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When we moved to Irvington, we had deer grazing in our back yard & Jimmy didn't see them. The rest of us would point and point, and exclaim, "Deer! Deer, Jimmy! Look!" and he would cooperatively jab his finger in the direction we were pointing and say, "Deer! Deer!"
But he obviously didn't see them.
Then one day, a few weeks later, we were driving down a neighboring road when all of a sudden Jimmy started craning around in his seat, staring at something out the window, a look of amazement on his face: deer!
He'd finally seen the deer, and he was thunderstruck.
I think the deer were moving, but I no longer remember. In any event, it was one of those fun moments with an autistic person where for a moment or two you feel you see the world through their eyes. Jimmy's attitude seemed to be: "Holy cow. I had no idea you were talking about actual deer standing around in people's yards in broad daylight."
The point is: for years I've had a scheme for years to teach Jimmy how to read - or at least how to recognize letters - by putting together a PowerPoint with moving letters.
Which I finally got around to tonight.
So here's a question.
I can get a letter or a word to enter from the right and move slowly across the screen to the left margin, where it stops.
I can also record the sound of the letter of word.
What I can't do are two things:
- I can't synch the sound to the letter. Instead, the letter moves across the screen, stops, and then, a few seconds later, the letter sound plays.
- I can't make a word spell itself. I can't get a slide to send first one letter clear across the screen, with synched-up sound, then a second letter, and finally a third. Instead, if I've written a word, then entire word crosses the screen as a whole. (Whole language in PowerPoint! It's everywhere.
[pause]
I just asked C., who had 3 years of instruction in PowerPoint in the middle school, how to do these things.
He doesn't know.
"I was never very good at PowerPoint."
1 comment:
I use PP 2007 so I'm a bit rusty on the older, more common versions but in 2007 (and I think in earlier too) you can set how an animation begins. Choices are; on click, after previous, with previous.
If you want to sync the sound with letter movement you have to set them both (each is seen as an automation event)to fire together. If the letter is first (on click) then the sound has to be set to start 'with previous'.
I think if you plow around a bit there is also an option to have individual letters automate. If you can't find that option just set up each letter in its own text box and automate each box.
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