Preschool Teachers and Primary Special Education Teachers received a new program, Letters Alive, to use with their students!  It’s pretty cool.  See a video below that talks about it:

When trying to implement this program, we discovered a couple of things that may help others, so I’m sharing them here.  The most important thing we learned was that this program needs an integrated video card with lots of memory in order to work properly.  If you descide to use it, it’s very important to work with Logical Choice before purchasing anything to make sure the computers you plan to run it on will work.

If you are one of the teachers that was lucky enough to recieve a kit, here are some things that may help you out!

 Letters Alive Tips and Tricks

•  Use your cart for Letters Alive. Keep the document camera with the cart and leave it set up.
• Make sure mat is flat as possible (store rolled, not folded).
• The neoprene Mat is washable (do not put in dryer).
• You can wipe cards with damp cloth but DO NOT LAMINATE or submerge.
• Make sure the dongle and document camera are plugged in.
• Keep the document camera as high as possible.
• Use training videos in the software.
• Bring alphabet card in from the right (up high).
• Be careful not to cover cards.
• The program runs in Full Screen Mode.  Use Esc to exit and Alt+Enter to go back to full screen mode.

 If you are having Document Camera isses:

• Choose Letters Alive
• Choose Letters Alive Camera Setup
• Make sure auto focus is unchecked

There are three different modes for Letters Alive:

Letters Alive Mode

• Introduces Letters
• Uppercase and Lowercase
• Sentences

Root Word Mode

• Sounding out letters one at a time.
• Uppercase and Lowercase practice

T-Shirt Mode

• This works with Letters Alive T-shirts.

Ideas for the Classroom:

There are lots of ideas for using this program in the classroom on the Logical Choice Website .  Check them out here!