Too tired to read carefully? Perhaps your computer will read the material to you. Use these instructions to test your computer’s reading abilities. Set up your computer to read to you.
If you are an auditory learner, or your eyes are tired, I recommend listening to the course materials and readings to help improve information retention. Set up your computer now so you can listen to instructions and listen to your web pages to check for errors.
Chrome Browser (highly recommended)
- Click the Navicon menu
icon and choose More Tools, then choose Extensions from the popup list and scroll to the bottom of the list of extensions to click on 
. - Search for SpeakIt! and/or TuneIn and/or Select and Speak. Add both.
- To listen to any paragraph, select it then click the sound
or brain 
icon that was just installed on the Chrome Toolbar (to the right of the address bar). If you prefer one extension over the other, delete the other. - Click the icon again to adjust settings. You might want to speed up or slow down the text.
Macintosh
Choose this option only if you don’t like Chrome’s extensions.
- Set up Preferences for Speech to use a keystroke of your choice.
- From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
- Click the Speech icon then the Text to Speech button. Choose a Voice and Speed.
- Install Samantha if you want the reader to sound like Siri.
- Click the Set Key button and choose a keystroke you can remember.
- From any document or web site, select text you want read, and click your new keystroke.
Windows
Choose this option only if you don’t like Chrome’s extensions.
- Follow instructions for set up and use of Speech/Text-to-Speech and the Narrator controls:
Windows XP and Vista, Windows 8, or Windows 7 - To read an entire window, click the window and then press CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR. To silence the speech, press CTRL.
Or download the Natural Readers program; it may work better.
