Today I had a chance to review the website NextUp. This site talks about TextAloud3 which is text to speech software. I found it interesting that they market this software towards the general population, as a time saver (“listening while you exercise, workout, or during your commute”). The software converts Word documents, emails, web pages, and PDF files into speech, so it has a pretty wide range. I imagine you could scan any document to the computer and save it as a PDF file to have it read. This software also syncs with iTunes, which is definitely a plus! Items can be uploaded to any type of MP3 player so that the text can be referred to at any time, rather than just in front of a computer.
There is a wide selection of voices (29+) and accents to choose from; the voices can also speak in different languages, which I thought was interesting and certainly helpful. While the different languages and accents can assist in improving comprehension, the choices of voices and accents can just be fun for children. As long as they can understand the words, then the software is doing it’s job. It just may make the task more engaging if the speech is coming from a voice they enjoy listening to.
Overall the software seems like a good deal. For the basic software it is $29.95, but an extra $25 for voices (which could be worth it). If there was a need for text to speech conversion in my future classroom, I would certainly keep this software in mind.
References: http://www.nextup.com/
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