iStoryTime is an interactive story teller. It can be created by parents or teachers for kids.
The technology can support learning with audio for struggling readers and sign language for hearing impaired.
The unique features that are included are characters that the students are familiar with such as Shrek, Smurfs, and The Grinch. It has an automatic navigation, which is user friendly. It has narration options such as child and adult voices or chose the silent feature for self reading. It has an option for automatic or manual page turner. Lastly, there’s onscreen text to help early readers to make associations between the words they hear and see.
This tool is mainly used for children between the ages of 2 and 7. The tool is used for struggling and beginner readers. It also has a text to voice correlation. The tool can be easily accessed through an iPad.
There are a few limitations for this tool. The books cost money, the words are not highlighted as they are read, and there aren’t many different reading levels. The sign language option is not available on all the books. Each book has different options for how it is read.
This tool can be integrated into many different aspects of their learning. This tool can be a resource for all students. There are different interactive games that go along with some of the books. It helps with their fluency, word recognition, and comprehension. Students with IEPs can use this as one of their interventions or accommodations. The tool is very independently driven. The child is able to use the iPad individually. ESOL students can use it to help with their reading skills.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Book Builder
Book Builder helps you to create, share, publish, and read digital books that are engaging and that support diverse learners according to their individual needs, interests, and skills. This technology should definitely be used as a whole group. The website is too difficult to navigate through for the students. This technology is centered around story telling.
The features of this tool include coaches for the reading. These coaches ask the readers’ questions throughout the story. Vocabulary words are underlined and the user is able to click on the word to see a picture and in some cases a sound related to the picture.
All students could benefit from this book by reading along with the text and answering or discussing the questions posed by the story’s coaches. The students who would most benefit from this program would be auditory learners.
The concern with this program is the difficulty with navigating through the website. A lot of detail must go into creating books by students. It would be difficult and time consuming for an adult to go through and create a book. The end result wasn’t engaging. The result was a picture book up on the computer screen.
This resource should be strictly teacher controlled.
The features of this tool include coaches for the reading. These coaches ask the readers’ questions throughout the story. Vocabulary words are underlined and the user is able to click on the word to see a picture and in some cases a sound related to the picture.
All students could benefit from this book by reading along with the text and answering or discussing the questions posed by the story’s coaches. The students who would most benefit from this program would be auditory learners.
The concern with this program is the difficulty with navigating through the website. A lot of detail must go into creating books by students. It would be difficult and time consuming for an adult to go through and create a book. The end result wasn’t engaging. The result was a picture book up on the computer screen.
This resource should be strictly teacher controlled.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Natural Readers
Natural Readers
In Natural Reader students are able to see words highlighted as they are read aloud. This program also allows students to scan in books and have those books read aloud to them. It also is able to convert text files to MP3 files. It also has the ability to pull from programs like Internet Explorer, Outlook and Adobe Reader and read the text aloud.
This tool can help students who need to hear the questions on any tests or assignments. Once you scan in the test, the program will read the questions aloud to the students. This is beneficial for struggling readers, ESL students and students with visual impairments. It will also help those students who are auditory learners. It can be used in all subject areas.
The tool allows you to stop, pause, rewind, and play the reader. This reader also allows you to choose different languages, voices, and speeds of the reader. Although they offer different languages the free languages are limited. The languages offered are English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Swedish, and Arabic. There are other languages available for purchase. In the professional version, which is about $100, of Natural Reader you are able to record your own voice for use. Education versions of Natural Reader are available at a discounted price, which also allows you to record your voice and comes with free eBooks.
There are a few downfalls of the free downloaded version of Natural Reader. The voices available are monotone and they don’t show any voice articulation in reference to the text it is reading. The voices are also robotic and would be hard for younger students to understand.
Another downfall in the free version is the ability to open word documents and upload those documents to Natural Reader. The reader doesn’t support Microsoft Word documents; therefore, in order for the Reader to read the document the text must be copied and pasted into Natural Reader.
