Ideas to Support Student Learning
1. I teach students who have difficulty reading how to have the computer “read” text to them. This is useful for research purposes. On a Mac this can be done using a Safari browser. Have the student highlight the text they want read (smaller amounts is better- 2-4 sentences at a time). Students then click on “Safari,” “Services,” “Speech,” and finally “Start Speaking Text.” I have not been able to figure out how to do this on a PC.
2. All students can benefit from having their work “read” back to them by the computer in the same manner as above. This helps them to spot spelling and grammatical errors. The only word processing program that I have found that allows you to do this is Pages.
3. I often take screen shots to add to written directions. On a Mac you can do this using the shortcut: Shift Command 4. You can also use this using the free software Jing (www.jingproject.com/).
4. Jing is also great for creating tutorials for students that they can watch as needed.
