Dear OOo communities: A month or so ago, you may remember that I reached out to these mailing lists in the hopes that someone would be able to help me find a way to make Writer's capabilities for checking grammar and spelling much sharper and more accurate than they are currently. I have received some helpful suggestions along the way, including referrals to LanguageTool and After the Deadline, and while I thank those people for their help, I found through researching and testing great tools like these that they didn't quite hit the mark for my school's needs. (They're quite close -- don't get me wrong -- but no cigar.)
And then I discovered Ghotit <http://www.ghotit.com/home.shtml>. In its present form, *Ghotit *is a terrific tool that assists with editing grammar, spelling, and more. What's especially important is that Ghotit was created by people who have dyslexia for others who have dyslexia and other similar learning disabilities, and so the Ghotit team unquestionably have a reliable finger on the pulse of their intended audience. Naturally, this doesn't mean a person using Ghotit must have dyslexia or some learning disability -- in fact, the potential Ghotit offers is extremely useful to ANYONE who uses a word processor to write. (See for yourself here<http://www.ghotit.com/free_service.shtml>if you don't believe me. Click "Check Spelling" to edit the sample text, or delete it and type in something of your own before hitting "check spelling." Then right-click on the color-coded words for suggestions for edits.) In short, I believe that Ghotit offers the perfect solution for my students' needs, and there is no doubt in my mind that schools and other institutions worldwide would benefit immensely from this program. Currently, though, Ghotit is only available as a MS Word plug-in, and this won't cut the mustard on my school's ancient MS Word '97. Thankfully, though, I've made contact with Ghotit's founder, Ofer Chermesh, and he is willing to make a Ghotit plug-in for OpenOffice, but he and his team can't do it alone. (See Ofer's email about the subject below.) And so, I am reaching out to the OOo communities again to fill this need. *If you are willing to develop the Ghotit plug-in for OpenOffice, please contact me and Ofer immediately. *And no, I'm not making a dime from this. I'm not a salesman -- I'm an English teacher (and also now a master's student in educational technology) who has been searching all summer long for something that will truly make a difference in his students' lives, and although it's almost August already, and damn it all, I'm not willing to give up on that search just yet. Thank you for your time and consideration. Jeremy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ofer Chermesh <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 7:10 AM Subject: RE: Ghotit needs an Ooo developer! To: "Jeremy @ BBA" <[email protected]> Dear Jeremy, Sorry for the delay* *answering your e-mail. I have tried to find developers that will be interested to develop a plug in but unfortunately after they looked into all the aspects of developing a plug in I was turned down by all of them. Sorry but for the time being* *we will not be able to develop a plug in unless* *one of the developers that did not answer me yet will say yes. If you know if any developer that has interested* *in developing one please* *let me know. Ofer *From:* Jeremy @ BBA [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Monday, July 26, 2010 11:55 PM *To:* Raphael Mudge; [email protected]; [email protected] *Subject:* Fwd: Ghotit needs an Ooo developer! Dear Ofer and Raphael: I am writing to you both to check in with great hope that you were able to connect with each other about the possibility of making a Ghotit extension for OpenOffice. As it happens, I am currently working with another programming team to create an alternate version of Readability Report<http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ReadabilityReport>that will address the needs of my school and others a bit more closely than it does at present, and we are almost done with this process. Coupling that collaboration with the potential for ours to bring Ghotit to OpenOffice would pack an unbeatable knock-out one-two punch for our students' benefit. Since it is somehow almost the end of July (already? I can't believe it...), though, I must warn you that the window of opportunity that I have to be able to introduce this new technology to my school's administration and then test it thoroughly before opening it up to the entire school is beginning to close. It would still be possible for me to introduce Ghotit, Readability Report, and OpenOffice as a whole to my school in September or October, but making that transition would undoubtedly be much smoother for students and faculty alike if I was able to begin facilitating that transition in the week before the new school year starts. Please note: I am *not* telling you this because I am trying to pressure or rush either of you in making this happen, for if you have chosen to collaborate, I would love nothing more than for you both to work together in making the best program possible. I am only telling you this because I just want to make you aware of the impending time constraints for myself and for my school. Don't get me wrong -- I would still be quite eager to help you field test the extension even if it was not ready until November or later, but the reality is that by that point, my hands will most likely be more tied up than they are right now. