English and Digital Literacy

Free Teaching Resources. Throughout the digital revolution there has always been one consistent feature of every desktop and laptop ever made... The keyboard. And I don’t think our qwerty layout is going anywhere.

English Literacy is obviously a teaching priority. Learning correct spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting are schooling “101’s”. But there has never before been such focus on digital literacy.

Learning how to hand address a letter with attention to your word spacing (Tracking) and word height (Leading) was something I remember spending hours studying in junior school. So why do we assume that student can just transfer these skills when using a PC or indeed iPad? And using an Apple style template is not enough for me.

Being able to create a text document is surely high on the list of our Digital Literacy 101, right? Basic understanding of bullets and indents are essential for constructing an efficiently produced email, wiki or blog entry. Paragraph styles are always referenced in any HTML coding. These basic skills deserve to be featured with greater prominence in the curriculum.

So to support such an effort I have created you a Pages Essentials document. Please download it from the "Apple in the Classroom" tab in the menu at iSupport.com.au. Here you will find what I consider to be essential features of the creating a text document.

Student support, text to speech

Problem - Student has to read a 5000 word document. Student has a low concentration span and needs assistance. Solution - One click -Text to Speech conversion.

Another Problem - Student collects loads of text while researching a topic and needs to read or scan through many compiled articles quickly.

Another Solution - Text to speech conversion, automatically added to iTunes library for later listening.

OS X has some excellent built in features which can assist students in their studies. One of the most impressive features is the ability to quickly convert paragraphs of text to spoken word and then transfer the spoken word to your iTunes library for later listening, perhaps while commuting to school or exercising in the evening.

Since introducing this feature to a number of students who struggle with their concentration, I have seen them listen to and consume many documents, study articles from wikipedia and even finish entire novels. All of this can be done while on the move too, if you listen back via your iPod.

Where possible it is always best to have the text printed out so that the student can follow the words and make notes if necessary. However as a quick study aid, while surfing the internet and researching - a good technique is to collect many paragraphs on your topic, listen back to it and then make your own notes and observations.

A good technique you can use in class

Ask your students to research their topics by collecting (and referencing) many different internet sources. Once they have compiled different texts, simply convert all the written research to Spoken Track. That evening and while traveling to school the next day listen back to the research, and once in class recite and/or write down what you have remembered from listening to the 'research track'.

Here's how.

10.7

• To move spoken text recordings automatically to iTunes, you must first (click on your desktop once) go to the Finder menu - Services - Services Preferences

• Ensure that in the Services menu 'Add to Spoken track is enabled'
• Now go back to you Pages or Safari application and highlight some text.
• From the application menu choose Services 'Add to iTunes as a spoken word.

• The processing time may take a few moments depending on how much text you have entered. iTunes will open once complete and the file is ready to drop onto your iPod or iPhone for listening later.

In Lion 10.8 the process is a little simpler

• Simple highlight your text and right click. The service has already been activated for you. Just select 'Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track'.

Setting your OS X System Language correctly

Do you ever find your Mac wrongly trying to correct your spelling?  A common example of this would be words such as 'organisation' wanting to be spelt with a 'z'.  Or of course colour, analyse, and fibre all having American variants.  This can be very distracting when creating beautiful page layouts when all you can see is squiggly red lines underlining everything. This is a problem for any English speaking country that is not America.  And it is no surprise that your Mac has been set up with "American English" as a standard (We'll later find that American English is listed as just English).  Which perhaps should not be the case seeming as Canadian and Australian English largely follow British usage.

Well here is how you can set your system language to suit your country of residence so that you can always get it right.

1. Your first step is to head to your System Preferences (Applications > System Preferences).
2. Click on 'Language & Text' where we can specify exactly the variation of English we require.

   

3. Drag Languages into order you prefer?  Well English is already at the top, this is in fact American English.  You'll need to locate British, Canadian or Australian English yourself.
4. Click on Edit List... and here you will find many different languages hidden away.  Scroll through the list and check the box next to the language you need.
5. Lastly make sure that you drag your preferred language to the top of the list.  If an application supports the first language in the list, its menus and dialogs will appear in that language. If it doesn’t support the first language, it will use the second language in the list, and so forth.

Once you log back in changes take effect.