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For the past 20 years, Co:Writer has been offering support to students who struggle with reading and, particularly, writing. It is an incredibly clever word prediction program, capable of suggesting correctly spelled and grammatically appropriate words in place of words misspelled by students. This is of great value to students who struggle to even type the first two or three letters correctly, or omit and reverse letters. Many other word prediction programs are not able to accurately predict words in such cases. It is also of value to students with physical disabilities which make writing a painfully slow process – even when using a computer.

At Spectronics, we often refer to Co:Writer as the “Rolls Royce” of word prediction programs. The latest release of Co:Writer 6 lifts the bar even higher again. And it really does live up to its claim that it only takes 30 minutes to learn how to use the program. The “Train-in-30 Tutorial” backs this one up. We attended a two-hour hands-on Co:Writer training at the ATIA Conference in January this year and, being familiar with earlier versions of Co:Writer, we had mastered ALL features (both beginners and advanced) in an hour. It was really difficult for the trainer to add much more after that point.

So what’s new in Co:Writer 6?

Check out this informative video demonstrating the many features of Co:Writer 6.

Highlights include:

• Works immediately on starting the program – no need to log in.
• No need to open programs in any set order – Co:Writer will automatically assist with text entry into all open documents, web pages, Facebook, Twitter, email programs, Skype and more – automatically moving with the students as they move between programs.
• One single window onscreen – no other onscreen clutter to distract students from their writing.
• Speech Anywhere! Highlight text onscreen and Co:Writer 6 will read it back to you. It works in any application including: MS Word, Google Docs, Open Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer and Firefox using the natural sounding Acapela 6 speech engine. If you have the Australian voices of “Karen” and “Lee” installed on your computer, it will also be able to use these.
• Network ready! Now you can save your student’s Co:Writer files anywhere on your network, WebDisk or on a USB drive for instant access anywhere.
• “Always Active Prediction” meaning that if a student clicks anywhere in a document, Co:Writer will immediately start offering suggestions for grammatically appropriate words and correctly spelled words – much more cleverly than a standard spell checker can do.

More powerful than taking our word for it, why not check out the before and after samples of students’ writing improvements when using Co:Writer 6. Way more powerful. And think about joining one of our free online training sessions demonstrating many of Co:Writer 6’s new features. To view timing of the sessions, just visit Spectronics’ Online Training page.