Category Archives: Repetitive Strain Injuries

Speech to Text app on a mobile

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“I like to generate a transcript of a lecture session and I use speech to text to dictate into my mobile or I record the session”  D.T.

There are several ways of dictating and producing text on the mobile – iPhone has built in speech recognition (Siri) for many of its apps or the use of Dragon Dictation when online that allows short paragraphs to be dictated and collected within its own note pad. Android has Dragon mobile assistant and if you want to experiment there is Utter in beta mode for commands.  It does not make the Android totally hands free, but it shows the beginning of an off/online conversation with reactions!

utter! Android Voice Command Assistant – BETA! YouTube video

Taking notes on an iPad and using iCloud

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icloud“I don’t like pens and papers! Too much waste and extra cost.  I’ve been using my iPad with a stylus and several note taking/drawing apps so far. I synchronise all my notes with iCloud (it was iWorld before Apple introduced iCloud) and I’m perfectly happy – so is my room as it doesn’t have stacks of paper and pens around :>)”  Trinity – computer scientist

There are so many note taking apps and drawing apps that it is hard to advise which ones are the best but a combination of Evernote and Skitch is a good one – the Appadvice site has a note taking advice page with many more apps and the University of Exeter have a blog with a review of some more useful time management, maps, social network and note taking iPad apps. They mention WritePad that has handwriting recognition. 

WritePad for iPad YouTube Video

 

SwiftKey Android mobile app for speedy keyboarding.

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“SwiftKey mobile app for Android is super great with writing prediction. It can even create meanings from very incorrectly spelt words.  Great for speed writing an also for dyslexic users!”  Andrew (computer science)

SwiftKey have produced a YouTube video of their version 4 of the app where you can also write phrases with word prediction.

Free Dictionary on the iPad and Dictionary.com app

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Dictionary on iPhone“I like the way on the iPad the dictionaries are available from different apps but I also use the free Dictionary.com and Thesaurus app as it works offline and gives me the pronunciation of words.”  Andreas

There are advertisements supporting the free version of the app.  These disappear if you pay £2.99 for the ad free version of the Dictionary.  The iPad version also appears to work on an iPhone OS 6 as can be seen in the image and you can say the word using speech recognition.

Butterscotch.com have provided a YouTube video about the Dictionary.com app and mentions that you need to be online to use the audio pronunciation.

Kindle – read books anywhere, anytime!

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kindle“I have a Kindle – it means I read books anywhere even at times that I can’t carry extra books!”   Andrew

The smallest and lightest 6 inch Kindle 4 allows you to download Word and PDF files, has an onscreen keyboard controlled by the middle 5-way controller button,  dictionary and built in wifi for downloading books or other files.  Font sizes can be changed but there is no text to speech.

 

 

Using C-pen 3.5 to collect journal notes

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C-Pen 3.5I have been using a C-pen 3.5 for collecting printed notes that can be stored for assignments. It works well with Bluetooth and a Windows computer – You can run the pen over the print quite quickly and it will appear in whatever document you are using.

I have found it works best on high contrast black print on white paper or vice versa. The smaller the font the slower you need to scan. If you use a ruler or hard edge against the side of the pen you get a more accurate result and can scan across the page at a faster rate.

Luke – ECS