However, the student with the poorest reading skills benefitted the most.” It should be noted that in this study the students only received 15 minutes of training in the use of the Reading Pen. In this case, “use of a reading pen did not uniformly improve the comprehension of the post-secondary students. Schmitt et al carried out a similar study involving only three students in a post-secondary setting. The results showed a significant improvement in comprehension scores among the learners who used the Reading Pen and pupils were enthusiastic about using the Pen. Participants were provided with training over the course of two weeks, followed by a reading comprehension test carried out with or without the use of the Reading Pen. Higgins & Raskind (2005) carried out a comprehensive study involving trials of the Reading Pen with thirty participants with reading disabilities aged 10 - 18. There have been a few research papers on the use of scanning pens with a variety of learners over the past few years. Using Scanning Pens in an Educational Context - What the Research Says The C-Pen is faster at scanning and reading back a line of text and has a significantly better voice than the Reading Pen. Reading Pens usually come with a clear plastic training "skid" which helps the user start at the right place and hold the pen at the right angle, but this is easily lost! The Reading Pen runs on small wheels which help it to run smoothly as it is scanning, but the C-Pen can drag slightly on some paper making it harder to scan in a straight line. If you are not getting good results, try adjusting your starting point, the angle of use, or the speed of scanning before you dismiss the device as "not working". You need to start scanning around 0.5 - 1 cm to the left of the text that you are wanting to read, which is not intuitive, but an easy habit to adopt. Functionalityīoth devices work well with fairly standard fonts up to a size of around 36 point where there is good contrast between the text and the background, but they struggle with the 'unusual' fonts and strongly coloured backgrounds found in many children's picture books and some magazines. Neither device would score particularly for clarity of operation - you really need to need to consult the manual to find out which combination of arrows and cryptic symbols / abbreviations you need to use to access some of the functions on both devices. The standard Reading Pen is the same shape as the orange Exam Pen illustrated above, but is dark grey in colour, making it a little more discreet, but the C-Pen is probably the better option for somebody concerned about being seen to be "different". On the other hand, the C-Pen is significantly slimmer, and less than half the weight. The Reading Pen is a rather 'chunky' device that can be awkward for small fingers to hold and manipulate - probably not suitable for early primary school. If you think that you could benefit from a scanning pen, which one should you buy? (You may be able to borrow one from CALL to try out - we have examples of both, but they are in high demand.) What are the features to consider? Design Both WizCom and C-Pen have versions of their devices specifically designed with dictionary definitions disabled for use in exams. the WizCom Reading Pen are still available and can still be effective, but a new generation of device, most noticeably the C-Pen Reader has become available in the last couple of years. Reading / scanning pens have been around for nearly 20 years and can be used to scan individual words or single lines of text and to read the text back using synthetic speech. Maybe technology could help you, so that you don't have to rely on someone else? What do you do? You could ask somebody to read it for you, but this is always so embarrassing. It may be an exam paper, or information about your flight and accommodation details for the holiday that you have been looking forward to for months. Suppose that you have dyslexia, or a reading difficulty, and have been given some important information printed on a sheet of paper.
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