RSTAQ: Reviews

WYNN is easy-to-use educational software designed especially to meet the needs of individuals with reading difficulties. It is designed to assist students to read, write, study and comprehend more effectively. It is suitable for students from middle school age to adults.

Presents materials in both auditory and visual modes so that students have simultaneous auditory and visual input.
Includes full editing capabilities so that students can add text and make corrections.
Incorporates study aids such as highlighting, bookmarks, masking, dictionary, text and voice annotations.
Allows users to increase the line and word spacing and adjust margins.
Includes easy-to-use rotating tool bars, which are labelled with pictures and words and are colour coded:

File Management tool bar allows users to scan a page, open, close, save and print files. Two views of the page are offered — Exact view which displays the page as it was in the original source with graphics, line art, tables and columns, and Text view which displays text only.

Visual Presentation tool bar includes tools for making the page more readable such as size of text, spacing between words, margins and type of font.

Study Tools tool bar gives access to dictionary, thesaurus, highlight, bookmarks and text or voice notes. The List feature allows users to gather together all highlighted text on a separate document.

Writing tool bar allows users to create or edit a document with the usual buttons for cut, copy and paste text and checking spelling. A Find button is also included which helps students find words or mark-up symbols such as bookmarks and notes.

In depth user’s manual.
Short reference guide to using the tool bars.

The program is particularly supportive for students with written language difficulties. It allows users to scan information from their textbooks or magazines, adjust the visual appearance of the text to make it more readable, and have the information read with words highlighted as they are read. Text can be added in or edited and all information is read aloud. For students experiencing reading difficulties, this program helps students develop some independence in researching information or studying information in their text books.

The program also includes features that support the development of note taking and study skills. The features of highlighting, note taking (both text and voice annotations), dictionary and bookmarking all help to facilitate the process of making notes. Furthermore, the List feature helps students to gather their highlighted text into a new document where they can organise their notes, number the ideas that answer their research question and add in information in their own words. Students can also collect notes made during reading using the Find button in the Writing tool bar.

Vocabulary development and word meanings are also facilitated using this program. Students can highlight unknown words, use a different coloured highlight to identify words or phrases that offer clues to meanings, write their predictions of meanings in the notes section and check meanings using the ‘talking’ dictionary. The highlighted words can be gathered together using the List button and students can then use this list to create a glossary.

WYNN comes in two versions — WYNN Wizard with OCR (Caere Optical Character Recognition) or WYNN Reader. OCR allows users to scan in and read pages using a scanner, in addition to reading electronic files. WYNN Reader also reads electronic files but does not include OCR.

This program fills a gap in the assistive technology field for students with learning difficulties and learning disabilities because it assists these students to access information in the text books assigned for their subject area or reference text books and to develop skills in studying texts and note taking. There is already assistive technology available for accessing information on the Internet or electronic encyclopaedias, and technology to assist students to organise ideas, plan for writing, composing, revising, editing and proofreading texts. Now they have help with study skills.

A demonstration version is available for downloading from the company web site at http://www.arkenstone.org