One of the best features of the Fly Pen is its handwriting recognition ability. The pen uses several interesting pieces of technology to provide students with nearly flawless handwriting recognition. This allows the student to digitize handwritten notes and upload them onto a PC as a text document.
In order for the pen to recognize handwriting, the student must write on special Fly Paper. This paper is covered with millions of little dots that form a grid. As the student writes, the computer interprets the letters, numbers and other characters by reading the lines made on the grid.
The pen has a built-in scanner or camera near the tip of the pen. The scanner basically reads the grid (rather than the actual ink) and tells the computer what is being written by storing a series of grid coordinates. The computer then uses special software to interpret those coordinates as letters, words, numbers or even drawings.
The Fly Pen uses MyScript handwriting recognition to read those grid coordinates. MyScript is a powerful handwriting recognition tool that uses vocabulary lists to recognize actual words rather than just letters, numbers and other characters. The program uses the context words are written in to determine precisely which word should be used.
All of this technology sounds great, but of course it leads one to wonder how well a middle school student could use it. The technology itself operates on its own behind the scenes, but what about a middle school student with sloppy handwriting?
Leap Frog, the maker of the Fly Fusion, actually had a test group of 8-13 year-olds who provided handwriting samples to develop the handwriting recognition program. As a result, the pen offers copletely operational handwriting recognition for both words and individual letters and numbers, even if the student’s handwriting isn’t the clearest.
Fly Pen Handwriting Recognition
