Read&Write is a literacy support tool that helps individuals of all abilities read, write, and express themselves with confidence. For education and the workplace, its assistive features include text-to-speech, word prediction, and research tools for users with diverse learning needs.
Grammarly is good at the grammar and spelling stuff but the deeper analysis is lacking.
Autocrit and Grammarly make a solid pairing as you can incorporate grammarlies tools with Autocrit for a full package. The same can be done with pro writing aid.
I found Dragon better at dictation and more responsive to commands. I was more familiar with Dragon, so I'm hopeful dictation in Read&Write will improve. Read&Write selected as it was already approved by the school and was more affordable.
I know many other teachers have complained that the speech-to-text isn't always effective in the regular classroom. When I have seen it used in testing, there haven't been any issues.
It is similar but Read Naturally was costly.. I do know your prices are increasing significantly and am extremely nervous about this since the increase wasn't budgeted for.
We use the screenshot reader often in our classes. Things like drama scripts, music sheets or other pdf's can be read online through the screenshot reader.
We are still learning how to use equatio. I am not a mathematician and therefore I am finding understanding it a bit more difficult. Once I understand how to use it I will be able to cascade it down. My hope is that it will be as useful as Read & Write.
Cowriter, Snap and Read, Clicker, Kurzweil None of those popped up. I know of the merger but I would say some of the big things that made me choose CoWriter or Snap and Read over Read&Write for students still haven’t moved over and I’m hoping that will happen with time. Things …
Read&Write has a lot more inclusive features then grammarly especially in terms of the picture dictionary and reading rulers and screen masking and the text to speech.
Early on our district was using Kurweil 3000 but that was restrictive to the computer that it was placed on. We also used co-writer (Don Johnson) for writing supports. By having both features available in one convenient toolbar along with other amazing features that follow the …
We still utilize Microsoft Immersive Reader as our Tier2 / UDL support tool. However, the word prediction is barely functional and there are confusing limitations to when certain tools are available (the picture dictionary is available in Word Online but not in Edge).
Autocrit is great for editing longer form text. It's less designed for short email and Slack threads. If you are writing a short story or novel it's fantastic. It can also be well used for longer form pieces such as articles and interviews. I would not personally use it to write my content in its first draft. It has a word editor but it's not as fully featured as your typical writing programs.
Read&Write is especially well-suited to supporting students with reading accommodations during independent work, content-area instruction, and written-response tasks. In my 5th-grade classroom, one of the most effective scenarios is during science and social studies lessons, where students are expected to read complex informational texts independently. There can also be occasional challenges when websites, PDFs, or testing platforms are not fully compatible with all Read&Write features.
I would like to use the practice reading aloud tool more, but the kids that I work with have a hard time understanding the concept. I think that, while there are a lot of tools available, sometimes they are hard for younger students to understand.
The hover to read function is nice as well, but my students struggle with the fact that if you move the mouse once it starts reading it will start all over in a new area. It's not as smooth as I would like it to be.
I'm just really impressed with the software and the access it gives to learners who are used to coming up against barriers in education. It's a quick-fix for a learner - something they can access usefully and productively with very little training. I also love that learners can access Read&Write on their devices at home - that really is a game changer.
I am giving this an 9. Not a perfect score because working on PDFs is better but not yet as easy as I need for it to be. Working with many students who have executive function challenges, I need a smooth simplistic access method. We are not quite there yet for writing on PDFs. Overall the toolbar on Read&Write is super easy to access and I love that the suite includes several tools on the toolbar providing a solution to many accessibility challenges.
The support team at Texthelp is excellent. They're all super helpful and open to feedback and new ideas. Still, more importantly, they are ultimately fully committed to aligning with us and ensuring they help us provide the best education possible. Furthermore, they're open to new features and always communicate this incredibly well.
It took a solid 2 weeks for R&W to work on our students chromebooks even after reaching out to tech support. The toolbar was greyed out and not accessible to students. Took a long time before tech support helped us solve this problem.
Grammarly is good at the grammar and spelling stuff but the deeper analysis is lacking. Autocrit and Grammarly make a solid pairing as you can incorporate grammarlies tools with Autocrit for a full package. The same can be done with pro writing aid.
We are still learning how to use Equatio. I am not a mathematician and therefore I am finding understanding it a bit more difficult. Once I understand how to use it I will be able to cascade it down. My hope is that it will be as useful as Read & Write
The impact that it has had on the staff supporting students is huge as they have a tool that they can direct students to who are struggling to use the tool and get support to use it in their own individual way. There are currently no numbers for this as we have only started using Read&Write this year for both Exams and SEN support and it will take 2 years for the use to have a clear and measurable impact.
