots of voice options even for the foreign language voices and I can even slow Rosa down speed.
Her Up and you can test the the speed by hitting the play button that so, you know so and. Then you'd be able to to. Read at that particular speed so it's very easy to set, the preferred Spanish voice and. Have access to any sort, of foreign language text that hasn't voiced companion, with it but, again just, illustrating, how easy it is also to, extract. Text from webpages just, going to another browser or opening up another tab in your browser visiting. You know surfing the web as usual, finding. A web page that you like or an article that you want to work with extracting. It into. The playlist it's great for research, purposes, too if students are trying to compile sources, if they, can add it to a Cathy playlist and have access to it for it you know from anywhere I. Do. Want, to. Move. On here to what, it looks like to distribute content because now that I've added all this all this stuff to these playlists, here I want, to share it with with my students I want you. Know perhaps the. The students I'm working with don't necessarily have access to all this material, or maybe they can access this material for whatever reason, so. What I want to do now is I want to go ahead and I want to share this this English, 210. Playlist. With, with my with, a group of students end to end a colleague of mine so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and now as the professor, or the teacher or the educator, at the disability, Center what, I can do is I can hit readers, and hit. Sharing. Now. This is something that students. Cannot do use. The students cannot access this. Readers button at all this is something that is only, accessible by professors, and educators I. Can. Go ahead and click. On the playlist I want to work with let's let's share with my English 210 and now. You're going to be presented with a list which, is currently empty so, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to import, I'm. Going to add users, to this list and that, was going in it's going to allow me to share, this. English, 210, playlist. By. Adding. Users, to it I'm, going to ahead and select add and. Now what I would see you, know theoretically you would see everyone, in your organization you. Can you know group them by particular, playlist maybe you've done. So already and then what you could do is you. Can even tell Kathy. Whether you like this particular student, to. Add or. To. Be able to edit the playlist or simply, view the playlist so you have total control over this so if I wanted the students to be able to just view within the playlist I had ten view I want.
To Add my colleague to this playlist, as well I'm, going to allow them to contribute to it they can edit this playlist but this particular student they can only view it they I only want them to read and and, annotate, on the. And I want them to be able to delete tracks or add tracks or anything like that so now, I have no more students left in my organization, I go back to my playlist here and you. Can see now everyone, on this list now, has access to this English 210, playlist, that's it you, don't have to email them you don't have to give them a USB, thumb drive with all this material, they can now access this, material from anywhere, they, have access to Kathy so, what does that look like from the students, perspective well, I can now go ahead and let's go back to my iOS. App. Go. Ahead and move this, okay. So I'm going to go back to my iOS app and again if you remember I'm, using my student, account here, and I. Wanted, to see I want, to show you what it looks like from the students perspective let's, say the student is you, know received an email from the teacher saying or within, the class with the teacher and or. In the disability Center and you said you know I've added, you. Know I've added some things to this playlist I've, shared with you could you synchronize your account so you can you can take a look at it all you have to do is the student that is all they have to do is pull down on the playlist with their finger and it. Will go ahead and synchronize. Their, account and what's. Going to happen now as you can see hey now, that English 210 playlist is available, to me so. I can go ahead and open that up. And you can see all of these tracks are currently being synchronized I can. Go ahead and open up this PDF and here's. The PDF I, can. Go ahead and inter-regional layout by the way you can see the same PDF. And. In its rich text version and as you can see I change the background I've changed the font on my iOS device here, and it will automatically, adapt, to those changes. Here. Is the, here's. The image in fact that I took with my. With. My. With. My phone here so here's the picture I took so everything is available to me here in. The English 210 playlist, simply. By, synchronizing. Pulling. Down on the track and synchronizing. The playlist and, again you can do that from from, anywhere just pulling down and synchronizing. The material. To. That particular, device so. Again. And it will synchronize both ways so if the teacher were adding. Materials, to this playlist now on their device, you, know they only have to add them to this particular, playlist once, right so if they're adding this to this list they only have to do it once and, then, they'd be able to you. Know they'd be able to keep adding, documents to the playlist so the, next, time the student. Syncs they would just change the documents that are inside the playlist they don't have to you know continuously, add them to this list in order to synchronize. Every. Single time. And. Then last, but not least here before we get to, questions. I do want to leave some time for questions I do just want to briefly show you what. It looks like to. What. It looks like for, the assessments, component, now this. Is. The. Assessment is it, in its beta form the, assignments, and assessments we, call them and, this allows users, to create. New. Assignments. Based on particular. Tracks. In the, in. The playlist so you can click on the clipboard here on the upper right corner, open. Up the the. Assignments, sidebar, here on the right as you see I did here so as a teacher or an educator I could just simply create a new assignment. And then you can assign this particular, assignment. To any, playlist that you have here you can you, know add directions, to the assignment, you, can add questions, so right now we we. Only have a, short. Answer questions in the beta but as soon as we release this, widespread. Release at the end of the month we're going to have multiple choice questions, which, will allow for Auto grading, you'll have spelling, choices, of spelling questions, so multiple question types will be added about, right now you could add short, answer questions so. You can ask a question based. On the reading you. Can back out add more. Questions if you like or you can assign this, particular. This. Particular test, to a user, and. And. Once you've assigned it to a user you'd, be able to you, know or a student that student would be able to open up the they, can click on their red clipboard, there and they'd be able to see all in-progress assignments. Here. They can then go ahead and open up the assignment, and. Then view the. Questions and answers and you know they'd be able to submit answers, and the teachers would be able to see their answers from.
