C PEN review Jay and Lucille at Algonquin

Hi my name is Lucille, I work as an Assistive
Technologist at Algonquin College. Hi, I am Jay Timms. The guy behind the camera, another voice. I work as I work as an Assistive Technologist
at Algonquin College.

Today we are going to show you the C-Pen. This is a C-Pen, this is just a reader. Now to turn it on, now you see this red thing
here. You press on that and hold it for a few seconds.

Now it turns on the C-Pen. It takes a few minutes to load, but not too
long. Now this pen is great, it will read document
for you. Now when you open it up, you get to the main menu.

You got a couple of options, you can see it
says text reader and dictionary and then you can go to scan file or recorder and lastly you have settings. Now we will start off by showing you the text
reader. Alright we are going to pan out little bit
so we can see what this thing does, so you know we are not making this stuff up because
people have probably been working with other versions of reading pens and sometimes they
have not had great experiences. So lets see what this one does.

Are you ready to go. In order to use the text reader, you would
press the ok button, which is the little one in the middle. We are just going to scan, so you would hold
it like you would hold a pen and you push it down. Now you see there is a pretty light when you
push it down.

Pen is speaking what it scanned. It read the text for you. So lets print it. Kind of a funny voice.

It is true
its a British accent. Unfortunately on this pen, you cannot change
it unless youre in dictionary mode, where you can change it to American accent. So basically thats how it reads. It will read whatever you scan over.

Can you try some different types of backgrounds
and fonts and stuff? Sure
This is something that always comes up, like will it read what and how well. We have discovered somethings already. Its not a perfect tool, so dont come
to me if it doesnt work because it does work, it just does not work with everything. So I am going to just, this is a peach colour
page.

Will try that and see if it works. What were the expectations in your own home
country? So that worked really well. Not bad, lets try something tougher. Lets try this one.

It was like you knew that page was there,
you flick right to it. This is the black and it reads. Pen is speaking what it scanned. But it is reading letters and its gibberish.

That is wonderful and I really make sense
of that. It doesnt read on the black. Will try the red and see if it reads on that. Pen is speaking what it scanned.

But it is reading letters and its gibberish. So it seems have a problem with some contrast. So it definitely has a problem
Ok, any other size issues or anything? Lets try, here I will try the very small
font. Here let me zoom into your very small font,
so we can see.

Right here, where it says chapter 10 social
work, so lets try that. Groovy
Pen is speaking what it scanned. So that worked alright. Thats ok.

Um.Alright. I am not sure I am sold but, will see. It seems like it has to be very picky about
what colours and what not. Ok, lets talk about scanning speed because
like when I work with students, I find they go way slower then they need to on this particular
tool.

Lets have a look at that. Im guilty of that as well, alright so,
lets go back to a white page where we know its going to work here. Alright, if you go really slow. Pen is speaking what it scanned.

Hmmm
That made absolutely no sense, what so ever. I am not so sure I am happy with that. Lets try that same line at slightly faster
speed. Slightly faster.

Alright
Pen is speaking what it scanned. So not perfect, but was little better. It was absolutely better. So I find that a smoother scroll, it does
have to be perfect but actually quicker.

I dont know why because I dont know
the mechanics behind it, but it seems to get a better recognition results. You dont want to go too quick, I dont
think you see. Pen is speaking what it scanned. You might, if you can line it up fast enough.

You want to look at the front of the pen and
explain. So when you look at the pen, lets hold it
up. Um, I think if you look there is this little
thing there worth noting if you want to draw peoples attention. I shooting in front of the pen Lucille, the clear window.

Oh right here. Whats that for? Thats so you can actually see what youre
scrolling over. Oh my goodness, that would be useful. It is definitely.

So you hold your pen like that, so that you
can actually see what words youre going over. So, lets flip it over. There is something I discovered on the bottom
because I like to touch things and poke at them and try to break them. Do you want to touch that little spring loaded
thingy.

Umwoh...Let me pan a bit. I think I am in close enough. Give it a push in and out. So the light turns on when you push that,
whats going on there? Thats gives you, thats when youre
scanning the light comes on when youre pressing hard enough.

So it gives some lighting on the page and
thats the little screen loaded button that when you push it, it knows that you want to
scan that spot. So, ok I wanted to point that out as I had
students ask me in the past. Anything else you want to say about reading right now? No, thats about it for reading. Alright.

Alright, so now we are going to try the dictionary. So you just press ok and it takes you into
the dictionary settings. One of the five choices there in the menu,
I believe. You got English to English.