In this program the student is able to use the Reader independently once the program has started and the documents are copied and pasted into the text area.
In Natural Reader students are able to see words highlighted as they are read aloud. This program also allows students to scan in books and have those books read aloud to them. It also is able to convert text files to MP3 files. It also has the ability to pull from programs like Internet Explorer, Outlook and Adobe Reader and read the text aloud.
This tool can help students who need to hear the questions on any tests or assignments. Once you scan in the test, the program will read the questions aloud to the students. This is beneficial for struggling readers, ESL students and students with visual impairments. It will also help those students who are auditory learners. It can be used in all subject areas.
The tool allows you to stop, pause, rewind, and play the reader. This reader also allows you to choose different languages, voices, and speeds of the reader. Although they offer different languages the free languages are limited. The languages offered are English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Swedish, and Arabic. There are other languages available for purchase. In the professional version, which is about $100, of Natural Reader you are able to record your own voice for use. Education versions of Natural Reader are available at a discounted price, which also allows you to record your voice and comes with free eBooks.
There are a few downfalls of the free downloaded version of Natural Reader. The voices available are monotone and they don’t show any voice articulation in reference to the text it is reading. The voices are also robotic and would be hard for younger students to understand.
Another downfall in the free version is the ability to open word documents and upload those documents to Natural Reader. The reader doesn’t support Microsoft Word documents; therefore, in order for the Reader to read the document the text must be copied and pasted into Natural Reader.
In this program the student is able to use the Reader independently once the program has started and the documents are copied and pasted into the text area.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Touchscreen Computers
I watched Jeff Han and his demo on touchscreen computers that will inevitably move us to the next level of technology steering away from point and click. Jeff’s speech is very interesting to watch and to learn and most importantly for me, it was a visual demo with hands-on. As I was watching Jeff demonstrate this new invention, my mind raced quickly to my students, to my teaching techniques and to the technology that is offered to our schools. I believe that since technology is moving at a fast pace we, educators, have a huge amount of pressure on us to keep up with the new and latest inventions. The pressure of attending in-services and learning these ideas and contemplating how we, educators, are going to integrate them into our instruction is massive. This also relates to Elizabeth Gilbert’s speech on nurturing creativity. How are we going to successfully and effectively carry out new ideas and deal with the after effects; failure? I feel that we shouldn’t jump head first into getting our hands on new gadgets if we haven’t researched or sampled them first. This is where I feel, many of these new inventions are somewhat a waste of time.
On the other hand, the touchscreen computer can be useful, valuable, and applicable for all learners particularly ones that need diverse learning techniques. Teachers and students will be able to engage in activities jointly. I would love to have touchscreen computers in my classroom in the near future but let us be realistic, budgets are tight.
On the other hand, the touchscreen computer can be useful, valuable, and applicable for all learners particularly ones that need diverse learning techniques. Teachers and students will be able to engage in activities jointly. I would love to have touchscreen computers in my classroom in the near future but let us be realistic, budgets are tight.
Monday, July 16, 2012
What Digital Age?
The article What Digital Age? in the journal From Now On mentions how members of society prefer an equal balance between the digital world and the world of nature. After watching Sherry Turkle make her powerful speech on “aloneness”, I couldn’t agree anymore with her research and stats. I feel children and adults think they have to keep up with the digital world and forget the simple things in life. The pressure society places on individuals and on businesses to be up-to-date with technology is actually back firing and is causing mental, social, and emotional problems in people. We need to remember that all of the fuss about technology in schools is crucial but at the same time we need to ask ourselves how much technology is too much technology?
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Technology and the effects on teen education
The URL below is a four mintue youtube video on how technology has effected teen education. The purpose of the video is to bring awareness to the importance of interpersonal social skills along with utilizing technological advances.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYMAULd2vhg
(Copy link into new window to view)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYMAULd2vhg
(Copy link into new window to view)
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