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Each spring the Learning Center hosts a luncheon to honor its students that are graduating that year. Spring 2007, the catered luncheon was held in the Boardroom of Hopkins Dining Hall. Each of the three students that were graduating was allowed to invite their favorite professor as their special guest. All of the tutors and current students from the Learning Center were also invited. Those honored this year were Katherine Elizardi, Laura Jarrett and Crystal Meyer. Each of the graduates was given flowers and a gift from the Learning Center. Please see photos in our picture section.

In preparation for the new fall semester of college beginning on August 20th, the tutors for the Learning Center will be getting together for a planning session. The tutors will be served lunch first and then get down to business on an outline for another successful year of tutoring at the Learning Center. Linda Kern, Information Services Librarian, will be  the guest speaker. She will be discussing the services the Trustee Library offers to the students and ways the tutors can utilize those services to help their students.

Assistive Technology Available to Students through Generous Donation to Learning Center

The Kurzweil 3000 is a PC-based reading system developed specifically for ease of use by students and teachers.  In particular, it is an ideal compensatory aid for individuals with reading difficulties.

The Kurzweil 3000

• Scans and reads pages from any book or document, and reads World Wide Web Pages and imported electronic documents.

• Speaks and highlights text simultaneously, providing auditory and visual representation.

• Offers clear, natural-sounding synthetic speech in a choice of reading voice personalities.

• Offers a 175,000 word dictionary with synonyms.

• Highlights selected text and extracts the highlights into a new document.

• Enables users to insert typed or spoken notes anywhere within a document.

• Provides text-editing options for teachers before students read.

• Reads back student-generated writing to assist in proofreading.

What is Mastery?
When it is time to review information from reading, it is important that students apply strategies which require them to practice expressing that information in their own words. Even if they have understood the text and taken notes from it, students will not necessarily commit the material to long-term memory.  In order to perform well on tests, participate in class discussions, and remember information for future classes, students must be able to prove that they know the information.

The strategies in Kurzweil 3000's Study Guide Chapter 4 for active reading will improve long-term retention, but there are several additional strategies that will ensure mastery of material.  Each of these emphasize writing or talking about the information in complete sentences, in the student's own words.

Using Kurzweil 3000 to Proofread
It is useful to proofread written work twice -- once for content and clarity of ideas, and a second time for mechanics.  The Kurzweil 3000 can help at both proofreading stages for all types of written work, including short compositions, summaries, question/answer assignments, book reports, or research reports.