Spritz

Last week, I posted about Readsy: a site where you can read text by isolating one word at a time.  Today's post is about a similar site called Spritz. "When you’re spritzing, you’re reading text one word at a time in our “redicle,” a special visual frame we designed for reading."  Using Spritz or Readsy to read helps readers to better focus their attention.  Instead of being exposed to large amounts of text, readers are instead given one word at a time.  What makes it so different? Using Spritz or Readsy allows you to read without eye movement.  Here's a link to even more science behind the concept.

While Spritz and Readsy are very similar sites, Spritz allows you to add a bookmarklet to be able to Spritz from anywhere.  Bookmarklets are created with software that is stored in a bookmark that allows interaction with web browsers.  If students find Spritzing to be helpful, they can click the added bookmarklet and it will read any webpage to them.  There are some web pages that do not allow bookmarklets, but it's worth a shot!  Here is more info on how to add Spritz as a bookmarklet.

Another great feature of Spritz is that it will also work with other languages.  There are 20+ languages that are supported by the tool.  This would be a great tool for students to use in their foreign language classes.

While both sites are great tools, I find Readsy to be more compatible for classroom use.  The main difference between the two is that Spritz will only read web-based text while Readsy allows you to import/upload Google Docs, PDFs, and URLs.  If you are wanting to Spritz in English, Readsy is the way to go.

Here is Spritz in action:

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