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"The National Association for Child Development and Blue Whale Apps have announced the release of their breakthrough app aimed at assisting children and adults with speech and articulation. The application, "Speech Therapy for Apraxia-Words," which is part of their NACD Home Speech Therapist line, is now available on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon App Store, and Barnes & Noble App Store for the iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook, and Android Tablets."

"Below is a selection of some good text to speech iPad apps that you can use with your students. Text to speech apps can be used for teaching all the four skills: listening, writing, reading, and speaking. They are also good for language learners and for special education students. You can also access the web version of text to speech tools here. Enjoy"

"Most of us know you should read something out loud when proofreading, but we may miss critical errors. We insert words we think are there, but aren't, because we wrote it. Using the text-to-speech function on your device will help prevent your internal autocorrect from missing errors. Over at TUAW, they suggest using the Mac's and iOS's built-in text to speech function. Windows, Android and Chrome have text-to-speech too, though, so this tip works anywhere. You'll hear words that are missing and punctuation that's off when the text doesn't sound right. It's no replacement for a human, but can help in a pinch."

"A very techno-skilled young teacher, Lindsay, was in a session with me on Friday. I could tell pretty quickly that she is keen on learning and has a lot of iPad expertise. During a discussion on uses for Dragon Dictation (an app that converts voice to text), Lindsay shared the speak selection feature of iOS as a complimentary technology. Great! I had never thought of tying dragon dictation to the voice over feature of the iPad before to give you a fully integrated speech-to-text-to-speech again experience."

"The newer versions of iOS include a fantastic text to speech engine that lets you select any text and have it spoken to you. This basically means you can have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch read you the content of any web page, notes, text files, or even eBooks and iBooks. Before you can use the text to speech function though, you have to enable it."

"George Takei knows how to tell a great story. In this case, a true story of his life. The famed Star Trek actor, activist, and social media star was in town recently to give a remarkable talk as part of a very special TEDxKyoto event. I was invited to watch the rehearsal just before the live event, so I arrived early and grabbed a front row seat. George did not give a speech in the traditional sense. There was no lectern, no notes, no teleprompter. George obviously was reciting the speech from memory-his live version was exactly the same as in the rehearsal-but the speech did not seem memorized. That is, when I was listening I was not aware that he was giving a speech or a prepared talk, I was just lost in the narrative flow of his story."

"Read and Write for Google is an excellent Chrome app that provides text-to-speech functions from your browser. They have just released a free iPad and Android app. The apps provide text to speech functions, which are great for ESL, learning disabled, visually challenged and struggling readers, on your device, just like the web app does in the Chrome Browser and Chromebooks."

"The iPad is a great device for assistive technology and text to speech is one of the most often used accessibility feature by teachers in special education and general education classrooms. Many teachers are not aware that it exists, but it does, and it has evolved to become a very usable solution with lots of valuable options to customize it to meet your needs. Here's what you need to know to get started with text to speech functionality on your iPad."

"Figurative speech is the language we use to spice up our writing. Besides their aesthetic value , figurative expressions and axioms cast a flavour of 'writerly professionalism' on the written piece. It does take so much practice for students to be adept at the use of figurative language and there are no shortcuts to learn that quickly. There are however some useful tips to help them in their learning process. Periodic table of the figures of speech is an example of a very good document students can draw on to consolidate and learn different ways to use figures of speech."

The idea of the Last Lecture, for example, rests on the idea that the professor will give a lecture as if it was his last opportunity to speak to the university community. Last lectures and commencement speeches dispense life lessons not traditionally taught in a classroom, and thanks to the viral power of YouTube, Last Lecture and commencement audiences are growing well beyond their intended numbers. Read below for our list of 10 inspiring Last Lectures and commencement speeches everyone should watch.

"John F. Kennedy is often reported to have said "The only reason to give a speech is to change the world." Over the years this has been paraphrased by many speaking and training professionals. Not surprisingly, people occasionally mock this kind of statement as being just so much hubris or pomposity. "Surely," they proclaim, "not every presentation or speech is important enough to even make the slightest difference." However, when we say "change the world," we do not mean necessarily to change the world in a monumental, earth-altering, life-changing way. The operative word in that phrase is change. Affecting a change is a necessary condition of an effective speech. "A presentation that doesn't seek to make change is a waste of time and energy," says business guru Seth Godin. "

If you can't watch the video on Facebook you can see it on YouTube - "If you've ever seen the movie The King's Speech, you remember the incredible feeling at the end when the King finally overcame the debilitating speech impediment he suffered from since he was a boy. Musharaf Asghar is no King, he is just a young man who has suffered his entire life, like the king, with a terrible stutter. In this heartwarming video, Mushy's teacher uses the same method as in the movie - using music to overcome anxiety - to help Mushy speak. For this man, even getting a few words out felt impossible, but once he started getting the hang of it, there was no stopping him."

"Announcify is a free text to speech application that is available as a Chrome browser extension. With Announcify installed in your browser any time you're viewing a webpage you can simply click on the Announcify icon in your browser and have the text of the page read to you. A bonus aspect of using Announcify is that in order to make a webpage easier to read it enlarges the text of the webpage and removes all sidebar content. In the video embedded below I provide a short demonstration of Announcify in action."

SpokenText is an online text to speech converter. Using it you can easily create audio recordings of any text content. We currently support English, French, Spanish and German text to speech conversion. You can use our site to record books, articles, web pages, your papers class notes or any other text content you want to have available to you in audio format. So that you can listen while you commute or exercise.

NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod.

"The iPad platform provides teachers with lots of good resources to assist in developing children's speech and language. The features of the iPad allows Apps that provide students with the ability to interact with words with all their senses. They can listen, see, touch and record while developing their vocabulary, language, articulation and grammar skills."

"This morning on Practical Ed Tech Live I answered a request for a free speech-to-text tool. There were two that I suggested. One was Dictation.io and the other was Dictanote."