A Prodigi in the Classroom: Prodigi Connect 12 Review

One of the most difficult things for students with visual impairments in the classroom is accessing distance and near materials at the same time.

In the past, my student has either had to use two monitors on an enlarged table (one connected to the projector to see distance materials, and the other a Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) to magnify near assignments), or she had to move a camera up and down from the board to her paper, all the while adjusting the zoom and trying to complete her work.

It was exhausting, and she often ended up missing important information.

I was beginning to worry what we would do when she moves up to Middle School. Will she have to lug a big CCTV from class to class?

The Prodigi Connect 12 with distance viewing from Humanware solved all our problems.

The Connect 12 has the versatility of a tablet with a high-performance digital magnifier. The capabilities out of the box are incredible. It is the ideal solution for students, seniors, and professionals with low vision.

The main Prodigi carousel has large icons for Magnifier, Distance, Books, Gallery, and Calculator, as well as a Settings, and Help menu.

Lightweight and extremely portable

The Connect 12 folds up into a lightweight (less than 5 pounds) and compact design. It has a handle on the top to easily move from one place to the next. For safekeeping when traveling, it comes with a laptop style carrying case with multiple pouches and a shoulder strap.

My student is no longer confined to her desk with a large CCTV. She can fold up the Connect 12 and easily carry it to another desk to work on group assignments.

Quickly switch between distance camera and magnifier

One of the biggest issues my student had in the classroom was switching between viewing distance materials and the magnifier. She had to manually move a camera up towards the board and then back down to her desk causing her to miss important information.

Using the Connect 12, she can quickly switch between distance viewing and the magnifier with a swipe of the finger. There is even an option for split screen mode to view both distance and magnified materials at once.

Annotate and share documents

I think this might be my favorite feature of the Connect 12. You can take a picture of a document, save it to your gallery, and then annotate right on the document. It saves all your work automatically. You can highlight, underline, circle, and type text directly onto your document.

You can also purchase a Bluetooth keyboard to type more lengthy notes.

Then, share your annotated document via Gmail, OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, etc. directly to your teacher or boss.

I think this feature is perfect for students and professionals to take notes in the classroom or during meetings.

I’m excited to see how my student will grow with this feature, especially as she moves to Middle School and learns to type proficiently.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in several languages

People with low vision often experience eye fatigue when reading for long periods of time. The Connect 12 has the option to switch to speech to reduce fatigue.

The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) captures all the text from a document and produces speech in 14 different languages with more being added.

As the OCR reads, each word is highlighted to easily follow along with the text.

Versatility of a tablet with various apps

The Connect 12 is essentially an Android tablet. It has all the features of a tablet with the additional magnification and OCR capabilities of Prodigi.

Several apps come pre-installed on the Connect 12. In addition, I downloaded the Learning Ally Link and OneDrive apps from the Play Store.

Use the Connect 12 to check your email, watch YouTube videos, use GPS to plan routes and navigate in Google Maps, create documents and spreadsheets, conduct research in Google Chrome, and so much more!

The Prodigi Connect 12 really is an all-in-one device. Instead of carrying around a laptop and a magnification device, the Connect 12 does it all!

In Review

The Good:

• Lightweight and extremely portable
• Split screen for distance and near viewing
• Quickly switch between distance camera and magnifier with a swipe of the finger.
• Cordless with a full charge
• Bluetooth capabilities to connect a wireless keyboard
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture and read aloud materials in several languages
• Annotate documents with text, highlight, and draw and automatically saves
• Quickly share saved documents in Gmail, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.
• Full capabilities of an Android Tablet
• Everything is synced right out of the box

The Bad:

• 12-inch screen is small
• Unable to customize the apps in the Prodigi Carousel
• OCR has robotic voice
• The Books application is automatically set to BookShare and cannot be customized.

Tips:

• Keep electronic wipes on hand to clean the screen. Fingerprint smudges build up fast.
• Watch the YouTube tutorials and Webinars in the Help menu. Not everything is covered in the User Guide.