Creating Early Literacy and Readiness Activities with Clicker 5 Editing/Creating Talking Books with Clicker 5
Presented at Closing The Gap, October 2006 Open the At School – Read activity in the Examples folder of Clicker 5. We will use this as a template for a story about a visit to a farm. This is a story format with repetitive lines and beautiful clipart that can reinforce vocabulary from any content area.
Scroll through a few pages to see the format. Each page in this example has a button to read the text out loud. In our edited version, we will change it to automatically read the text as the page turns.
Each page starts, “I like to…”
The final page simply says, “At school I like to do lots of things.” It shows pictures of each activity in the story.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 1 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
To make a new story about a trip to a farm, we will begin to make changes in the master slide. This will minimize the editing needed on each page. Under the Edit menu, select Edit Mode, then click on Explorer in the Editing Toolbar.
Save this as a new activity by selecting File/ Save as New Grid Set. Give it a new name and Save.
Double-click on the Master Slide called page.
Right-click on the cell above the text box and select Cell Properties. Change Background color to Transparent and uncheck the box for Show Border.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 2 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Under the Grid menu, select Grid Properties. Click on the Sound & Video tab. Click the radio button next to Grid Opening/Speak or Play this… Click on the Insert button, then select Text Boxes/ Textbox1.
Before closing out of the Grid Properties window, click on the Appearance tab. Because this is going to be about a farm, choose a light blue for the Background color to simulate sky and bright green for the Additional color to simulate grass. Then click OK. Right-click on the button with the speaker icon and delete it.
Shift-click in the Text box and type, “I saw a”. Change the font by Clicking on the Properties button.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 3 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Then click Choose Font.
Increase the font size to 36 points. Click OK and OK to go back.
Back in Explorer, right-click on each of the pages that were based on the old page master slide and delete them. You should be left with the Start page, Cover1, and end.
Now click on the master grid called. “page,” drag it up to the Sequence 1 window, and drop it between the cover1 and end. Repeat this for as many pages as you would like to have in your book.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 4 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Double-click on the start grid. Hold down the shift key, then click on the Title text.
Type, “At the Farm..” Click the arrow to navigate to the next page.
Shift-click on the text box. Type At the Farm over At School.
Shift-click on the picture of the classroom even though there is no text showing. Type farm and hit enter. An image of a farm will replace the schoolroom. Shift-click on the word farm, then hit Backspace and Enter. The text is now gone. Now you have a nice-looking cover page.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 5 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Click the arrow to advance to the next page. Shift-click in the text box and add “brown hen.” to finish the sentence. Shift-click in the space set aside for an image. Type “hen,” and type enter.
Now shift-click on “hen” and delete it with the backspace key. Type Enter..
The hen’s image will fill the space. Click the arrow to advance to the next page.
Open the Picture Palette from the Editing Toolbar and find a nice pink pig. Drag & drop it in the picture cell.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 6 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Shift-click to delete the text and you now have another page finished in your book.
Maybe you would like to put some sound effects in this story. You probably have quite a few if you have Microsoft Office. Click on your Windows Start button, then choose Search. Search all files & folders for files named *.wav. After the search completes, Click on Name to sort them alphabetically. Scroll down and look for cow, pigs, etc. copy the ones you’d like to use into a folder on your desktop. At least while you are working on this project. Name it farm story or sounds. Open My Computer and doubleclick on the Shared Documents folder.. Drag and drop the folder with your sound files into the Clicker 5 folder.
You can also find sound files online or purchase disks full of great sounds at low cost.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 7 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Click on the Sounds button on the Editing Toolbar.
In this window, click on Sound Library Settings.
Click on Register New Library.
Click on the button to browse to find your folder, then click OK.
Fill out the rest of the box like this and click OK.
Check the box to use the library now called farm sounds and click OK again.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 8 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Back in the story, open the Cell palette from the Editing Toolbar. Click on the icon with the speaker icon.
Drag it onto the page with your pig. Close the Cell palette box.
Right-click on the speaker button and choose Cell Properties. Click the radio button next to Play recorded sound or video. Click on the down arrow and select Browse….
Navigate to the Farm sounds folder, open it an choose a great pig snorting sound.
Click Open.
Click on this arrow to try your sound If you like it click OK. If not, try another sound.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 9 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.
Now try it in your story. Edit the other pages for content and you are done! Enjoy your creation.
Jane Ricard, M.S.Ed. FLLAC Educational Collaborative 1, 2006 10 This activity is available for download at http://creativesupports.wikispaces.com/Clicker+5+files.
Oct.