ELA in the Digital Age: Text Complexity Online Tools

Here are some tech tools that will help teachers and students be better prepared to access complex grade level text, and increase their student vocabulary, knowledge, and capacity.

Check out the Text Compactor website, which allows you to create a summary of text to varying degrees or percentages.  

Another site that does this function is Rewordify ~ free, online tool that is ready to use with no installation. Helps takes complicated text from websites and make it simpler for students. Does not necessarily set it to a specific reading level, but does take difficult text and make it easier for students to read and understand. Watch this video about Rewordify with students. Watch this video showing you how to create a library of reading for students online.

Third option to try, The Readability Test Tool.  This site allows you to enter a web URL or text as direct input.

Announcify ~ this extension is a text to speech app that will read websites out loud for students and also clear the clutter on the webpage. Already installed for WGSD students.

SpeakIt! ~  another extension that will allow the reader to select online text to be read out loud.  Already installed for WGSD students

Readability ~ a web extension that removes the clutter from a website and makes online content easier for students to read.  Already installed for WGSD students

Kami ~ both a Chrome app and extension that allows you to open pdf and word (.docs) documents in the Chrome browser.  I opened a Read Works document, as an example.  I will then able to with the free account, highlight, add, underline, and strikethrough text.  I could add comments and then I could download, save, share my annotated document, either to my computer or to my Google Drive and keep all annotations.  I think this could be very powerful for supporting reading of online content.  Give it a try and let me know if this should be added to student’s accounts.

Text Help Study Skills ~ a Google Docs add-on that lets students highlight and then collect and extract those highlights from Google Docs.  “Used by educators in the classroom to help students identify and group key facts together, indicate new words to learn, or collect research to assist with studying. Texthelp’s Highlighting Tools are great for all content and grade levels”

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Resources used for this post:
Figurelli, Steve, and Natalie Franzi. "5 Tools That Demystify Text Complexity - Literacy in the Digital Age." Teaching Channel: Tchers Voice. N.p., 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/08/26/literacy-in-the-digital-age-text-complexity-sap/>..