“Babelbar works with Facebook, Twitter and Google docs. It is useful if you do not have your own text to speech program.”
Babelbar is an extension or add-on for internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari and appears over the web page. You need to highlight the text first then it will speak. It can change the colour background, font size and translate text.
Attendee at Accessing the Higher Ground Conference
“I really like the way I can scribble a maths equation on my iPhone and it will recognise my writing and then give me the answer!”
MyScript Calculator is free and can be downloaded onto an iPad, iPhone or Android tablet or phone. It is easy to use and copes with quite complex mathematical operations.
Rumi – RCAST, University of Tokyo
“Many of our students like to use the ‘howjsay’ website as part of their pre-reading of lecture notes. It gives an accurate pronunciation of unfamiliar technical terms, which can be used to prepare students for quick recognition when a word is said in a lecture. It also provides a multi-sensory input which will increase spelling accuracy. In addition, it can help students confidence in preparation for a presentation. Pronunciation can be practised to hopefully minimise slips and increase fluency.
Students have commented that it has a consistently higher accuracy level than some of the usual text to speech programs, which can struggle with technical words that are not phonetically regular. It is particularly popular with our medics. It has a clear and uncluttered layout and has the added benefit of not being license restricted so it can be used on many different pieces of hardware. Finally, as it is free so is available to students who are not DSA funded.”
This strategy was sent in via the Add a New Strategy form and we would like to thank The Disability Advisory Service at Imperial College
Teena has passed on advice about the EasyBib app for students that find it incredibly difficult or time consuming to provide a reference for written assignments. This free and useful iPad,iPod and iPhone 4 app is available through iTunes or as an Android app from Google Play. It will do most of the hard work for you but we have found issues using certain devices – anything post iPad3 seems to work well.
Hover over the ISBN number of a book with a steady hand. The app will automatically scan the barcode, and providing you are connected to Wifi, will generate a bibliography reference for you. Three styles are available including Chicago, APA (Harvard) & MLA.
Once your reference has been generated, email it to yourself (singularly or in a group) with other references.
Teena from Oxford & Cherwell Valley College
Extra Note – Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. There is also a useful introductory YouTube video on EasyBib iPhone and iPad App
AudioNote is a fantastic note taking app. The official description from the app store tells you how you can synchronise notes and audio with each key point being linked to the moment when the lecturer talks about that subject. Because it works on a tablet or phone there is no need to wait for the laptop to boot up.
Bookmarks can be created throughout the audio recording to highlight important points for easy referencing. It allows you to take pictures and insert them into your notes and AudioNotes can be exported to Evernote, saved and organised there. A yellow background can be used instead of white for those with visual stress/sensitivity. It costs £2.99 and is available from the iTunes store.
This YouTube video is a good introduction to AudioNote
This comes with thanks to the Disability Advisory Service at Imperial College
“I find the online websites that have subject specific word lists are helpful when looking for words that need to be used for academic writing” Lettie
There is the WordSift site at Stanford University that works like Wordle showing a section of text with the words you use most being shown in large sized fonts. The WordSift site also has the Visual Thesaurus to help when making choices of words.
Here is a YouTube video tutorial using WordSift