This pen you cannot change that so its
English to English. There are translator pens out there, but thats
not why we got this one. And then we have Collins dictionary and then
it says go scanning and press ok to set. If you want to change the settings, we go
press ok to set.

I will first show you how it scans and keeps
the word. I am going to scan the word the commission. That sounds like a big word. Commission
Ok, did we get it all? Yeah, we got the whole word.

Ok, I would like to point out, this is not
the first take on this particular one, but I dont like to do multiply takes because
I like to show how things really are, but there are some hand eye coordination issues
sometimes with scanning a word and getting all the letters
or not. So I would like to be fair about mentioning
that. So, ok you got it. So you got commission and then when you press
the ok button again.

Commission
It will read Commission [k mijen] n1. A duty or task
committed So it will read the definition to you as well. So that, it seems like that can be really
handy because lot of times the students that we work with its specific words that they
dont know which is stalling the reading process or there is gaps in the knowledge
that they read through and try to use contexts which doesnt always
work. Absolutely
So you like that feature? I do like it.

I like a feature that is link to that. That you showed me today that I did not know
about. That you mention about doing vocabulary. Yes
So, want to talk about right now or wait.

Sure, I can show you that. So what we are going to do is, we are going
to go back out. I think it is related to dictionary so well
look at it here. It is, alright, so we go press ok to set.

So you would just bring your curser over there
and press ok to set and you would go to history. Ok
So, in here all the words that you dont know or want the explanation, it has the words. So there is commission, so you press that
and again it will read it to you. Pen speaks the meaning of commission.

And this does something later with another
feature that youre going to show us, I. Am not going to mention that. No
As youre going to show that with the other feature. Ok, so that is basically it for the dictionary
section.

I like this next feature that youre going
to show us because it has actually been the most usefully as a AT in the workplace. We can talk about that after, but people might
get after we talk about it here. Ok, so I am going to plug this into the computer. So you put in your USB.

And that plugs into? I am just showing people. Into your laptop or your computer. Laptop. So what I am going to do now guys and gals.

I am going to turn over this way and we are
going to pan out and focus up on our smart board. Um, lets seeI dont know thats
going to be, hopefully you can see. Maybe you can choose a nice big font size for your curser pointer
or we can do that stretchy zoom thingy, if you want. Um, ok
Alright.

So. When you plug it into your computer, youre
going to get different options. One is keyboard, Udisk and charging. What I am going to show you right now is.

Ok, we did that automatically, we didnt
have to hit the menu button. No, as soon as you plug it in. That is kind of nice. For this we are going to use the keyboard
and basically what that is that is acting as a keyboard.

So you take your scanner, your reader and
you would scan. We are going to go to keyboard
I heard a dinging noise And alright it says character scanning and
you would start scanningthat. I am going to pan out and not pan in too much. Great, what did that just do for us? What that did was took the words off the page
and scanned it into the c-reader and put it up on to your laptop.

That was pretty quick
It was And not too complicated
No wasnt What on earth would you do with that? If you had study notes or if there was something
in your textbook or brochure that you really wanted to remember or have notes on you could
use it. And how we use it as AT that I am really happy
with, some of us are stuck with using clockwork and we have an inventory module. We decided lets take all the description
of the materials off of the boxes that we are using serial numbers and so on, so we dont have to input that
which can take a long time. What we have discovered with the C-pen is
we can use that to scan the boxes, so just saves us some time to input data into our
system, which can be used in other ways.

Of course for students for studying. So this one maybe learning strategist want
to have a look at it and say hmmm how I can use this as digital highlighter, I think. There is something related to that ahh with
the history that you showed me with the dictionary. We will watch that on the computer screen
if you want, I presuming youre going to show how to access it that way.

Yeah, I will come back
We will leave that over here. She is working on the pen, we are going to
watch the monitor because we are going to see what it does on the computer. Ok, so right now. I am going to change it from keyboard to Udisk.

Ok
And just going to take word out here because we really dont need this right now. And no and actually we are on the browser
page for connections, the Algonquin College store where you can buy the C-Pen. You will go to your
We will pass that You see right here
Hang on Theres your pen
Lets have a look and see if I can pan in. You are going to see your different devices
and I see there are all different kinds of devices there.

Hopefully the people who are watching can
see the C-Pen and is there specific area that you go on the pen to see what youre looking
at next. You click on that and you go to e-history. E-history. Click on that.

Aha. You go to word. Ok. And there is all the words
Can you maximize that? I can.

Lets do that. Every word that you have ever scanned in a
dictionary is there. Whats there with it? Its also the definitions. What a great way to do a vocabulary list.

