Tools for Literacy: Technology for Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Development

Kathleen McClaskey

EdTEch Associates

EdTech Associates was established by Kathleen H. McClaskey, M.Ed., a well-respected and recognized professional in educational technology. Kathleen has over two decades of experience in educational technology with a firm philosophy that technology is a tool that can improve teaching and learning. She has held positions in education as a computer teacher, technology integration specialist and a K-12 Director of Technology in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She has over 17 years experience in technology planning, budgeting, assessments and policy development with the talent to take a “systems approach” in designing and establishing a lasting physical and human infrastructure to support technology in schools. She is known as a teachers’ teacher, and she has trained hundreds of educators in her career. She is currently a graduate adjunct professor at Plymouth State University and Cambridge College.

Kathleen provided many free technology resources to assist students with reading comprehension and vocabulary.

She started the session sharing some free tools that actually read documents or the web for students. This will actually help ALL readers in the classroom.

Freeware

ReadPlease 2003 – This basic reader can support fluency and reading comprehension with its highlighting feature as it reads. There are free voice downloads in British English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. ReadPlease Plus 2003 has additional features with options to purchase natural voices.

Natural Reader – Free download. This reader with highlighted text reads MSWord files, text files, Adobe PDF files, web pages and emails where you can change the voice, volume and speed. Natural Reader Professional and Enterprise versions can also be purchase that offer natural voices.

HearIt for the Mac – Free reader. This program uses the MacIntalk or PlainTalk voices to read highlighted text in almost any application.

WordWeb – A free dictionary and thesaurus for Windows. It includes a comprehensive English thesaurus and dictionary, and can be used to look up words from within most programs and the web. WordWeb works from a small icon in your computer’s system tray.

Shared a story of an English teacher using this with a 10th grade student who was a non-reader. She burned Macbeth to a CD and the student listened to it using one of the readers above. It was a WOW moment for both the student and the teacher. It opened the door of literature for that student.

Her website has a great list of links for teachers...

http://www.edtech-associates.com/education-and-technology.htm

Kathleen showed how to use the highlighting tool in Word to work on comprehension. She had everyone highlight the main idea sentence with green and supporting details in blue, new vocabulary in pink.

Wouldn't these be great tools to share with dyslexia teachers?  Wanda

You are exactly right, Wanda! I thought of you because she said the reason she did this was because her son was dyslexic. Scroll down and read her story on this page----  http://www.edtech-associates.com/educational-technology-consultants.htm.

Thanks for your input! These are really great tools for ALL kids and very easy to use! I'm thinking these are great strategies for those kids with learning difficulties...

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