SmartWrite is a word processor for younger students or those with special needs.
An office type word processor can be difficult for younger students to grasp.
SmartWrite has a simple to use interface with special writing aids for younger
students.
SmartWrite includes a homophone dictionary of similar sounding words.
Includes assessment features and logins for teachers and students.
Write and assign templates of work for classes of students.
SmartWrites special writing tools are designed to help the younger student write. With these tools they can produce a higher quality document. These special writing tools help them navigate and review their document.
Homophone Checker
SmartWrites homophone checker detects homophones as they type. If a homophone is
detected the built in homophone dictionary is checked and the words meaning is
shown along with the similar sounding words.
A whole document can be checked for homophones. Individual words can be checked
for homophones.
Speech
Review your document by using the text to speech engine that reads out aloud.
As words are spoken they are highlighted. With the accuracy of the speech
engine, errors can be spotted quickly. Quite simply, reading out words that are
miss-spelled allows them to be spotted in an audible way that something is wrong
with what they have written. You can set the speech option to read out a letter,
word or sentence as there typed. Research shows using text to speech improves
the students response to words that are not spelt correctly.
Special needs and dyslexia
SmartWrites visual interface is designed for learners with special needs. Large
clear buttons with labels help set out what the button is for. Moving the mouse
pointer over the button will produce an audible description of the buttons
purpose. SmartWrite enables buttons back and text colours to be changed to
higher contrast ones. You can save these changes so students use the same colour
scheme every time they use SmartWrite.
Buttons can be changed to three different sizes small, medium and large.
Document colours can be changed to high contrast or custom colour schemes. Large
colour palettes have been designed for ease of use.
Text can be magnified.
Templates
SmartWrite lets you make templates with locked text that you can assign to
students own work areas on a student by student basis.
Student Centre
The Student Centre Manager provides a simple interface to the students work. Through the Student Centre they may quickly and easily navigate and see their documents and assigned templates.
Analyse what they have written..
SmartWrites built in document analyser goes through their
document and creates a report with...
Document statistics
Shows documents statistics for number of words, characters,
paragraphs and sentence length. Breaks down word usage into a list of character
length
Document History
SmartWrite records the date started and time spent on each
writing session.
Pasted text
Inevitability within any body of work it’s highly likely that
some text maybe pasted in from an external source. SmartWrite monitors and saves
text pasted in from an external source.
Spelling
As students write inevitably some words will be misspelled.
Simply correcting them with SmartWrites built in spellchecker, will not reveal
underlying problems with spelling. SmartWrite records each misspelt word and the
context it was written in. This is useful for spotting any recurring spelling
problems.
Assessment
SmartWrites assessment features are great for keeping track of your students
work. Assessment features are included with the standard and advanced versions
only of SmartWrite. These features give you an insight into individual students
writing patterns, trends can be spotted more easily and corrective action
applied to a students’ needs.
A variety of assessment options are included with SmartWrite. The Student Manager lets you monitor the progress of your students....
History Shows details of when the current document has been edited and
time spent writing.
Statistics A table of statistics for the selected document.
Words The number of words contained in the document.
Frequently Used Words The number of frequently used words in the
document. This is based on a list of 5000 frequently used words in SmartWrite
memory. The number of words flagged as frequently used words depends on the
number set in the words window. By default a limit of 300 words is used by
SmartWrite to arrive at this figure. The default limit maybe changed from 1 to
5000
Characters The total number of characters in the document.
Sentences The number of sentences in the document.
Average Sentence Length The average number of words in a sentence.
Words with letters The number of letters in a word.
Graph
SmartWrite produces a graph based on key document statistics.
Spelling
Each time the spell checker is used, a record of the misspelt word is recorded
along with the replacement word. The context in which the word was used is also
shown.
Paste
Text pasted into the document from an external source is recorded. Each entry
provides the date and time the paste took place and the logged in user.
Homophones
Each time the homophone checker is used, a record of the homophone is recorded. The context in which the homophone was used is shown in the sentence column.
Change student’s preferences
There will be times when individual students require SmartWrite to be setup to their specific needs.
With the preferences option you may change the selected students SmartWrite preferences.
Compare
The compare option compares a range of students documents so you may assess the progress they are making.
Network capability
SmartWrites network features enable you to store documents centrally on a
network drive.
Each student has a unique login name and password that accesses their own dedicated network folder.
This folder stores all their work. Keeping students documents in place enables easier backup of their documents.
A login for the student enables you to create program preferences for each student.
You can set button size and colour schemes for individual students.
