Monday, May 3, 2010

Speech Maker in Read and Write GOLD

I am always excited to learn about new features in Read and Write GOLD software. In our district, we have Read and Write GOLD at all of our upper level buildings, as well as single copies in each of our elementary schools. A great feature of this software is the "Speech Maker" tool. This tool allows you to turn text into an audio file (MP3). Simply pull up a word document and highlight the text you would like or highlight some text you would like from the web or a PDF. Then, click the speech maker button. This will ask you to choose the voice, where you would like to save, and what file type you would prefer (MP3 or WAV). Then, the text is scanned and converted to an audio state. If you have chosen the MP3 format, you can then put it on a student's MP3 player.
This tool is wonderful if you have students who benefit from that extra auditory help. For example, they could have their vocabulary words loaded onto their iPod, and listen to help them study for the test. They could also have their speech transformed into MP3. As they listen to it over and over while practicing, by the time speech day comes around - they will have their speech memorized!

I hope you will find this tool useful for your students!
-Amy

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