RSCs – Stimulating and Supporting Innovation in Learning
RSCs – Stimulating and Supporting Innovation in Learning
MyStudyBar has been produced by the same team at RSC Scotland North & East which created the award-winning AccessApps software suite. Although MyStudyBar is designed to support learners with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, the toolbar can offer potential benefits to all learners.
MyStudyBar puts a whole range of individual and essential tools at your fingertips. Together, these have been designed to support the complete study cycle from research, planning and structuring to getting across a written or spoken message. MyStudyBar has 6 sections; each has a drop down menu offering personal choice, flexibility and independent learning, particularly for those learners who require additional strategies to support their learning. With over 15 apps to choose from, MyStudyBar is the perfect study aid.
We've even provided step-by-step tutorials to get you started with the applications on MyStudyBar
Examples include: Xmind for planning and organization; T-Bar for customising font and colour backgrounds; Lingoes for when you need a talking dictionary; LetMeType for help with text input, and Balabolka for converting text to audio. And if all that’s not enough, there’s even a speech-to-text app which allows you to talk to your computer.
You can use MyStudyBar straight from a USB stick (if, for example, you are using a machine that is not your own) or you can install it directly to the desktop. (Technical staff in colleges or universities also have the choice of installing it on the network for everyone to use). However you choose to use it, MyStudyBar pops up on your screen like this:
After you’ve downloaded the zipfile you then need to unzip or extract all the files and folders and double-click 'MyStudyBar'.
A version of MyStudyBar is available for each of the common Windows operating systems. The main difference between the two is that MyStudyBar for Vista/Windows 7 is able to take full advantage of the system’s excellent built-in speech recognition capabilities. This is a welcome advance by Microsoft in the latest operating system.
To get you started with MyStudyBar we provide some useful help materials. Included among these are screencast tutorials on how to download (link here to tutorial) and how to get the best from the MyStudyBar and all its components.
Introduction to MyStudyBar Version 2
Planning Support
Reading Support
Writing Support
Vision Support
Windows Speech Recognition
We surveyed a number of products which provide commercial alternatives to MyStudyBar and calculated an average cost of £115 per user licence. Estimated saving is based on number of downloads since MyStudyBar was launched (March 2010), multiplied by average cost (£115).
