CGHS Library

Apple Dictation

Voice to Text has been available on Apple computers for years. YEARS! The quality has vastly improved in the last two to three years, but everybody has been able to speak to their Apple and expect it to respond for a long time. Turn this feature on under System Preferences--Dictation and Speech. Though I could not make it work in Google Docs, it worked very well in Google Mail and Microsoft Word.

If you are interested in the Voice Commands that your computer understands, look at them here. You can create your own commands if you like.

Note: I made the following 1:39 video using Screencast-o-matic, iMovie, and a Saturday afternoon. It is a little embarrassing, but I am doing my best. Though I have played around with iMovie before, this was my first attempt at Screencast-o-matic. I know Mr. Doornbos, Mrs. Schroeder, and probably everybody else in the district have been using it forever. For the record, I liked it, and will be using it more.

Voice Typing in Google Docs

Voice typing in Google Docs should be available for our school accounts around September 21. When it is available for us, open the Tools drop-down menu and select Voice Typing. According to the people who have tested it, it is responsive and accurate. You need to tell it where to insert punctuation. (These may be the most useful commands to know: period, comma, exclamation point, question mark, new line, new paragraph.) If you are interested in a complete set of voice typing functions, click here.

Though this technology has been available on the Macintosh operating system for years (more about that tomorrow) and as a Chrome extension, it will be nice to have voice typing available within Google Docs.

One thing you might not have considered is that Voice Typing is pretty good at transcribing video as well. If you open YouTube in one browser window and a Google Doc in another, your computer can transcribe very well.