Richard and Kathleen Carlson
Richard and Kathleen Carlson established this endowment in 2008 with gratitude for the services available to their daughter, Margaret, as she earned a degree in General Business at MSU. Building on their belief in access to education for people with disabilities, they sought to increase the availability of accessible educational materials. With leadership from RCPD's tech team, this endowment is helping increase information accessibility through a range of technologies and close working partnership with the Tower Guard sophomore honor organization.
This endowment accelerates MSU advancement in educational media and has helped MSU become a national leader in accessible textbook production including braille, electronic, and tactile. Visit our Accessible Textbooks and Media page for more information on the production of accessible materials at RCPD.
This donor-supported program provides awareness and expanded opportunity for persons with disabilities. You can help support this initiative!
Livescribe Echo Smartpen
This smart pen syncs audio from meetings or lectures to your handwritten, digitized notes. While it's noticeably larger than a standard ink pen, the Echo Smartpen is an excellent pen for taking comprehensive notes with audio.
The Livescribe Echo Smartpen uses a camera in the pen tip that works with the microdots printed on the paper to track your pen strokes. This is a very effective way of recording your handwriting to a digital page. The accuracy of the digital page is less than a millimeter of spatial difference when compared to the physical copy. This makes it great for digitizing your sketches.
This electronic pen also records audio. By pressing "record" at the bottom of the paper, the digital pen's built-in microphone records the audio of your surroundings. You only need to write keywords to highlight parts of the presentation; the audio syncs to the notes. In your own time, you can return to any point in the audio presentation by simply touching a word or sketch in your notes. Adding audio to your notes allows you have a more comprehensive record of the important points you want to remember from a class, meeting, lecture or conversation.
For more information, visit their website.