Raising the bar: literacy tool saves pounds for public sector

A clever tool bar designed to help students with literacy difficulties to interact with text on screen is helping schools, universities and colleges to save money across the UK and internationally.

MyStudyBar is the latest initiative from the Jisc Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East and consists of a collection of freeware and open source software which is specially selected to help students with literacy difficulties (planning, reading, writing, vision and voice). Although MyStudyBar is designed to support learners with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, the toolbar can offer potential benefits to all learners.

Thousands of downloads from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia equal savings of more than half a million pounds as the commercially equivalent price of the applications on a single MyStudyBar download is around £120. Garth Ritchie from the Ministry of Education, New Zealand, comments that the package “will make it easier to get assistive technology to the students in schools for whom it would not be considered otherwise. [Jisc’s] work has direct spinoffs for inclusive education around the world.”

The tool bar includes a range of tools to support inclusion such as mind mapping, screen masking, word prediction, talking dictionary, text-to-speech, different saving options and voice recognition.  Together, these have been designed to support the complete study cycle from research, planning and structuring to getting across a written or spoken message.

Since it was launched in early 2010, thousands of individuals and organisations have downloaded MyStudyBar, from the John Moores University in Liverpool to the Fundación Todos Podemos Ayudar in Colombia. As Andrew Edis from New College Nottingham comments, “We have already distributed 16,000 USB sticks containing free and open source software from the RSC Scotland North & East, right across the college. I must say I’m impressed with this - in times of financial squeeze the fact that MyStudyBar is open source is a major plus.”

MyStudyBar has been produced by the same team at RSC Scotland North & East which created the award-winning AccessApps software suite.

More information on MyStudyBar

Software collections that make up the EduApps family

Alternatively, contact the Manager at the Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East: manager@rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk.