This week I joined with teachers, students, researchers and policy writers at Melbourne University to discuss student voice. This conference was hosted by Social Education Victoria and made possible by the conference partners, The University of Melbourne, Education and Training Victoria, Foundation for Young Australians and Connect. Over three days, participants engaged in rigorous dialogue about the significance of student voice and what is required to ensure its benefits are maximised for all.
As with many things in education, the outcome achieved will be a result of all that we do. Efforts to promote and empower student agency, voice and choice certainly falls into this category. We might have the best of intentions but unless each of our messaging systems align, we are unlikely to achieve success. So where do our efforts go wrong and what else might we change so that student agency is genuinely a part of our learning environment?
Better late than never as I have just joined this group. ReadSpeaker provides text to speech (TTS) engines for websites and iOS and Android apps which combine text reading with word by word text highlighting on any end user hardware.
The service has a growing range of early Australian adopters including Centrelink, Comcare, Dept of Health and Ageing, Dept of Human Services, FAHCSIA, and the Australian Paralympic Committee. In elearning, adopters include Gale and Cengage.
I would be happy to provide information to interested elearning professionals and I can be reached on richard.ings@readspeaker.com.
Screenjelly records your screen activity with your voice so you can spread it via Twitter or email.
Use it to quickly share cool apps or software tips, report a bug, or just show stuff you like.