Academic phrasebook to aid writing

Posted on July 4, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

This could save the day when you cannot think what to write in certain parts of an assignment or dissertation – the University of Manchester has an Academic Phrasebank.

It is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological “nuts and bolts” of writing organised under the headings to the left. It was designed primarily with international students whose first language is not English in mind. However, if you are a native speaker writer, you may still find parts of the material helpful.

Thanks to Andy McMahon

BrailleSense schedule manager for appointments

Posted on July 2, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

“I do not tend to use a calendar. However, for critical appointments, I put them down in my BrailleSense’s schedule manager.”

This works well with a PC and screen reader. It has a calendar and clock for alarms. Appointments can be made very quickly using Braille, whilst having a conversation or in a lecture. It has an internet connection, can be used for social networking and word processing.

Sam – Live and Studio Sound

iSoton app for bus timetable, campus map and lecture timetable.

Posted on June 1, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

“I use the free university iPhone bus timetable and map app when I am in a hurry and need to find my way about. It also has my timetable and modules.”

Nicole – Engineering

Access ebooks from libraries with Kobo Reader

Posted on May 4, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

“I have discovered that the Kobo e-reader can open protected (DRM’d) epubs from libraries. They are synced by connecting the device to a PC with Adobe Digital Editions installed. But as far as I know it has no TTS.”

The Kobo wifi has adjustable fonts and views but these can depend on the book that has been downloaded.

Using the free Calibre ebook management service is another alternative when documents need to be converted to an accessible format

Neil – Psychology

Using Ctrl+F or Command +F to find things – keyboard shortcuts.

Posted on April 23, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

“I would find that when I am reading poilicies which have so much text to read, I go to the summary and then use the find and just go to the specific bit. If you know you need a specific item such as ‘consent’ – then use Ctrl +F [Command +F], add the word to the search box and find it directly.”

Amber – nursing.

Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don’t Know How to Use CTRL+F

This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don’t know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don’t use it at all. (Alexis Madrigal)

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts for Windows

vBookz PDF – free iPhone app for reading PDFs with text to speech.

Posted on April 22, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

vBookz PDF Voice Reader

“I’ve just tried a different vBookz app [from the one that offers free Audiobooks – 30,000+ classics read aloud with text to speech]! Its called vBookz PDF Voice Reader. It is a free PDF TTS app and will read directly from a PDF, so you see the page as it should be, not just plain text. It uses a moving box, rather than highlighting – the box surrounds the word currently being read. The screen shot shows how the reading speed is controlled and page control.”

The company provide a quick overview of the vBookz PDF Voice Reader app on YouTube.