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you for your interest and inspiration so far! Jeremy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Ofer Chermesh* <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 1:57 AM Subject: RE: Ghotit needs an Ooo developer! To: [email protected] Cc: "Jeremy @ BBA" <[email protected]> Dear Raphael, First of all I want to thank Jeremy for the introduction. Secondly I will be happy if we can arrange* *a phone call, can please* *send me your phone number and a time and date of your convenience* *for a short* *phone call. Hope to hear from you soon. Regards, Ofer Chermesh www.Ghotit.com http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com/ http://twitter.com/ghotit *From:* Jeremy @ BBA [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:53 AM *To:* [email protected] *Cc:* [email protected] *Subject:* Ghotit needs an Ooo developer! Dear Raphael: Earlier when you referred me to Ghotit, you may recall that you offered to allow the Ghotit team to use your After the Deadline program as a template for an OOo extension, just as you said you did based off of LanguageTool. The following is the latest reply I've received from the Ghotit team. It seems to me that they're willing to help, but they require your assistance as a developer. Please consider this invitation and let Ofer Chermesh (Ghotit's founder, at [email protected]) and I know if you are interested. Together, this could be quite the opportunity for a unique collaboration. I greatly appreciate your help! Sincerely, Jeremy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Ofer Chermesh* <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:48 PM Subject: RE: Ghotit vs. early Windows or OpenOffice compatibility; AtD's offer of assistance To: "Jeremy @ BBA" <[email protected]> Dear Jeremy, First of all thanks for your update. Regarding OpenOffice Ghotit as a company doesn’t really* *have the bandwidth * *to develop a plug in for OpenOffice saying that we will be happy to find a developer that will find interest* *to developing* *such plug in. I will be happy if you will be willing to contact* *me with Raphael Mudge in order to find out if he has any interest. Hope to hear from you soon. Ofer *From:* Jeremy @ BBA [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Saturday, July 17, 2010 12:14 AM *To:* Ofer Chermesh; [email protected] *Cc:* Raphael Mudge *Subject:* Re: Ghotit vs. early Windows or OpenOffice compatibility; AtD's offer of assistance Dear Ofer and the Ghotit Team: Unfortunately as I suspected, Ghotit does not work with my school's old MS Office '97 suite. One of the members of the school's tech support staff that I have been in constant contact with over the summer was was able to try Ghotit out on MS Office '03 on his personal computer, and that worked fine, but the chances of updating all of our school's computers to this version of MS Office is absolute *zero.* As a result, I humbly implore you once more to create an OpenOffice extension version of your software, perhaps with Raphael Mudge from After the Deadline <http://afterthedeadline.com/>, whom I have CC'ed this email to. Raphael, if you recall, was the developer who referred me to Ghotit in the first place, and without his word of mouth, I can assure you that I never would have heard of Ghotit's potential. When I wrote to him about finding a way to make Ghotit work with my school's old computers using OpenOffice, he had this to say: If you like, email them and suggest they take a look at some of the OpenSource code and adopt one of them to make a GhotIT extension for OpenOffice.org <http://openoffice.org/>. They could use AtD's extension as a template. I used LanguageTool's extension as my template. Again, I humbly implore you to seize this opportunity. As it happens, I am also in the process of completing a master's degree program at UCONN in educational technology, and I have had high hopes in conducting a thorough practicum/thesis presentation of how the quality of our student's writing samples may be improved through the use of assistive technology like Ghotit. *ALL* of our students have learning disabilities, and as I said before, I am positive that Ghotit can make a real difference for *ALL* of them in their ability to edit their work. Unfortunately, due to our limited finances and technology