Thats really cool that you showed me that
because I had no idea that was there. You can actually get rid of what you dont
want by using your computers. You can file and save it to your laptop, so
you can have a whole vocabulary list all saved. Awesome, so is there anything else you want
to say about the C-Pen full version the reading pen? No thats about it, thats basically,
I think thats it.

OK, were going to look at the other version
of the pen! Exam Pen:
Okay, I think were ready to go to talk about the other two versions of this pen that
were working with? So the white one here, this is your exam,
this is your reader pen and this will read books and do what I just showed you with the
dictionary. So a lot more functions
A lot more functions Like it didnt talk about it but we dont
even recommend it but there is a digital record feature I just dont know if it is the best
tool for that to be honest. Yeah
And so our thoughts on that but Im gonna zoom in here on this very special orange only
coloured pen. So why dont you tell me about that? This is the exam reader and this functions
the same way you just press that red button, hold it and turn it on.

And this can be used for students who have
to take tests or exams and need a reader. And the nice function and the nice thing about
his is it only has two settings. Text reader and settings. So all it will do is read the text.

So we cant keep a copy of our test questions
to share with our friends because we wrote early, for instance. If were walking through the hallway we
cant even load data on the three so if were moving this device from one space
to the next its fairly secure. Cant look up words. Pretty bright, you know its definitely
different, the other one were using is white only so it just helps us know what version
of the pen someone has Were thinking about a way of trying to
get this into the classrooms so if someone has some earbuds and they want to use a reading
tool they can just bring that to class.

And were gonna talk a little bit about
reading tools and, and the test room I think. Well just leave a shot on both of the pens
And weve noticed something so when we train for reading tools now with most students okay
and this is testing specific were showing them a reading tool software on your laptop. We usually use Natural Reader most of the
time but also Read & Write and then we show the C-Pen the Reading Pen because it is quick
to show and some people and this is I think we are finding and I am going to ask Lucille
about her observations, she has more time as a proctor
/test room invigilator than I do but I do have the fun at Final Assessments of watching
so I have my comments on what Im seeing but what are you seeing as far as people using
reading tools in the test room. I find a lot of times they dont use them.

Theyre available and but they dont really
use it Or only partly right? Only partly, just for one or two questions
or maybe an essay question So sometimes were doing a lot of work to
accommodate which is what were suppose do and Im, Im great with that
When someone doesnt need that full functionality so we have some students who are interested
in this. I have one who only wants to use this
I havent had a lot of people using it yet because weve only had it for about year,
but we do have ten in our test room, we have a few with our apprenticeship people and some
on other campuses for testing so they could use this with a paper version of the document and my thoughts
are if we can we can get them into the classroom then the student has their teacher available
to them to answer questions and they feel like the rest of the group if they are okay
with having this pen
But when we look at these yeah its an orange pen but I feel like its fairly discrete
especially looking at the other pen which you might use for other reasons. It looks like some kind of really fancy branded
product and I dont want to say the name but because of the colouring
and so on Pretty sleek, pretty small
If you want to pick one up in your hand again well just look at that compared to your
hand size. Like it is very hand hold able where as some
of the other pens, or one of the other pens I have seen is probably four times that large
and it doesnt work nearly as well .

Now what would we recommend these C-Pens for? What do you think? For C-Pen I think use it for study guides
and what not. I would definitely not recommend it to read
like a whole book you wouldnt want to scan a whole book. I had you just to demonstrate that process
try that before we recorded to see how you felt about the process and how many lines
did you get in before you gave up? I got about four lines in and I said this
would take forever just to do one page. So and here at Algonquin were e-book so
its its really not as much of an issue.

You could do a couple of pages and its
doable but doing large textbooks would be a pain in the butt, honestly but someone might
like to do that, it could be the only way. I really like the idea of these on a placement. There is a lot of times when you cant get
digital information because the placement doesnt know how to provide that. Sometimes theres even security issues and
so we could look at if we really needed, say having a reading pen in
the environment so we know nobody could take data off the work site in those placements
and co-ops and they would still have access to a reading tool.

Its also discrete, works on the fly
And the programs of study I have seen it the most in have been child youth work, social
work and nursing but its early days for us so we are slowly getting this out as an
accommodation. I talked to Christine our other AT I think
she has recommended a couple. I recommended about 3 so I dont know Lucille
if youve recommended any. I have recommended any yet
So about six in one year, its not the thing we recommend the most because we want people
to try it We have a few people who have them signed
out so I think we have about 5 of them signed out as well.

Not everyone has the funding. So theres our look at C-Pen
Love to hear some feedback so were gonna go live and just get peoples feedback and
well see how that goes because I havent used the tool right now for the rest of the
meeting.