Test Drive--Readingpen Personal Reading Assistant

The Reading Pen Group, 2 Chandler Street, Lexington, MA 02420 (877)-344-4040 www.readingpen.com $139 each; 10 pack available for $990.

The Readingpen K–12 edition fits right into the model of “Universal Design for Learning,” or UDL, an educational framework in which assistive technologies designed to help students with special needs also benefit the general student population, making learning more accessible across the board.

The Readingpen combines optical character recognition and text-to-speech capabilities with a built-in English-language dictionary, an English/Spanish translation tool, and a thesaurus—all in a handy tool that weighs in at just three ounces. Use the pen’s tip to scan a word and you can hear the word read aloud through the built-in speaker or the included headphones; see the word in a larger font and divided into syllables; or hear and see the word spelled.

The Readingpen, powered by two AAA batteries, can also read whole lines of scanned text and save selected words for later review. These features make the Readingpen a natural fit for special education and English language learners (ELL). My colleague Sandra Ricks, an English Language Learning teacher who works with native Spanish speakers from Mexico and Central America, found the Readingpen to be an empowering tool for her students who often struggle with the English vocabulary they encounter in textbooks. “In subjects like social studies, for example, my kids run into so many new terms they don’t understand that they can get frustrated,” she says. “The Readingpen really helps with comprehension, and they can use the tool to learn independently. My kids were amazed by it,” she adds, “and many of them said they really wished they had one at home.”

I found the Readingpen very easy to master and was generally impressed with its features and options. Though the text-to-speech engine didn’t exactly sound “natural,” its output is certainly clear and its pronunciations accurate. Although it’s practically a must-have for special education and ELL classes, it’s a powerful little tool that could be put to use in just about any learning scenario. School librarians might want to purchase a few to circulate in-house or to make available for students to check out and use at home.