Text-To-Speech Applications to Develop Educational Materials

Abstract

[EN] There are several ways to develop educational materials and several different types of educational materials depending on the audience, objectives, topics or themes, type of education, among others. One of the most common educational materials developed is the use of presentations slides where to shape the information that the trainer wishes to share. The most used presentation graphics packages are Microsoft PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress and Apple KeyNote. These systems enable Word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and displaying different presentation management tools to design and configure a presentation. This educational material is usually used to be shown during an explanation in a master class or online through an e-learning platform. In the case that the education material is available through an online resource, it is important not only to present the information in a readable manner but: (i) to add the explanation as a spoken sound version in order to give to the receiver more information than the one that is displayed in the slides and (ii) to avoid fatigue due to reading all the information of the slides.

Currently, there are different text-to-speech applications that allow to play sound files based on text without the interaction of humans. This paper focuses on these applications, which their main characteristics are and which their benefits and weaknesses are in order to select the most appropriate one to develop the different types of educational materials.