Kurzweil 3000-Firefly for iPad Released

Today the Kurzweil 3000 firefly app was released for the iPad. Click here to download the free app. The app, firefly, is the iPad version of Kurzweil's cloud-based reader and file storage product. If you have a firefly account all of your saved documents will be available to read on the iPad as well as any Mac or PC. Watch the video above to see firefly in action. Click here to learn more about firefly.

Firefly has many useful reading features, but will not replace the full desktop version of Kurzweil. Similar to the desktop version of Kurzweil, firefly highlights words as they are read, which makes following along easier. Firefly includes high quality text-to-speech voices. Users can adjust the text-to-speech rate and highlighting options with ease. The interface is extremely clean and simple to learn. The app can read documents with images and rich text formatting. Firefly is a simple and easy way for teachers to distribute accessible instructional materials to their students with dyslexia or physical disabilities. While firefly is ideal for reading documents, it does not offer any annotation features such as highlighting, text entry, note taking or speech notes. Also, documents cannot be added to the firefly app directly from the iPad using the "open in" feature. It would be very cool if firefly offered the ability to scan documents using the iPad's camera and then read the document using optical character recognition (OCR).

The firefly iPad app is a must have for current firefly web users. If you do not have a web account you can still try out sample documents from within the app. For people who do not want to be tied to a computer all of the time the iPad app is also very useful. If you are not a current Kurzweil 3000 user but do not have firefly the new app may be a compelling reason to get a firefly web license. Click read more below to view screen shots of firefly.

Kurzweil Bubble Notes

Bubble notes is a great feature in Kurzweil 3000. Bubble notes allows teachers to easily assess students. Bubble notes also helps students easily complete tests and quizzes. To insert a bubble note go to tools, then notes, and then bubble notes. When a student reads up to a bubble note it will automatically open and be read aloud. Bubble notes can have multiple choice, true or false, matching and open ended questions Once a student completes the assessment the teacher can extract the student's answers to easily grade the student's answer. Bubble notes can make tests and quizzes easier for students and teachers. Watch the video above for more information. For more Kurzweil tips and tricks click here, here and here.

Kurzweil 3000 Online Tips

The above video is a short example of how to use online downloading in Kurzweil 3000 version 12. Online downloading allows users to download content from many sources directly into Kurzweil. Kurzweil allows users to download books Project Gutenberg, Bookshare and many more. To use online book downloading go to the online menu and then select search for books. Once you search for and download the book go to file and then open to start reading the book. This method of downloading books directly into Kurzweil allows you to quickly access books from many sources. To watch this video with YourTube click here. To learn more about YourTube click here.

Edit Underlying Text in Kurzweil 3000

This video shows how to edit the underlying text of a scanned document in Kurzweil 3000. If a word is being read incorrectly you can correct the mistake using the edit underlying text feature. Additionally this video explains how to use zone editor to improve your scanned document. With zone editor you can change the order that the document is read and what text is read.

Using Image Selector in Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil 3000 is a software application that can interpret scanned documents and read them back to you. Scanners are not perfect and sometimes a scan comes out poorly, luckily, Kurzweil 3000 has tools to improve your scans. One of the best tools to improve your scan is image selector. With image selector you can delete a part of your document that came out poorly. For example, if scanned document has a black mark down the side you can use image selector to delete the blemish. To activate image selector go to the edit menu and then click on image selector. Next you will have to click draw a box around the blemish you wish to remove. Then under the scan menu go to image fill and then select white. Now your black mark is removed from the page.

There is another useful way to you image selector. If you are using the fill in the blacks feature and it mistakenly finds to many blanks. Now your document has text boxes all over. To delete all of the unwanted text boxes use image selector. With image selector draw a box around all the unwanted text boxes then go to tools then notes and then delete this process will delete all text boxes in the selected area.

For more tips on improving your scanned documents click here. 

Free Kurzweil Webinars

The maker of Kurzweil is holding a set of free webinars this summer. The webinars will inform users about features Kurzweil version 12. Learning about features of Kurzweil can be very helpful to users who don't know about all of the things Kurzweil can do. The webinars will take place between June 21st and August 30th. To sign up for the webinars look after the break for dates and times.

Kurzweil 3000 Tips and Tricks (Worksheets)

Watch this quick video about tips and trick for Kurzweil 3000. This video focuses on tools for completing worksheets in Kurzweil. Keep your eyes open for more tips and tricks regarding Kurzweil and other assistive technology.

Kurzweil 3000 Overview

Watch this 52 minute video to learn all about Kurzweil 3000, or read the summary below:

Kurzweil 3000 is writing and reading software that has many great features. Kurzweil is available for both Mac and PC, but the PC version has more features then the Mac version.  Kurzweil has optical character recognition. (OCR) What this means is that a document that is scanned can be read back to you.  As the words are read aloud, they are highlighted.You can turn off the sound if you just need help with tracking and not decoding.  There is an option to speed up or slow down the voice, and the pace of highlighting according to your preference. Kurzweil comes with a few computerized voices, but more can be added.


Once the document is scanned it can also be annotated with text boxes, highlights and circles. This allows you to do anything you could do with hard copy print material. Kurzweil is great for completing worksheets, tests and quizzes. If a document contains many blank spaces Kurzweil has a feature to add a text box on each blank. This feature can be found under tools and then fill in the blanks.

 Kurzweil is also great for writing. It has spell check, word prediction and web layouts. One of the best parts of writing with Kurzweil is that the text is read back to you, which is a great editing tool. Kurzweil has a built in dictionary for quick reference. Another handy feature is "read the web" this feature allows a web page to be read aloud with out copying and pasting the text in to Kurzweil. With read the web a toolbar appears with a read button a the bottom of your browser. To read the web simply select the desired text and press the read button. Kurzweil is a great tool for reading and writing. To learn more about Kurzweil, click here visit the Kurzweil webpage. For a video about Kurzweil's virtual print click here. Stay tuned for more Kurzweil tips, tricks and videos.

Using the Kurzweil Virtual Printer

Kurzweil Virtual Printer is a great tool to help read unsupported documents in Kurzweil. It works with any program that you can print from. Hope this tip helps.

Tip: Print Text Boxes in Kurzweil 3000 version 12

Kurzweil 3000 is a great tool to get print material in an accessible format. Kurzweil has OCR functionality that allows printed papers to be scanned and read aloud. With the scanned documents there are features to insert text boxes, highlight and circle text. The text box feature is great for completing worksheets. Unfortunately, printing the text boxes in version 12 is very difficult because many text boxes are cut off in the printed document. Fortunately there is a simple fix that will allow you to print text boxes with ease. The fix only takes minutes to download. By clicking on this link you will be able to download the patch. This Link. When downloading the patch make sure Kurzweil is closed. I hope this helps you to print text boxes in Kurzweil 3000 version 12.