From Their own account so, the assignments, function of the feature I should say it's, really useful for just wrapping, assessments. Of any kind wrapping, questions around, particular. Tracks in a playlist, and. Being able to, you. Know distribute, the questions to a group of students at once have those students answer the questions and then have the teachers revoke, access to, the to the quest to the quiz of the test or what have you grade. The questions on their own at their own discretion and keep, track of all of this all this, all these, materials. So. That is you, know these are the biggest you, know the. Biggest workflows the most part most commonly, used features you know that, have been asked, by me. You. Know asked. To me by a lot of the educators. And at, the disability, centers that I have spoken to around, the country. So. I do want to briefly. Discuss how you can get Kathy. You. Know for your disability Center for, your college your campus, you know there are a variety of different ways to do this you. Know Kathy is free to you I mentioned. That earlier briefly, you can download Cathy on iOS, for. Free you can download it on your desktop or laptop computer, for free, but, there, are some, subscription-based. Features. That. You'd be able to access if you, had. Either, a premium, individual, account or a premium organizational. Account so when we work with schools especially. The disability, centers that we currently work with we usually provide them with an organization, account or they can have a set number of users. And. You. Know they would say hey we need we, would like 50 users or 50 students, to, have capti accounts so we would provide them with an organization, account for 50 users, or. Maybe they wanted 100 users up. Now, I should say by the way before I even talk, about numbers, Cathy, is certainly the most certainly. The most affordable literacy, platform on the market today you know we've we've, been told there were 60%, cheaper than you, know alternatives like kurtzweil or, you. Know snap and read things like this things, like this you. Know so if you're looking to save money, at any point you know if you, want to be a hero and save your Department the.
Precious, Budget. Money you know this is this is certainly something to take a look at because where. We scale very nicely down when, you're only talking about specific, numbers of students and if you're talking about large numbers of students, maybe you want to cover everyone on campus you, know we have options to allow you to offset the cost of students and. Things like this so, it's. A lot of different ways for you to personalize. Exactly. How to provide, cap. D to your users of. Course fuel. You should all have my email address at this point and. If you wanted to email me and request a quote of any kind or maybe, schedule, phone call at some point in the coming days to discuss this further feel, free to reach out I, will, be available to, speak with throughout. The weeks coming up and. We can, hopefully work something out then provide, cap D to, you and your staff. And students so. What I wanted to do now is hopefully. Answer a few questions here with the five minutes we have remaining and. If. I don't answer your questions don't. You. Know don't feel bad you can always again send, me an email. Talk to me call. Me I'd love to talk with you guys, and I'll, talk, with each of you individually. By. Email or by phone whatever, is easier for you so I'm going to go ahead and take, a look at the chat here and I'm, going to, you. Know what let's switch here to. Right. Let's just go here. I'm. Going to go to how to get Cathy just so you can see this on on, your screen, okay. And. I'm going to start. From the most. Recent here I'm going to pick out a few questions as I go so can it read math it, cannot you. Know well I shouldn't say it can it will remap, but. Your experience is going to vary with math unfortunately. The Texas speech technology, the way it is today it's, very difficult for it to read. Algebraic. Expressions, or abstract, equations. You know it, will Texas beef who will read what's on the screen and. That's great but in cases like math it can really it. Could present a lot of problems so your experiences, will vary with math for sure although we do work with schools in Texas who use captive. Or for. General, subject, test distribution. So it, is it, can be used some, extent but again your spirit experience, is going to, vary, viewer. 22 says you, know is Kathy mobile app iOS only it. Is not on Android yet we're currently working on the Android app so, it should be out by we're. Hoping with right now we're targeting the beginning of 2020. 18 for. The Android app so. If there. Is any Android users out there you. Can, still use Kathy if you point your web browser to Kathy voice calm on the Android device works. Fine and Android tablets too so you'd be able to use Android in that way. The. Free features, the. Free features are you. Know you can you can create a playlist you can only create one playlist but you'd be able to add content, from a variety of sources in the playlist you. Know you'd be able to use. Text-to-speech you, can buy voices, Alucard from the free version so you can buy each voice individually. But, there are some differences here like for example. OCR. Being. Able to see the images in the text these are subscription-based, features, that would require some sort of a premium account whether it be individual, or, organizational. Let's. See what. Do we have here, I said. It yes it is accessible with a screen reader, can, you read and expect accessible, PDFs, with this tool. If, it is an image file. This, is a question from viewer, 8 yes so if it is an image file you can use Kathy, and will OCR, scan it for you and. Then you'd be able to. You. Know have it read out loud with text-to-speech but right now it does have to be an image file we are working with, the. Develop developers, are currently working on solutions for for. Inaccessible, PDFs, but if it is already, a image. If it's an image file before, it's a PDF you can use the image file.
