Talking PowerPoints

Talking PowerPoints are an excellent tool to use with students to actively engage them in learning. I find them to be especially useful and effective for my students with motor impairments. With this tool favorite children’s books can easily be made into an interactive tool for students. Pages from books can be scanned into a computer and then imported into a PowerPoint presentation. Once the pictures are into the PowerPoint a voice can be recorded to coincide with the words on each page of the story. Here is a link to step-by-step directions about how to create a talking PowerPoint http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/Tutorials/talkingBooks/ppt_ace.pdf. I find these to be a great tool for my students with physical impairments because a Big Mack switch can be attached to a computer and then the switch, when hit, acts like a mouse click and advances the pages on the PowerPoint. This allows the students to control the story, when they hit the switch the page turns and the voice recording begins to play.

Materials Needed:
Here is some information on the materials needed for a talking PowerPoint presentation.
Enabling Devices http://enablingdevices.com/catalog offers a great online store that has numerous assistive technology devices. Here is a link on the Enabling Devices webpage to an adapter that will allow a capability switch to be hooked up to a computer http://enablingdevices.com/catalog/computer-aids/mouse-switches/interactive-mouse-for-pc. Here is another link from the Enabling Devices webpage; this one for capability switches http://enablingdevices.com/catalog/capability_switches.