Special Education and e-readers? Text to Speech functionality

[Karen Anderson]

We are experimenting with a variety of e-readers in our district specifically for use with Special Education students.  Text to Speech is one of the features that we are investigating.  (Kindles, Sony, Ipad).  It's exciting to compare features, but there is still not one device out there that does it all.  It seems if you want one feature, then another feature is not available.  I look forward to the improvement in this technology and in a few years we will all look back and laugh at the primitiveness.

 

What are your experiences with Text to Speech and using the Ereaders for Special Ed?

 

 

[Joan Holopoff]

Publishers are rather resistant to text to speech since they are concerned about the ability to sell audio books. NOOK allows audio MP3 files to be played while EPUB files are in use. www.text-to-speech.imtranslator.net offers an affordable way to integrate a "Read-a-long" approach by converting EPUB files into recorded MP3 files (in 10 languages!) You can then sideload your MP3 file and have it playing as the book is on the screen. This program for group users such as schools is around $700, but at $150 per NOOK it is affordable.

NOOK color will have text to speech capabilities on some titles.

[Kathleen Parker]

Our experiences using the text to speech feature of the Kindles with our Special Ed students has proven to be quite beneficial. I recently gave Kindles to our 7th and 8th grade self-contained class. Prior to giving them their Kindles I met with their teacher to discuss their specific needs. Most importantly, this group of students were better auditory learners. This was proven by their STAR Reading Scores and AR test scores. The teacher gave me 2 types of reading ranges for each student. One range was when they took an AR test when they had read the book to themselves. The other range was when they took an AR test after they had listened to the book on tape and followed along in the book. The second range tended to be a bit higher.
In choosing titles to put on their Kindles I only downloaded titles that had the text to speech feature.

Hope you find this bit of information useful and helpful.
Kathy Parker