Text-to-Speech

Text to Speech

Text to Speech is a tool that has multiple uses. It can be used to help with reading and writing. It can be used by students and teachers.

I use text to speech to edit my writing. I listen to what I have written to help with sentence structure or misused words. It helps me improve my writing. I use text to speech to edit all of my blog posts.

Text to Speech can be a useful tool for struggling readers, English language learners, or readers with dyslexia as well. Using Text to Speech as a reading tool can help a variety of students and adults.

On a Mac follow these directions to enable Text to Speech.

Try it out for yourself.  I am sure you will love it!

Summer Announcement

Schools out for Summer! (In your best Alice Cooper voice.)

During the summer months I will continue to post to my blog.

I will use the summer to re-visit items from the YCS Technology Newsletter, provide updates on previous newsletter entries or blog posts, or to re-post the most popular blog entry to date.  The summer will be a time to refresh, for all of us, while still providing you with wonderful AT / UDL Tips and Tricks.

Please continue to join me for Tech Tuesday's and enjoy your summer!

One Tab

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Tab Snooze, one of my new favorite extensions.  Before I discovered Tab Snooze I was using a different extension, OneTab.  Although OneTab is not new to me, it is still one of my favorites.  I know it will be one of yours.

OneTab



One Tab allows you to convert all of your open tabs into a list of URLs.  



From the list you can restore your tabs individually or all at once.  



Using OneTab can conserve battery power on a laptop.  It can also help speed up your computer.  OneTab temporarily reduces the amount of memory your computer uses when you keep too many tabs running in the background.

The URL list can also be exported to save for later or share with anyone.



OneTab may be just the tool your students need when they are working on a research paper for your class.  They can open and view multiple tabs.  When computer time is over, they send the OneTab list to their G-Mail for later review and use.  They will have all of their research available to them, without having to continually start over or remember what they had searched for previously.  

Readability

Why are there so many ads in this article? How are my students supposed to navigate through this?

Readability is a Google Extension that removes the ads and makes an article easier to read.

Readability


This tool removes webpage noise and clutter from an article to make it easier for students to read. With Readability, you can read the article now, later or even send it to a Kindle with the simple click of the extension. To use the later and Kindle options simply create a free account with Readability online.



Once you have de-cluttered an article, you can configure the font and margin size, as well as invert the screen color directly in Readability. Inverting the colors is great for night time reading or people with light sensitivity. Adjusting the font and margin size can be helpful for people with vision impairments and can make printing easier.