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WordAloud® - teaching English and literacy worldwide"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin | ||
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Quick-start Guide to WordAloudYou can have this guide displayed in a Window alongside the WordAloud Window, so you can try things out with WordAloud while you are reading the guide. Word or sentence display: WordAloud is basically a text reader. It displays the text either a word at a time or a sentence at a time. You can switch between these modes using the hash key ('#'). The word or sentence is displayed in a central area of the WordAloud Window, which we call the "main field". Files: The text that you are reading with WordAloud is kept in a Windows file. The initial text (i.e. the text that you read when you start up WordAloud) is kept in C:\cloudw\intro.htm. The text is marked up so that it appears like a web page. (It is marked up in the mark-up language called HTML, used on the World Wide Web.) Operation: WordAloud can be operated by keyboard or mouse. You have the choice. You can navigate around the text in the file either by pressing the arrow keys on the keyboard, or by clicking on the arrow buttons you can see below the main field. There are keyboard equivalents for just about everything you can do with the mouse, and vice versa. The arrow keys/buttons are used as follows. The right arrow is used for stepping forwards through the text, and the left arrow for stepping backwards. The up and down arrows are using for changing levels (see below) and for pausing. There are four levels: The current level is displayed below the main field. You change level using the up and down arrows. The down arrow also has the affect of pausing the reading, and the up arrow of allowing the reading to continue. At the top level, WordAloud will read through the whole document/file. At the sentence, word and spelling levels, WordAloud reads a sentence, word or single character. At these levels, the effect of right and left arrows is to step you forwards or backwards a sentence, word or character. Thus at the sentence level, you can read through one sentence, then step onto the next (using the right arrow key/button), and so on, until you've read to the end of the document. Similarly at the word level, you can step a word at a time through the document. Progress: You can see whereabouts you are in the document from the progress indicator in the top right corner of the Window. The indicator shows you the percentage of the way through the document, between the beginning (0%) and the end (100%). Extension mode: I've pointed out the arrow buttons below the main field, and there are other control buttons which we'll come onto later. These are sufficient while you are reading a document. But if you want to write text or browse the internet, then some extra fields and controls are available. You switch this extension mode on and off by typing '&' (called 'ampersand'). Typing: While in extension mode, you can go into editing mode by typing control-e or clicking on the Edit button. You can then type into WordAloud and see the characters appear in the main field as you type them. You can cut and copy text from the main field, or paste text into it, as with a conventional editor, using control-x (cut), control-c (copy) and control-v (paste). In this way you can pass text between WordAloud and other Windows application programs such as Microsoft Word. While in editing mode you have four speech options: You can cycle between these options using control-e. To escape from editing mode back to the normal reading mode, press the escape key, or click on the Escape button in the bottom row of controls. Removing clutter: If you don't want to see any controls below the main field, then you can toggle a "full screen mode" on and off by typing zero ('0'). The full screen mode is useful if you want to display words as large as possible, making them look like flash cards, visible from a distance, e.g. by a group of students. You should have the WordAloud Window maximised. If necessary, click on the square next to the 'X' in the top right corner of the Window. Adding pictures: If there are pictures associated with your text, then you can see them displayed alongside the text, either below (by typing '_') or to the left (by typing '|'). You will see that the main field is split in two, with one half displaying text and the other displaying the picture. Pictures from web pages can be displayed in this way. You can jump to the next picture by typing 'j' or to the previous using 'J'. Note that pictures are "embedded" in the text using the HTML mark-up language. The pictures are displayed alongside the text that follows them. Pictures are automatically resized if they are too big to fit in the space WordAloud provides. Settings panel: If you type one ('1') or click on the "Options…" button you will see a panel where you can set the size of the text, the colours for the text and background, set the speech volume and speed, etc. At the top of the panel you can set the "Mode" to one of five settings: You will probably want to keep to the "speech (no pause)" mode to begin with. Changing file: You can change to a new file to read by opening it. Type two ('2') or click on the "File…" button and you will see a file directory from which you can choose another file to open for reading. Or you can browse your computer to find some other file to read. Note that WordAloud can only read certain types of text files. To read from, say, a Microsoft Word document, it is necessary to save it as a type: Plain Text (*.txt) or Web Page (*.htm; *.html) file. You can click on the 'Back' button (or type '<') to change back to reading the previous file. | |
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Copyright © 2006 |
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