Kurzweil 3000 is alive and well at Paul Kane High School.  This text-to-speech software is a compelling software program that reads text out loud by tracking it as it reads it.  Any text, even the internet.  It’s pretty cool, and it’s giving struggling readers a chance that they’ve never had before.  It’s improving their reading and if you believe that the ability to read determines success in all other subject areas, you begin to realize how beneficial this program can be.  There are two of the best voices available on the program: Kate and Paul and they can read at any speed selected.  If you suspect that your child has trouble reading, consider Kurzweil.  Ask your English teacher more about it!  

Picture and brief excerpt courtesy of the following website: http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html  

Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.