After Debbie Grants presentation on the multiple tools available for educators, I was most impressed by the different speech to text tools. Most importantly the one that is avaliable through your internet browser. I use Safari so I first highlight the text I wanted to hear, then on the top bar under EDIT you click SPEECH, and lastly click START SPEAKING. When Debbie presented this tool, I could not believe what I was seeing. I can see how people with a reading disability can help them learn, although they are not able to read the text. Like for myself, who often gets distracted when reading and end up reading the same sentence over and over because I loose the spot I left off.
The first thing I did to try to find more information on this tool was google and found a website which listed 19 free text to speech tools for educators. Here is the link: http://elearningindustry.com/19-free-text-to-speech-tools-educators-tts-teachers. From this list I noticed that many did the exact thing, as the SPEECH tool on my computer, but one that caught my attention was PowerTalk. Unlike the others, power talk is used when you are using a slide show or presentation in PowerPoint.
PowerTalk
- PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images
I am still in shock that I had never discovered such great tool and most importantly that it is completely free. I hope that I can spread the word about this build-in tool that can help those that have difficulty reading or simply do not have the energy to look at a computer.
-Yessica