in the school, this *will not be possible *unless you can help us by creating an extension for OpenOffice that we can use. I promise that if you can help me make this dream-like promise of making a real difference in their lives a reality, you can be rest assured that I will write a glowing testimonial for you or help your cause in any other way that's reasonable for you to repay you for your time, consideration, and generosity. Thank you for taking my humble plea under careful consideration. I look forward to working with you throughout the upcoming school year. Sincerely, Jeremy On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 7:10 AM, Ofer Chermesh <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Jeremy, I have created for you a Ghotit VIP account, I hope you will be willing to try Ghotit and see if this is what you are looking. You can download Ghotit plug in from: http://www.ghotit.com/install/ghotit-word-addin-01.exe User guide can be found at: http://www.ghotit.com/install/GhotitWordSpellchecker-HowToUse.pdf it is a short user guide and it is recommended to read it before you start, if you use a proxy it’s recommended to read Ghotit proxy settings part. In order to use Ghotit you will need a Ghotit user name and password: Username: jyanofsky Password: jrew2665x The username and password are case-sensitive. If you like Ghotit please send me your school external IP and I will create for you as many accounts as you need. Please let me know that you received my e-mail and if you need any additional accounts. Any inputs you have will be very welcome. If you like Ghotit I will be happy if you will send a twitter about us. In addition please let me know if Ghotit worked on your* *school PC’s Hope to hear from you soon. Regards, Ofer Chermesh www.Ghotit.com http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com/ http://twitter.com/ghotit *From:* Jeremy @ BBA [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Tuesday, July 13, 2010 4:22 PM *To:* Ofer Chermesh *Subject:* Re: Ghotit vs. early Windows or OpenOffice compatibility; AtD's offer of assistance Dear Ofer: Thank you for your prompt response! I am eager to test Ghotit on Windows '98, 2000, *and* XP to see if it works. Despite the Frankenstein mixture of OS's that we have at my school, however, all of the computers run *Microsoft Office '97.* My hope is that this version of MS Office is not so old that it is just incapable of running Ghotit, period. While I hope this may work, I humbly implore you to reconsider the reason why I am asking you if making Ghotit compatible with OpenOffice is possible. As it happens, our school aspires to convert our entire system to a Linux/Unix-based system, and my goal in introducing OpenOffice (along with its capacity for extensions, etc.) is to provide a stepping stone for that transition process. I would agree that it may not be common for schools to make that arguably giant leap to Linux/Unix since the prospect of an open source can be intimidating to people who know nothing about how to manipulate its code and all, but I can attest to you that my colleagues in the field are working in schools that are switching away from Windows to at least Mac at an increasing rate as it becomes financially feasible. Hence, as more and more schools migrate away from Windows in the years to come, I assure that it would really behoove and benefit your organization to find a way to make Ghotit available on these systems as well, and networking with myself and Raphael Mudge to make this happen ASAP could prove a rare opportunity for you. In closing, let me assure you that I am not making a dime off of this experiment. I aspire to use Ghotit and OpenOffice in the classroom as part of a practicum experience for a master's program in educational technology, but more importantly, I aspire to find a tool that will help our students with learning disabilities write without breaking a sweat, and from what I have seen on your site, Ghotit is the best assistive tech available for editing. I hope that you will join me in taking advantage of this unique opportunity. Thank you for your time and consideration. Jeremy Yanofsky Ben Bronz Academy On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Ofer Chermesh <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Jeremy, First of all I want to apologizes* *for the delay answering your e-mail. Ghotit plug in was developed for Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Word 2003 and tested for Microsoft windows XP and higher operational systems. Ghotit plug in will not work on OpenOffice or* *a computer that it operating * *system is not Windows. I don’t know if Ghotit will work with Windows 2000 (we did not test it) but there is a possibility* *it will. Ghotit can send you a Ghotit account and you can try and see if it works on Windows 2000 and if it does* *you can try it on Windows 98. In any case there is a good chance that Ghotit web services* *will work on Windows 2000 and Windows 98 http://www.ghotit.com/free_service.shtml Regards, Ofer Chermesh www.Ghotit.com http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com/ http://twitter.com/ghotit *From:* Jeremy @ BBA [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Tuesday, July 13, 2010 7:28 AM *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* Ghotit vs. early Windows or OpenOffice compatibility; AtD's offer of assistance Dear Ghotit team: I originally sent these emails to your info@ address, but have yet to receive a response, so I am re-sending this email through your supp...