Tuesday Tech Tidbit

If you have text on paper that you would like to scan and convert into digital text, then I recommend trying Adobe Scan.  This iPad app is available for staff and students in Self Service.   With Adobe Scan you can use your iPad to scan a piece of paper with text.  It will then use optical character recognition to convert the image into true text.  The text in the resulting PDF can then be highlighted, copied, and even read aloud.  (See last week's blog about Spoken Content on iPads .) The video below demonstrates Adobe Scan in action.  It's easy to use and does a great job of converting printed text into digital text.

In the days of Chromebooks I remember using an extension called Read&Write, which allowed users to highlight text and have the computer read it aloud.  The iPads have this feature built into its operating system, and it works great!  This feature is called Spoken Content . It is considered an Accessibility feature and is a great companion for students who benefit (or require) read-alouds for text. To activate Spoken Content, open Settings and then select Accessibility .  From there you can select Spoken Content .  You will want to toggle on Speak Selection and Speak Screen .  Speak Selection will activate a Speak button whenever text is selected.  Speak Screen allows the iPad to speak the entire screen whenever you swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen. Spoken Content works with all text, be it a website, a word processing document, and many PDFs.  In the settings you can switch on a Speech Controller, which provides a floating to...