Okay Let's see what, else any other questions here that maybe I have not addressed. Let's, take a look. Susan, says can it read word doc yes of course it can read word docs it can read, you. Know again you'd be hard-pressed to find any, text document that doesn't work here text. File type I should say RTF, s-- epubs. Daisy books, even. Powerpoints. In PDF format so it, will certainly work with these folks these. With. These file types, really. Again it since, Microsoft onedrive is a, source, that's integrated, into the platform you, can type up a document Microsoft, Word save it to your Microsoft, onedrive account and then easily access, it from cat you know in capita, to use. All the Kathy supports there. Jennifer. Asked a very good question or, it has a great, comment I should say it'd, be great if this could also sync with learning management systems, or professors, post readings such as Moodle and blackboard, this, is something that we are working with on a case-by-case. Basis. So if you are, you. Know if you are certain that you would like to work, with us in the coming school year we, can work with you and adapt Kathy. With your particular learning magic learning. Management system, there, are so many out there right now that we decide to do this on a case by case basis, so if that is something that interests you we, you know we can strike, up a conversation and, talk, about details, on how that could work for your particular campus, in. Terms of, you. Know being able to hook it into Moodle. Or canvas or. SKU ology whatever, you're currently using we'll. Work things out with you in that regard. Let's. See. Yes. Gradient, was thinking with blackboard yes lots, of colleges talk to us about blackboard. I heard, canvas, too is also up and coming canvas I don't know if you use canvas. Let's. See. Some. Of viewer enforces, some of the messages on the program, are pop-up. Messages, can, the screen reader read these that's a good question I will. I, will, certainly double, check on that with our developers, and when, I send the email out to everyone I will verify that with you or for you but, I would, believe that you, know just off that my head I do believe, it would but. I can verify that for. You when I talk with our developers afterwards and I'll send everyone again an email with. The archive of this particular, session I'll make. Sure to make a note in that email about that. I. Think. Let's see a a. Couple, more here we were 22 if the student is using Kathy online with a filed stored on a computer will. Kathy pick up where the students left off when he or she returns, yes yes. So, if, you're using really anything to recap you with you, know and you synchronize, your account as you go between devices, it will synchronize, reading. Position it will synchronize highlight. Annotations. Things like this this will all synchronize.
As Well. Individual. Users can. Subscribe, individually. For viewer 120, ask this question how much is it for individual accounts it's about a dollar ninety-nine per month it's ten, dollars for six months and twenty dollars for twelve months for so for the year for individual. Users so. You'll be able to subscribe on a monthly basis, a six month basis or an annual basis, depending, on what, you're more comfortable with, the. Organization, accounts of course, the. Difference is there they include, some. Text-to-speech voices premium. Text-to-speech voices are included, within organization. Accounts if, you're using an individual, subscription, you do still have to buy text-to-speech, voices ala carte so it would be a dollar ninety-nine for example per month and then you can add let's, say you wanted to add a particular. Ivona voice or acapella, voice it might be $4.99 for. The voice or $2.99 depending. On the voice but. That that the voice payments, themselves are one-time payments. Let's see can their Jennifer, also ask can it be multiple teachers on an account yes there can be there can be as we, actually do not charge for teachers so, you just need to know how many students you want to work with and. Then you'd be able to add. As many teachers as you'd like to. That particular, account and. In they, actually are set to teachers in the organization, so they have their own administrative. Powers. There so they can they. Can identify themselves, as teachers in the organization. All. Right I think that is pretty. Much what we have here. Yes. So well thank you for, joining me thank you I appreciate. Everyone. For for, coming in again my. Email, is Anthony, mattress. At cockyboys calm, I will be reaching out to you so you don't have to worry about that my, phone number is eight eight eight five three three seven eight eight four I'm at extension number two so if you feel like calling me and if, you're starting to use it yourself and you. Will have some questions you could always reach out and. Then yeah. So thank you guys very much for for, coming by I will, email everyone in our kyv of this session, today we, are also doing a session tomorrow so if you'd like to join us tomorrow feel free to register for that one at the, same time on. Wednesday the 19th okay. Thank, you guys very much for joining me in that I hope to speak, with everyone soon thank you. You. You.
2018-03-21 17:04
