ReadingPen Advanced Edition

Summary

The ReadingPen Advanced. For grade 9 and beyond. With its adult/college reading levels, thesaurus, and English to Spanish translation--is designed to specifically help students improve their comprehension, vocabulary, and language fluency. Scan text and hear it read. Hear word definitions, too. How it differs from the ReadingPen Basic: Designed for adults, rather than children.

Features

Works with any printed text.	The ReadingPen scans, defines, translates, and pronounces words from any printed material. This powerful tool fits in a pocket and has an intuitive, friendly interface.
Motivates and supports independent readers.	With the privacy and visual/auditory support provided by the ReadingPen, frustration and embarrassment disappear. Both struggling and fluent readers rapidly improve their skills in: Fluency. Vocabulary comprehension. Spelling. Pronunciation. Academic vocabulary. Grammatical structure. Understanding assessment instructions.
Provides in-depth instructional support.	Scans words or full lines of text instantly. Pronounces and displays words on built-in LCD screen. Displays and reads definitions and synonyms. Shows syllabication. Spells words, highlighting letters. Built-in tutorial. Includes built-in speaker and headphones.

Uses

The ReadingPen Advanced Edition is an assistive reading device designed specifically for grade 9 and higher.
Use the ReadingPen as your reading assistant, inside or outside the classroom. This versatile device may improve reading skills dramatically. Featuring the American Heritage Dictionary (English 4th Edition) and Roget's II Thesaurus, it provides a simple and easy way for people with reading difficulties, learning disabilities, or dyslexia to get immediate word support when they are reading. Includes English to Spanish translation Use the ReadingPen just like a yellow highlighter. Words can be highlighted on the screen as they are spoken for easy following. Test Mode prevents access to definitions during exams. Keeps a history of the last 80 words scanned for easy review by user, parent, or teacher. How does it read back to you? The unit recognizes one word at a time, does the OCR on it, does the speech processing on it, then speaks the word. When it does this after scanning a string of words, the playback will be staccato rather than smoothly narrative. This works great for selected words and passages, and helps people get past "bumps" in the "reading road." What it doesn't do is pave an entire highway.	Click image to enlarge
Reader Needs and Applications
The ReadingPen helps with the following needs and applications: Repeated reading. Content area readers. Struggling readers. ELL/ESL. Special needs students. Striving readers. Basic and advanced reading. Supplemental reading. Supplemental Educational Services.	Click image to enlarge

Specs

Interface		Windows versions for transfer function
Touchscreen (incl. virtual keyboard and icons)	No	n/a
Text Menu (as opposed to touchscreen)	Yes

Dictionaries		Speech
English dictionary preloaded	Yes	Speaks stored notes by paragraph	n/a
Thesaurus preloaded	Yes	Speaks word or line of text	Yes
Dictionary word history (80 words)	Yes	Speaks dictionary definition	Yes
Foreign language preloaded	Yes	Defines words	Yes

Included applications		Text handling
Scanned text storage (max # of pages)	n/a	Transfer to PC, PDA, Smartphone	No
Image capture	No	Scan directly into Windows applications	n/a
Address book	No	Scan non-English text	No
Onboard tutorial	Yes

Languages
English, English to Spanish

Accessories (included)		Optional accessories available for purchase
Batteries	Yes	Accepts earphones	Yes
Carry case	Yes	Accepts USB cable	No
Earphones	Yes
Training foot	Yes
USB cable	No

More Specifications

Size: ergonomic 6 inches x 1 x 1, lightweight 3 ounces.
Recognizes 6-22 point size text, bold, italic, underlined, inverted text.
Auto detects text for instant scanning. Just roll and scan.
Optical character recognition at 97% (based on standard font and size average).
Preference setting for higher numerical and inverted text recognition level.
Completely mobile. Uses 2 AAA batteries.

Comes With

The ReadingPen comes complete with:

Two "AAA" batteries.
"Getting Started" document on the back of the packaging.
Carry case.
Earphones.
Training foot.

Basic v Advanced

The ReadingPen Basic and ReadingPen Advanced are similar. The differences are as follows:

Basic	Advanced
Designed for children (over age 10).	Designed for adults (grade 9 and up).
Recognizes over 250,000 words.	Recognizes over 600,000 words.
Uses simple definitions, to avoid confusing the child.	Uses standard definitions, suitable for adults.
American Heritage Children's Dictionary and Children's Thesaurus.	American Heritage Dictionary (English 4th Edition.) and Roget's II Thesaurus.

FAQs

How accurate is it? Answer: It's 97% accurate
How hard is it to use? Answer: If you have good dexterity, it's easy to use. How much dexterity do you need? Here's a simple test. Grab a text highlighter, and see if you can draw a straight line of highlighting in a newspaper or magazine. If so, you are good to go! If not, you are going to find the pen difficult to use.
Does it really read to you? You can't just wave it across a page and hear James Earl Jones reading the text. After you complete scanning a line or word, the pen recognizes the characters and looks up the words in its internal dictionary. It then can pronounce them in sequence.

POs

Many of our customers need to purchase via Purchase Order and pay by check or wire transfer. We are happy to have such customers. Thus, we accommodate buyers who have to work within paper-based systems, though we don't use paper ourselves. As an Earth-friendly company, we don't do faxes. Here are a couple of ways you can send us your order:

Option One Type a short e-mail telling us: What you want. Where to send it. Whom to invoice (via e-mail). What the PO number is. We don't need your actual PO.	Option Two Proceed through checkout, as though you were using a credit card. For Bill To, enter the e-mail address of your Accounts Payable Department (or someone in it). When you get to the page that asks for your credit card number, stop. Copy and paste the order information from that page into an HTML-formatted e-mail. Enter your PO number above the order information. Send the e-mail to sales@mindconnection.com, with a subject line that makes sense to you.
If you already have a PO saved as a PDF, you can just e-mail that. We ship once AP acknowledges they have the invoice. We can insert a "Pay After" date if your system uses a paper PO as a process flag for payment.

Terms. Our terms are Net 20, with the discount provided in the regular price. If you need more time, the rates below apply. Don't consider mailing time in your calculations. If you process a check within 20 days after we send you the invoice, then no financing fee applies (your order will have long since arrived). Otherwise, please adjust the payment amount as follows:

Period	Fee	Remember, we give the discount upfront rather than inflating the price to penalize customers who pay promptly. We want to give you that discount. If you have special circumstances, let us know and we'll try to work something out.
After 20 days	2% of order total
After 30 days	4% of order total
After 40 days	10% of order total

Resources

Right mouse click here for a PDF of the manual
Getting Started Guide
Scanning Pen Easy Steps Guide.
Grant Guide (for educators).

ReadingPen and Learning Disabilities Analyses