Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

Texthelp Blog - Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

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What is one way your organization can be more proactive in creating a workplace where curiosity about differences is welcomed and encouraged, and where inclusion is the mutual responsibility of everyone?

13 consciously inclusive behaviors to foster in the workplace

The festive season is here, and we know teachers are always looking for fun activities to lead into the winter holidays. This year, why not get your favorite EdTech tools involved? 

EdTech the Halls!

Get ideas for incorporating EdTech into your festive activities with this blog 

The festive season is here, and we know teachers are always looking for fun activities to lead into the winter holidays. This year, why not get your favorite EdTech tools involved? Here are 5 ways to bring the festive spirit to your classroom with Texthelp. 

KPMG

West Midlands Police

HSBC

Skipton Building Society

University of Warwick

Ruh Global Impact

Network Rail

AutoTrader

Inclusion North

Mills & Reeve

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust

National Highways

Shell

Last Thursday, 2nd December, organisations across the globe celebrated their achievements at Business Disability Forum’s (BDF) Disability Smart Awards. Discover who won, and explore their successful initiatives.

Disability Smart Awards 2021: A huge congratulations!

WeAreTeachers is an online media brand for educators committed to one of the toughest, most rewarding jobs out there. They have a vibrant community and publish daily articles, videos, and giveaways on their website and social media channels. We’re partnering up with them for their 2021 Mega Holiday Giveaway, where US-based teachers can win gift cards, books, tech, and toys throughout December.

Entering is really simple, just head over to our giveaway page and enter your details to win. The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. Central Time on January 3, 2022 and the winners will be announced on January 7, 2022. 

One winning individual will receive a one-year subscription for their school (up to 1,500 students) to Read&Write, EquatIO, and OrbitNote (a $5,000 value). Texthelp can provide live training and demos for the winning school, as well as implementation and tech support throughout the one-year subscription.

The promotion is open only to legal residents of the United States who at the time of entry are a) eighteen (18) years of age or older and b) currently employed full- or part-time as an educator by an accredited public or private K-12 school in the United States. 

Read&Write, EquatIO and OrbitNote can be used together to cover all subjects, supporting students with reading, writing, math, and science. They help to create an accessible digital experience for all students. If you aren’t familiar with our tools yet, you can read a bit more about them below, or follow the links to their dedicated homepages.

We’ve teamed up with our friends at WeAreTeachers to give away a one year subscription to three of our most versatile classroom tools - Read&Write, EquatIO and OrbitNote.

Win a one year subscription to Read&Write, EquatIO and OrbitNote for your entire school

As the SNP pledge to provide a computer device for every school child, what can Local Authorities and Schools learn from the 72,000+ devices already distributed across Scotland.

Learning from the 72,000+ devices already in Scottish Schools

In March 2021, the Scottish Government pledged to provide a computer device for every school child. The plans mean that every pupil from P1 to S6 will be provided with an age appropriate laptop, for use in school and at home.

PDFs are especially effective as digital worksheets and documents in the classroom when you pair them with a tool like Texthelp’s OrbitNote. OrbitNote provides built-in tools for reading, understanding, interacting and collaborating on a PDF - allowing you and your students to take your documents to the next level. However, it’s vital to ensure that your PDFs are readable in order for you and your students to get the most out of them. 

The first step toward using PDFs as instructional content is ensuring that they are readable and are not image only PDFs. This is what allows screen readers and other programs like Texthelp’s Read&Write software to recognize and interact with the text, for things like read aloud and highlighting. Many PDFs used in classroom or educational settings start out as textbooks or physical papers. In an effort to digitize those materials, teachers and students may use scanners to convert those paper documents to PDF format.

But that may not be enough to make a PDF readable or accessible. Often, if you scan a piece of paper, it creates what’s called an image-based or image PDF. Text to speech software like OrbitNote will see the PDF as one big image, rather than distinct letters, words and sentences that it can read or interact with. And for students who rely on text to speech, dictionaries, highlighters and other such tools to support them and allow them to complete their assignments, they are left unable to read and study the material.

The easy solution then is to make sure your PDFs have undergone Optical Character Recognition, or OCR. This process will take the image of your scanned document and break it down into recognizable paragraphs, sentences, words and letters that can be read by a tool like OrbitNote. Many modern scanners have a built-in OCR function that can do this when the initial scan is taken. If you are a user of Read&Write, this can also be done using the Scan feature on the Read&Write for Windows or Mac toolbar. But Texthelp is also excited to announce an upcoming feature in OrbitNote that will make this process even easier and seamless.

Soon we'll be adding a built-in scanning feature to make your image PDFs readable. When you open a PDF, OrbitNote will automatically check if the PDF is readable, and will prompt you to scan with one click if it is not. Then once your PDF has undergone OrbitNote’s OCR process in the background, you’ll be presented with a readable or accessible version of the same PDF and will be ready to go with using the tools like text to speech, highlighters, annotation tools and more.

We are excited to be rolling out this feature in the next few months, so watch this space for more details coming soon!

Want to know more about OrbitNote? Visit our dedicated product page. From there, you'll also be able to arrange a free trial.

PDFs have reigned as a standard document format among schools, businesses, and really anyone sharing information in the digital world. There are many reasons they have remained popular, so many in fact that we probably take for granted why they are so effective. PDFs are easy to create, but they aren't always readable or accessible. What does this mean?

Readable PDFs: What you need to know

PDFs have reigned as a standard document format among schools, businesses, and really anyone sharing information in the digital world. There are many reasons they have remained popular, so many in fact that we probably take for granted why they are so effective. 

PDFs are a perfect snapshot of a paper document, and can be universally opened across devices and applications with a consistent experience. Other documents like Word docs or Google docs may not always look the same when opened on different devices. PDFs are also easy to share, can be secured and locked down to prevent changes to the content, and are easy to create without advanced software or technical knowledge.