Saving My Hands the Work!

I am taking the Google Read and Write investigation to another level for this blog post. I am attempting to write this entire post just using the speech to text feature on Google read and write(,) comma so forgive me if there are errors in my text.

An interesting feature I am noticing about the speech to text is that on the Side Bar, there will be a little note that gives you tips and pointers as you're using the feature. For example, instead of saying enter to get to a new line(,) it tells me that I can just say new line. I am also in the process of testing this out in my backyard where there is traffic noise. It doesn't seem to be interfering with my Chromebook picking up my voice. I think it's neat because it means I can do work outside when I can't really see what's on the screen.

I think the highlighting feature on Google Read and Write is really neat for students who have a hard time viewing a lot of texts at once. It allows students to highlight different parts of a Google Doc in different colours, and then to collect all of those highlights at the end. This would be really helpful for students who need to have those important pieces of information be the only things that they are viewing. There is also a really cool thing called the screen mask which allows students to only focus on small parts of the text at once by creating a screen over the other parts of the text. Again, this would be really helpful for some students who have a hard time focusing on the entire text at once.

It was good to be back in class this week with everyone. We first looked at the writing process, and completed a writing task analysis. Once again, I was really surprised at the enormity of how many steps are involved in the writing process. Below, you can see a picture of what this.

I have a few students that I work with who have challenges when it comes to grip of their (pencil, ) pants Salama so I was really interested to find out about all of the different low-tech options that are available to them(.) period Particularly, I really enjoy learning about the Fingertip pen and the writing bird. I have noticed that one of my students has really large handwriting and it takes him a really long time to produce any written work. When (using) the Chromebooks, he is much faster at getting his ideas out. I have found that learning all that we have has been making me much more aware about my students and (their needs) in my classroom. For instance, yesterday I was working with a student on writing a cover letter for his Co-op portfolio. He struggles massively with reading and with spelling. After asking me about a few different words and doubting their spelling himself, I thought what a great opportunity for him to try out the word prediction feature of Google Read (and Write) them right. He still continued to ask me many questions about how to set up his letter, but I notice that he stopped asking me about the spelling part(.) He's able to recognize the word when he sees it but struggles with spelling it correctly by himself. I have been granted access to this extension for most of the students that I work with, so I am looking forward to testing out some of the features as I learn more about them in the coming week.

I really enjoyed learning about the different apps that are available to students who have challenges with writing. I like how with co-writer, there are specific dictionaries for certain topics that will allow students who have challenges getting their ideas onto paper to be able to elaborate on their ideas more than they would with a pen and paper. I am looking forward to working on my case study and testing out some of the different strategies we talked about this week such as speech to text, word completion, and word prediction.

It is amazing to me how many different technological options are out there in the world, whether they are apps (,)comma or software for different systems. Our task this week was to look at the Mac system, and to investigate what types of software are out there for Mac users to help with the writing process. We found so many different ones that were amazing. I think sometimes we also forget that there are many tools that come with the system that are available to us without having to add anything to the computer. I think that Apple has done an amazing job of using the speech to text software with all of their devices. It is so easy to be able to just text someone without actually having to use your fingers, or to make a note on your computer, or your phone or (to) two comment on things using a voice note. Allowing students to have access to these different platforms make learning more accessible to everyone. Below, you will find our word cloud that we created with all of the different software options that we found for Mac in just half an hour. There are so many great features included in the (them) AMA that I think a lot of students in our system could benefit from.

As a person who doesn't really enjoy the sound of their own voice, using speech to text has been interesting for me for this blog post. I have found that I'm able to speak pretty quickly, which I wasn't really expecting. I have been trying to formulate thoughts as I'm speaking, which I usually am better at (while) well just typing out my thoughts. I think (that) in order to use this technology, students may wish to be in a in a quiet place so that others won't hear them as they're using it. For this reason, I am home alone while writing this post. It's also important to make sure that you speak clearly, (and) as the words are not always picked up exactly as you have said them. I am a person who is fairly apt with punctuation, so I am fairly good at remembering to include that, but I can see where some students may struggle with this. I am also still learning how to include different forms of punctuation (-) for example(,) parentheses. I would like to investigate this further and how to include those using a voice command. I will go back through now and correct the grammar using an orange color in my blog post. Hope you all have a great week, and I'll see you next Saturday!