The Spell Check feature works normally with the paint text and object text and word processing tools but with some characteristic Canvastic customization built into the process.

Checking Your Text

Click the “Next Misspelling” button and it will compare the words in your text or word processing object to the dictionary lists which are in the Spelling folder that is located inside the Canvastic folder. If it finds a word that is not in one of the lists the user has a choice of Replace, Ignore and possibly Learn.

Replace: The checker will list words that are possibly better choices than the one found and highlighted in your text. To replace with the first choice just click Replace. Or, click a different word from the suggestion list and then click Replace. Or, just start typing a correction yourself to replace the found word.

Ignore: If the checker finds a word that is okay as is, just click Ignore and it will do just that for the present session. Students should be instructed to do this for their name and many other proper nouns. The checker will find that word again if you close and re-open the text or word processing object.

Learn: If the checker finds a word that should be in the dictionary, click Learn. It will be added to the user-words.txt file in the Spelling folder. The checker will no longer find it when spell checking. Since, it is easy for young students to add misspellings and other inappropriate additions to this list there are a couple of customizations you can make.

Customizing Spell Check

You can customize the Spell Check features. When preparing your preference sets choose the Spelling tab of the preferences You can disable Spell Check for students that are too young to use it properly. Just un-check the Enable Spell Checking check box. Un-check the Enable Learn button option only if you’d like the students to use the feature but not be able to add words to the user dictionary.

Another customization idea is add your own custom group of words by using the Learn button. You can then archive that text file and periodically replace it in your student Canvastic folders.