@address in the hopes that I hear from you soon. Thank you for your time and patience. Jeremy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Jeremy @ BBA* <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 2:16 AM Subject: Ghotit vs. early Windows or OpenOffice compatibility To: [email protected] Dear Ghotit Team: My name is Jeremy, and I teach English writing and literature in a small private school exclusively for children and teenagers with learning disabilities. This summer, I am on a mission to do whatever possible to help this school update their technology out of the proverbial stone age. To call what this school has available for our students "stone age" technology may sound a bit harsh, but considering that nearly half of what we use on the computers runs off of DOS (yes, that's right -- DOS!), it's not that much of an exaggeration. To compound our technology woes, while we are able to switch over to Windows on most machines in the building, all of the computers have been donated over the years, which has resulted in a unimaginable Frankenstein of a network. Some computers still run Windows '98, some are on Windows 2000, and a few others are as close to up-to-date as our budget allows with Windows XP. The biggest goal I have in my efforts to help the tech staff update our technology this summer is to update as far as we can and then standardize that technology across the entire school. Hopefully, this will result in no further nightmares in which students start using Computer A in Classroom A to complete an assignment and then not being able to continue his/her work on Computer B across the hall in his/her study hall in Classroom B. As part of this process of updating and standardizing our available technology, I have been struggling to find a way to replace our practice of using our DOS-based word processor. Sticking with MS Office '97 would not be too bad if we had too, but I have also explored updating to the latest version of OpenOffice. Either way, one of the most critical hurdles I need to overcome in making this change happen is to find the most efficient and user-friendly grammar/spellchecker there is for our students to use. MS Word's grammar/spellchecker is basic, but not quite up to par with what our students need, and what Writer has in OpenOffice by default is simply too overwhelming. To make a long story short, one helpful member of the OpenOffice community recommended Ghotit to me, and when I checked out your website, I literally jumped for joy. As you might have surmised by this point, though, one major and truly annoying hurdle remains: *compatibility*. Although not spelled out on your site as far as I can tell, your YouTube video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aHgkcF_1yQ>suggests that Ghotit only works with Windows 2007 and beyond. As I mentioned earlier, our school's hands are tied between either sticking with MS Office '97 or updating to the free OpenOffice suite. Is it possible that Ghotit is -- or can be made to be -- compatible with either one of those office suites? If so, then I would be thrilled beyond belief to apply for my school to use Ghotit...but if not, I would greatly appreciate your best recommendation of an alternative, if one exists. (I'm going to cross my fingers for the first option there!) With regards to this query, I would also like to add that Raphael Mudge of automattic.com's "After the Deadline" add-in (who just so happens to be the "helpful member of the OOo community" I wrote about earlier that referred me to you) has graciously suggested that Ghotit use AtD's new OOo extension<http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/after-the-deadline>as a template to create a Ghotit extension for OOo. Mr. Mudge is certainly passionate about improving the way(s) computers can check and correct grammar and spelling as evidenced by the paper he references below (see the pdf link), and I wager he would be more than happy to help Ghotit in the process of making an extension for OOo to a certain extent. I unfortunately am not a programmer myself, but I would be more than happy to do my part with field testing Ghotit in the classroom and promoting Ghotit to the OOo education community and to my colleagues. Thank you for your time. I eagerly await your response. Sincerely, Jeremy
