Product Review: Natural Reader
Note: This is NOT a sponsored post or anything for which I have been paid for any reason. This is just a product I came across and liked very much. They don't even have an affiliate program.
When my children were small, reading aloud was a huge part of our home school. We read all the Little House books, and the Anne of Green Gables books, and the Narnia books, and Madeleine L'Engle's books, and Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle. And that didn't even scratch the surface. What a wonderful time that was!
As my daughter got older, i would hear her reading aloud to herself in her room, because she needed to hear what she was reading in order to retain it. Sometimes I helped her read, or we took turns reading. But I confess I wish I had someone to do some of the reading for me.
Now you can.
NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software application using natural sounding voices. It is able to convert written text into speech The speed of the reader can be adjusted, and the voices can be either male or female. It supports Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. You just copy and paste the portion of text that you want to hear into the window and NaturalReader will take it from there.
The free version includes a basic male and basic female voice, plus a voice called "Microsoft Anna", which is really more natural than the other two.
What's not to like?
I became acquainted with Text to Speech when my son's online school provided us with a paid version of a competing program. It completely revolutionized his ability to understand what he was reading. He just kind of started to read when he was about 3. I never taught him anything. He just read. But while he could decode anything on the planet, he couldn't understand any of it unless he could hear it as well as see it. His listening comprehension continues to exceed his reading comprehension. The problem is the flat boring voices that occasionally mispronounce or place an accent on the wrong syllable. We will be using NaturalReader instead this year, even though the other one is included in our tuition.
There are two inexpensive paid versons that have greater capabilities. The personal version is $49.50 and includes 2 free natural voices. It can read aloud any text from Word, webpages, PDF files and emails. It has a toolbar add-in in Word, Outlook, Powerpoint and IE. You can even convert large text files to audio files.
The professional version comes with 4 natural voices, but it also has an audio file recorder and editor, and has the ability to convert text into audio files that can be downloaded into your iPod or burned to a CD. This version is $99.50
You could mosey on over to Project Gutenberg and find some free classic books to "read" with NaturalReader, then convert them to MP3s and burn them onto a CD to listen to in your car!
No pulp fiction here, but the likes of Pride and Prejudice, Tale of Two Cities, The Time Machine, the Sherlock Holmes books, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Hmm. I don't think this free version can actually negotiate the dialects of Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer.
Another great application is to have it proofread something you have written - it will catch some of those things that spelling checkers cannot, such as when you spell a word correctly but it is the wrong word.
Visit the website and click the orange play button at the far right of the upper part of the screen to see and hear a demo of this product.
And before you buy a book or schlep down to the library, check out the Gutenberg project the next time you are looking for a classic book. You will be amazed what you find there.
Natural Reader 7 Free Version
System Requirement:
Operation System: win98/me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
Processor: 500MHZ
Memory: 128MB (256Recommended)
Free Diskspace: 50MB (Natural Voices may
require 600MB free space)
Showing posts with label auditory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label auditory. Show all posts
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Find Out Your Child's Learning Style
How does your child learn? It is important to discover your child's primary learning style if you are about to start a home schooling program. You will be able to help your child increase their enjoyment of learning if you know how they learn best.
There are three main learning styles - Visual, Auditory and kinesthetic.
Visual: Normal school learning is usually aimed at visual learners. Children who are primarily visual learners frequently see what they read or are told in a series of pictures or mental images. These children will be mostly quite fairly well organized in their schoolwork or habits. They may spend hours absorbed in a picture book or watching television if allowed. They will often be called 'imaginative' and love painting, drawing and crafts. The educational system is aimed at this kind of learning and so these children usually do well in a regular school. But the visual learner who wants to concentrate on artistic pursuits, for example, will have more opportunities to pursue his interests in a home school setting because of the flexibility of schedule.
Auditory: Children that are primarily auditory learners will have no trouble listening to and remembering a list of instructions. They will be happy to listen to a cassette tape without needing to look at pictures too. They will enjoy working along with the sound of music and usually have no trouble memorizing the words of songs. Actually, they are able to memorize almost anything if you put it to music. My daughter had some visual issues when she was really young, and was slow to learn to read. Because of this, she leaned heavily toward auditory learning, and enjoyed listening to books on tape that were way beyond her reading level, but that she easily understood. She also memorized astounding amounts of Scripture that was set to music from a very early age, and actually won an award in her AWANA club for memorizing 550 verses over a period of 7 years. Auditory learners make great university students, because they are able to absorb information through lectures.
