Text to Speech

Text to speech technology is rapidly improving and adapting. During the last two weeks of school a fourth grade teacher and I used glogster and xtranormal with her class to publish their research about technology in N.C. While using xtranormal, the students quickly caught on to the need to phrase questions carefully, so that the technology could get the intonation right. Just this morning while I was visiting the PBWorks Summer Camp wiki I read about someone using voki to embed a talking avatar into their wiki--takes all of five minutes, even if you fancy up your avatar. And of course, voicethread has been around for a long while now.

Enough about the cool factor--what I like about sites is the text to speech capability--users key in text and the tool transfers it to audible speech. I am amazed at how eagerly students approach learning tasks when these tools are used. And their increased conscientiousness is leading to better finished products that include more polished compositions. Afterall, who wants their avatar or their video characters to sound, well, you know, d@*b (there, I didn't say it)?