Universally Designed

Most of us are probably familiar with products that turn digital text into speech.  Programs like Read&Write Gold and Kurzweil are feature packed applications that will not only read almost any digital text to you, but also provide numerous other supports such as advanced spell check, word prediction and more.  Other programs, like ReadPlease are basic (but free) and allow you to copy and paste any text in and have it read out loud.

The only major downfall to these programs is that a student must be sitting in front of a computer to use them.  Having one computer with text to speech capabilities doesn’t do you much good when 15 kids need it at the same time.

To help remedy this, there are several products out there that allow you to turn text into an audio file (typically an mp3 or wav file).  Once created, students can listen to it on their portable mp3 player, cd player, or even their computer at home.  Granted, this isn’t always as effective as being able to see the text as it’s being read out loud, but it does work for many students.  Surely you’ve seen all of the earbuds hanging out of kids’ ears haven’t you?

Before I list some options, I should mention one concern I consistently get is that not all students have the mp3 players.  This is true, but according to a recent report specializing in tracking the use of digital music and digital music players, over 70% of respondents ages 12-17 already have some type of portable music player.  This is up from 54% last year.  What’s more is that not all portable media players are as expensive as iPods.  A recent search on WalMart.com showed a 2GB video and audio portable media player for under $30!

Now that that’s out of the way, how do we turn text into audio files?  Well, there are really 2 ways: a software application (or one feature of a software application) and a web site.  Let’s look at each…

On the Web:  These websites allow you to paste digital text in and they will automatically create the audio file for you.

• Vozme.com
• HearWho.com (only free for limited amount of text)

Software Applications:

• Read&Write Gold – Contains a “Speech Maker” feature that turns text into a wav or mp3 file
• Text to Speech Maker
• Other options – a website containing several low cost text to audio programs

If you know of any additional programs, especially free programs, be sure to post in the comments section or send me an email.

OK, so this post doesn’t really have much to do with educational technology, but it solves an annoying problem.  In Vista, if you have a shortcut icon on your desktop there is a huge arrow that attaches itself to the icon to show that it is a shortcut to another location.  One way to fix this is to edit your registry, but that’s never really recommended unless you are an experienced user and aware of all the risks.  Instead, download the free Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover by FXVisor.  You can download it from http://www.frameworkx.com/ or PC World.

After installing, simply open the program, choose no arrow and log off.  Once you log back on you’ll see that you no longer have a shortcut arrow on your icons.

One of the first steps in creating a Universally Designed classroom is to complete a learning styles inventory with your students.  This gives you a better understanding of how your students learn best, which in turn should effect the way you deliver content.  My personal favorite free online learning styles inventory comes from Learning-Styles-Online.com.  Not only does it provide information on how you learn best, but if you are an educator it allows you to create an account so that after your students complete the survey it will build a classroom profile for you.  This is much easier than calculating and putting together a profile manually.  

I just finished doing a session on using technology to motivate writers and came across this cool website. It’s called the Newspaper Clipping Generator. It’s purpose is to generate what looks like a newspaper clipping out of whatever you have your students write. They can choose the title of the newspaper and download an image of the completed product to print off and hand in or include in their blog or website. It does have a couple of shortfalls, namely it’s inability to show the full text of the newspaper title or the article itself. But then again it is a clippings generator, not an entire newspaper generator. My colleague, Lisa Shaw, mentioned how this is a great strategy for teaching students how to generate leads for feature articles.

For those that aren’t aware, a podcatcher is a software application used to collect and play podcasts. By far, the most popular podcatcher is iTunes. However, not everyone wants to rely on only one software application. In addition, there are many schools or entire districts that do not allow the use of iTunes. So what exactly is a podcast and are there options for those wanting to subscribe to podcasts other than iTunes? That is what this post hopes to answer.

To start with, a podcast is simply an audio or video file that is syndicated, which means people are able to subscribe to it using a podcatcher. Why would you want to subscribe to a podcast? Let me use an example that I think will help. Imagine there are 5 podcasts that i am really interested in. They are on various topics, maybe Spanish lessons, technology, financial information, music, and math strategies. All of these podcasts contain great information, but it is a time consuming task for me to visit each site every day just to see if a new podcast has been posted. If I find that there is a new post, I then have to download and store it somewhere before I can listen to it on my computer or on a portable media player like an iPod.

Now let’s look at using a podcatcher, such as iTunes, to make this process more efficient. Instead of visiting each site everyday, I only visit it once. While there, I find the feed information for that podcast (usually by clicking on a link that says “subscribe to this podcast”). I take that link and copy and paste it into my podcatcher (if using iTunes go to Advanced – Subscribe to Podcast) and viola, I am now subscribed to that podcast. I do the same with the other four sites and now every time I open my podcatcher it searches to see if any new posts have been made. If so, it automatically downloads and organizes them for me. Is that cool or what! iTunes also offers an extensive list of podcasts you can search and subscribe to without ever leaving the application.

So moving on, are there other podcatcher options than iTunes? The answer to this is yes, but you may need to spend some time exploring the options to find which works for you. Below is a list of a few options you may want to try:

• Doppler
• gPodder
• Juice
• MediaFly
• myPodder
• NewsFire (mac only)
• NIMIQ
• PrimeTimePodcast
• QuickNews (for PalmOS)
• RSSRadio
• SmartFeed (for Windows Mobile)
• ZiePod
• Zune (Microsoft’s Version of iTunes)

I figure this list will do you for awhile. I personally use iTunes, but if I didn’t I would probably give Juice, MediaFly or ZiePod a try.  If you have tried one of the options above feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

I know that I am not the first, and will surely not be the last to do a post on Jott, a free web based tool to convert speech into text, but I still feel the need to mention it here for my readers.

So what exactly is Jott, and how can it be used in your toolkit of Universally Designed activities for students? Well, to access Jott all you need to do is go to www.jott.com and setup an account. Once setup you will receive a verification code to use when you call 866-JOTT-123. After dialing the number and entering the code, you can choose to Jott yourself or someone in your contact list (which you can create after signing up for an account). To Jott is simply to speak a message. Once spoken, you can set up a reminder to go along with it if you wish. When finished, Jott will sent you an email or text message with the text of that voice note. How cool is that! You can use Jott to send yourself reminders while driving in the car, create lists, and even add dates to your Google calendar or make a blog post.

So how can this be used in Education? It just so happens that a colleague and I did a session titled “Ugh, I Hate to Write!: Innovative Ways to Use Technology to Motivate Reluctant and Struggling Writers” yesterday. A major component of it was using services like Jott to motivate writers. For example, one critical part of writing that is seldom done these days is writing to learn. These are the kind of things students do to help digest information. They are not graded, and the main audience are the students themselves. Activities typically seen in writing to learn activities include writing breaks (stop talking for 2 minutes and let students write what is on their mind), exit and admit slips, brainstorming or clustering, drawing and illustrations, write arounds and much more. So imagine next time you want your students to participate in a writing break you allow them to call Jott and speak what’s on their mind! This not only increases engagement, but is also much more accessible for students who may struggle with writing due to cognitive or physical disabilities.

The above is of course only one example. I can see students using Jott as an organization tool, a method for delivering admit and/or exit slips to teachers (remember that students can Jott to teachers and other students, not just themselves), brainstorming, and to take notes among many other things. Have an idea for using Jott? Write it in the comments section below.