Thursday, July 19, 2018

Let the Device does the Talking

This is one of the takeaways from the 2018 World Wide ADE Institute.
One of the workshops discussed the use of tools developed for greater accessibility (for those who have physical challenges). Some ideas triggered how we could use this tools for Teaching & Learning in a normal classroom, too.

The following tool was created to support the community with visual disability.

Instead of reading with our 'eyes', we can use of the Speech tool in iOS to "read" the words to us. This is in particular helpful to those of us who have no time to 'read' with our eye (as we need to be engaged in other work) s but to listen to the text. Ops! Isn't it the concept of audio-book; however, now it's applicable to any text in a webpage?

The feature can be activated through SETTINGS > General > Accessibility > Speech > Speak Selection (where a Speak button will appear when we select text)

Bring it into the classroom

Who will benefit from it most? 
How can we bring this feature to benefit learners in the classroom?
  • Auditory learners, definitely!
  • Those who are learning pronunciation of new words
Instead of having the eyes to 'crawl' through lines of text,we can now use the feature to read out the text loud and clear to us. This matches the learning style of the auditory learners! 

Given the option to change to speaking rate, we can slow down the speed so that one could listen to how the word is pronounced more clearly when learning the new word. Well, for non-native speakers of English Language, this is in particular useful when we need a slightly longer time to digest what's said.




LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA6StvZVqyY&feature=youtu.be







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