Reading and typing tools for increased productivity

[Pyrrha Rivers]

I have just discovered a couple off tools that well make a great difference and my productivity and I am very excited to share my discoveries.

Both my education and communication will be enhanced by the use of these tools. Perhaps these are old news for many but since I’ve just discovered them I decided to share them because they might be new to some or even just one person who could find them beneficial.

I was recently introduced to voice typing; a feature available in Google docs. That made me wonder if it would be possible to type into other kinds of documents such as word documents, email or wherever else I need to type.

I later had a conversation with a friend who shared her concern for a very talented friend of hers with limited literacy skills. Knowing there are technology tools that read text to people I decided to do a search. What I discovered is that not only can I speak to type but I can have virtually any text read to me by using features that are readily available on my computer! I followed a couple of simple tutorials and set up my computer to both type and read to me. I’ve spent the better part of this afternoon listening to an e-book while doing my laundry and some other housekeeping tasks. I got through one third of the book while doing something else. I will now be able to do so much more reading in a fraction of the time without necessarily having to set time aside to do it. I am so excited with this discovery that I wanted to share it because I know it will greatly improve my productivity as well as my education.

I voice typed this entire message in no time. You are required to make a few corrections but nothing more than the editing and typos that you would normally have to correct when manually typing and again, it happens in a fraction of the time. This is so, so exciting to me!

I hope someone finds it useful.

If you do please add a comment and share how you are using these tools.

Here are the links to the tutorials I found helpful.

Text to Speech

Mac: https://youtu.be/tawg6Z8qi4M

https://youtu.be/38C_gbz6oBA

PC: https://youtu.be/QxOx-hJrxro

Speech to text

https://youtu.be/-tCL-5Cfj-Y

https://youtu.be/Q1YqvzIqyDI

Best wishes in all your endeavors.