Kinesthetic: kinesthetic learners are those who find it hard to sit still. They like to get their hands dirty - that is, they want to actually participate in the building of things, usually before reading the instructions. They will often figure out the way to do a thing quickly by experimenting with it, rather than sitting and listening to instructions on how to do it. My son's primary learning style is kinesthetic. When he was eight years old, he built a complex K'nex structure called a Power Tower Crane in two days with minimal attention to the directions. He also found a design flaw in it, and got into an argument with his engineer dad over whether it actually created a problem in the structure. These children often fall through the cracks at school because there is not a lot of opportunity for hands on learning. They are the ones who excel in the agricultural, woodshop, or home economics department - if there is one. Butchers, mechanics, carpenters and many other necessary tradesmen have been kinesthetic learners.
By careful observation, you will soon be able to determine which way your child learns best. Some children may be a combination of these learning types, but usually one type will be dominant. Many boys are kinesthetic learners, though of course some girls are too. Lots of girls are visual learners, but boys can be too. There is no hard and fast rule, so it is up to you to observe.
A learning styles test may also assist you as you try to identify your child's learning style. This particular test costs $8.95 to purchase and you can use Paypal to do so. There is no monetary benefit to me if you do or don't use this one. If you don't want to use this one, you can search for "learning styles test" and perhaps you will find a free one. I thought this one provided some interesting data. You can see my results here.
There are three main learning styles - Visual, Auditory and kinesthetic.
Visual: Normal school learning is usually aimed at visual learners. Children who are primarily visual learners frequently see what they read or are told in a series of pictures or mental images. These children will be mostly quite fairly well organized in their schoolwork or habits. They may spend hours absorbed in a picture book or watching television if allowed. They will often be called 'imaginative' and love painting, drawing and crafts. The educational system is aimed at this kind of learning and so these children usually do well in a regular school. But the visual learner who wants to concentrate on artistic pursuits, for example, will have more opportunities to pursue his interests in a home school setting because of the flexibility of schedule.
Auditory: Children that are primarily auditory learners will have no trouble listening to and remembering a list of instructions. They will be happy to listen to a cassette tape without needing to look at pictures too. They will enjoy working along with the sound of music and usually have no trouble memorizing the words of songs. Actually, they are able to memorize almost anything if you put it to music. My daughter had some visual issues when she was really young, and was slow to learn to read. Because of this, she leaned heavily toward auditory learning, and enjoyed listening to books on tape that were way beyond her reading level, but that she easily understood. She also memorized astounding amounts of Scripture that was set to music from a very early age, and actually won an award in her AWANA club for memorizing 550 verses over a period of 7 years. Auditory learners make great university students, because they are able to absorb information through lectures.
Kinesthetic: kinesthetic learners are those who find it hard to sit still. They like to get their hands dirty - that is, they want to actually participate in the building of things, usually before reading the instructions. They will often figure out the way to do a thing quickly by experimenting with it, rather than sitting and listening to instructions on how to do it. My son's primary learning style is kinesthetic. When he was eight years old, he built a complex K'nex structure called a Power Tower Crane in two days with minimal attention to the directions. He also found a design flaw in it, and got into an argument with his engineer dad over whether it actually created a problem in the structure. These children often fall through the cracks at school because there is not a lot of opportunity for hands on learning. They are the ones who excel in the agricultural, woodshop, or home economics department - if there is one. Butchers, mechanics, carpenters and many other necessary tradesmen have been kinesthetic learners.
By careful observation, you will soon be able to determine which way your child learns best. Some children may be a combination of these learning types, but usually one type will be dominant. Many boys are kinesthetic learners, though of course some girls are too. Lots of girls are visual learners, but boys can be too. There is no hard and fast rule, so it is up to you to observe.
A learning styles test may also assist you as you try to identify your child's learning style. This particular test costs $8.95 to purchase and you can use Paypal to do so. There is no monetary benefit to me if you do or don't use this one. If you don't want to use this one, you can search for "learning styles test" and perhaps you will find a free one. I thought this one provided some interesting data. You can see my results here.
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