Talking Clock

Time dictates our every move and determines how we go on with our daily routines. As such, we need to make sure from a young age that we know how to tell time, because clocks are found everywhere. With applications like Talking Clock you can make sure youngsters properly know how to read and tell time.

The installation process takes little of your time, while system resources used to run the application are not something to worry about. Visual design is simple and fitted with several descriptions and hints as to what needs to be done.

A closer look and you realize the application's practicality is somewhere stuck in the middle. This is because there's no possibility to manually select hours you want to hear, nor let it sit quietly in your tray and speak out specific hours based on the system clock.

What you can do however, is pick from either a random or organized manner in which to have hours selected. Your whole screen is covered by the application, with no other option than to close it if you want to interact with Windows features.

Depending on your selection, an analog clock indicates hour and minute, while a digital display provides an alternative. There's no repeat button in case you didn't manage to properly understand how to pronounce from the first run, so you need to scroll until stumbling upon it again.

Before actually hearing the sound, you are advised to say it out loud yourself and compare to the audio feedback. Additional options let you set the precision at which to indicate time. As such, you can choose from five minute intervals to hourly selection.

Talking Clock is not really the best method to teach youngsters to tell time. It's packed with good intentions, covering the whole screen so that you can focus better and clear audio feedback. However, the poor set of features and no options to manually select hours make it only worth a few tries, after which you most likely practice with a real clock.