Apple Computers Allow Talking Word Wall
by Samuel Sennott
You can utilize the OSX Voice over feature to create a personalized word wall system that has simple text to speech by clicking or arrowing into the letters or words on the word wall.
Doing a daily word wall practice as part of a systematic phonics instructional program is a terrific way to provide the exposure, anchoring, and visual memory connections to the high frequency words of the language your learners read and write in.
Download the guide at the OTOT wikispace. Here.
Enclosed is the Dolch list in alphabetic and frequency orders, the template, the guide, and sample word wall with the first fifteen words in Karen Erickson and Gretchen Hanser’s Literacy Through Unity 45 Location systematic phonics instruction program for learners who use augmentative communication.
On the QIAT Listserv, Ruth Fuller brought up the excellent idea of how cool this concept is on an interactive whiteboard. Gosh, Word Wall goes high tech! I bet if we change those voices around to the hysterical or robot, you could have quite the Friday Word Wall Sessions! Anyway, here is a mockup:
I think it would be cool if you could have the color coding aspects. To color the text is not hard, but to do the color blocks behind the words presents a formidable challenge. It would be terrific if you could color the background of each cell in a table. Oh, wait. you can, as I just figured it out. Look for an update soon.
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[...] schneier wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptby Samuel Sennott. You can utilize the OSX Voice over feature to create a personalized word wall system that has simple text to speech by clicking or arrowing into the letters or words on the word wall. TTS Word Wall pic … [...]
[...] schneier wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptby Samuel Sennott. You can utilize the OSX Voice over feature to create a personalized word wall system that has simple text to speech by clicking or arrowing into the letters or words on the word wall. TTS Word Wall pic … [...]
Sam,
What a great idea! I love using it with an interactive whiteboard as well. Thanks for sharing this great resource.
Karen
[...] few vocabulary words up there) and turned it into an idea for an interactive, talking word wall. While Sam provides all of the details and even includes a How-To Guide that you can download for using a Mac’s text-to-voice [...]
Very neat tech! Macs will soon be taking over the world!
Adelaide Computer