As I mentioned before, I was very interested in voice typing which Dorothy Burt mentioned at our first DFI session. I had previously tried something similar the year before and was met with frustration. Luckily, Dorothy gave a tip - to create a "soundbox". Another school had made these from apple boxes - but she said all you really needed was a way to project the voice to the speaker. And because there was no way I could have apple boxes stacked in my class, we opted for party cups instead.
My tamariki have responded well to the tool, my reluctant writers as well as my more capable writers. Last week, one of our other teachers in our cohort mentioned the "read & write" extension and I thought that just made sense for a next step, so all week I have been encouraging my students to read back what they have written using read & write, reflect and share their thinking with someone, and then use voice typing to record their ideas. Below is a snapshot of both tools in action. This student had found some facts and copied them straight on to his document, it was only at the last minute I decided to record this so apologies for the camera work.
One thing I am really enjoying about this is that my students are slowly starting to see chromebook as a tool to make life easier, I myself have been using voice typing to write my reports and it is a game changer for me. Recommend this to anyone that loathes typing.
This is brilliant Sally. Thanks so much for taklng the time to write this up. You innovation with the party cups is brilliant. I will be passing this link on tom lots of people. I do like the way you have explained your use of voice tying and read/write.
ReplyDeleteDorothy