Products
Read&Write 5 GOLD for Mac
5/31/2012 By: Carol S. Holzberg
www.texthelp.com Retail Price: $645 single DVD or USB flash drive (Read&Write GOLD MOBILE); also available in unlimited site licenses, concurrent site licenses, and volume license
discounts.
Texthelp Systems’ Read&Write 5 GOLD for Mac (R&W
Gold 5) provides robust text-to-speech software designed
to assist children and adults who struggle with reading and
writing. More than just a text-to-speech reader, the floating
toolbar in R&W Gold 5 works well with other popular Mac
applications.
Quality and Effectiveness: When used together with the program’s
Scan tool, the application can easily read aloud a scanned worksheet,
teacher’s notes, or whatever is placed on the scanner bed. The R&W
Gold Screenshot Reader can read Flash by using its OCR magic to
convert a selection into readable text.
One important new tool is the Picture Dictionary, offering visual
references to support comprehension and independent learning.
R&W Gold’s Verb Checker, also new to version 5, supports literacy
building, while helping users determine if they are using the correct
tense of a chosen verb.
Ease of Use: R&W Gold 5 for Mac is a program with many features
and optional settings. When using the floating toolbar, helpful textbased
tooltips pop up. Given the program’s many built-in applets and
settings, it will take time to learn how best to use all those features or
personalize the settings for
use with a particular student.
Fortunately, Texthelp
provides Video Tours for
many program features.
Creative Use of
Technology: R&W Gold
gives you two ways to use the
program. In Toolbar View
you can continue working
in your favorite application
and call R&W Gold into play from the floating toolbar as needed.
Application View, on the other hand, automatically displays text
copied from a Web browser so that it can be read aloud, checked for
spelling errors, and more.
Suitability for Use in a School Environment: R&W Gold 5 for
Mac is highly suitable for use both in and out of the classroom. Its
versatile toolkit promotes student-centered, self-paced learning
independence, because it reads aloud virtually any text that displays
on screen.
TOP FEATURES
• Floating Toolbar provides access to the
application toolkit while users work in
their everyday applications.
• Built-in tools read aloud text that is
typically inaccessible (e.g., Flash).
• Flexible licensing options to
accommodate a variety of installation
needs.