Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinecone
I see.
But IMO, text to speech will allow the students to NOT read the book, but listen to it.  |
Indeed.
The original original idea of the person making the grant was that the students could get single words pronounced for them if they were struggling with the pronunciation of that word. He apparently had such struggles as a kid, and didn't find the dictionaries' methods of showing the pronunciation (typically with IPA or similar characters) to be useful. But anyone who's played with the TTS on Kindle knows it's awkward at best for that single word purpose. There are other things out there, or promised to come, that would be better, but they either aren't available yet, or aren't affordable to us, or aren't things the kids can take home...
I brought this up with the district rep and principal when I met with them. I figured 3rd graders are mostly reading silently anyway. But they (esp. the principal) know their particular students better than I do, and they were actually excited about the possibility of the students using TTS to first hear the words (presumably while reading along) then (I assume) reading again silently. In any case, they really latched onto that feature -- at that point in the process I'd just heard about the touch Nook which is at the same price (I think) as the Kindle, and was ready to switch to that; but I was beholden to our grantor to at least include the reasons the Kindle was on the list. And, as I said, the principal jumped on that. So he knows that's part of it, and wants it. So there you go. :-) I just do what the people paying me or allowing me to come into their schools tell me to do. (Not quite true; I've looked at many many things, and narrowed things down from the wide realms of possibilities, and certainly give my opinions about things. But in the end, it's the vision of the grantor, and also the needs/wants of the school, that drive much of what will happen.)