Add Text-To-Speech To Any PDF With Book Creator....And For Poetry Month Too!

 

I love finding ways to support the diverse needs of all of our learners.  One of my favorite new ways to do this is the Text-to-Speech (TTS) for PDF feature in Book Creator. 

With TTS in Book Creator, educators can import a PDF, add Scan for text, and students can click on the speaker icon to have the text read aloud. 

I love this accessibility feature and find more ways to use it every week.  Today, while working on a few new activities for Poetry Month, I used Book Creator and the TTS feature to create four poetry activities for our students this month.

Let me show you how I created the I Am...Poem Book Creator activity with Text-to-Speech for PDF. 

When looking for activities, I found this free printable Poetry Worksheets Bundle on We Are Teachers.  I downloaded the free poetry worksheets as a PDF. 

I went to Book Creator and clicked on New Book. 

I then clicked on Import PDF or ePub.

I imported the Poetry Worksheets Bundle.

It brought up all four of the pages of the PDF.  I could select which pages to add or all of them. 

Once you select the pages to add, you can choose a book shape.  

I really like how it shows you what the PDF will look like in Book Creator.  

I selected the Portrait 2:3. 

The PDF opened up in Book Creator and the first thing I did was...

...click on Crop Image. 

I cropped just a small part of the PDF to start this poetry activity with our students.  

Once the piece of the PDF was cropped, I had enough room at the bottom of the page to add a frame.  

I wanted to add the frame so our students would have a place to also illustrate their I Am...Poem. 

To add a frame, I clicked on Images...

...and searched Frame. 

When I found the frame I wanted to add, I clicked on it...

...and added it to the page. 

After I had everything set of the page, it was ready to add the TTS to the PDF.  

With the PDF highlighted, I clicked on Scan for text. 

It scans the text and turns it into Text-to-Speech. 

Students will see the little Read to me icon and when they click on it, the text will be read to them. 

It even highlights the words in yellow as it is read.  You can see in the image above what that looks like.

When I had my poetry activity all set, it was ready to...

...Assign as an assignment to the new library I set up for Poetry Month.

I also published the book so you can use the I Am...Poem (We Are Teachers) Book Creator activity with your students. 

This is just one way to use the Text-to-Speech for PDF feature in Book Creator.  Just think of the possibilities and the way it can make learning and creativity even more accessible for your learners. 

Get Book Creator today, friends. 

I can't wait to see how you use Text-to-Speech for PDF within your classrooms and libraries.

And I can't wait to share another activity I created for School Library Month using Book Creator and PebbleGo soon.