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...

YouTube has a lot of tricks up its sleeve to make your classroom viewing experience more enjoyable.  All teachers hate when they play a YouTube video in front of their class just to be confronted with an embarrassing barrage of advertisements and video recommendations.  You don't have to put up with this!  Read on to learn about some tricks to make your YouTube viewing and sharing experience more efficient. Play video in full screen with no ads or suggested videos The image below shows two ways you can make a slight alteration to the video's URL to make it play in full screen with no ads or suggested videos.  An easy thing to remember is to ad a hyphen in the word YouTube in the URL between the 'T' and the 'U' (yout-ube.com).  Try it!  You'll be impressed.  Click on this link to see it in action:   https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=w8OnpsoDxns Download a YouTube video to your computer If the Internet is being less than cooperative, you can get...

  Wakelet is an amazing website that allows users to curate and share online resources.  Think of it as a glorified bookmark organizer for your web browser with a collaborative twist. With Wakelet, you can create online collections of bookmarks.  Each of these collections have their own web link that can be shared with others.  Online users, such as colleagues, parents, or students, can subscribe to your Wakelets.  As you add more resources, they instantly have access to them.   Wakelet is a perfect way to organize a collection of resources for a specific class or a specific topic of study.  You can share the link of resources on Google Classroom.  You can even invite others to edit your Wakelet collections.  Departments can curate resources together! There are communities of educators on Wakelet who freely share their resources.  You can start subscribing to their group collections to expand your Wakelet library.   Wakel...

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a one-stop shop for converting files and editing PDFs?  Meet your new best friend, 123apps !  This website offers a bunch of free, web-based applications that allow you to edit a variety of media files as well as convert files from one format to another.  The interface is super easy, yet this resource is quite powerful. The biggest draw to 123apps in my opinion is its massive array of PDF editing functions .  You can split, merge, compress, and rotate PDFs.  If you have a couple of PDFs that you want to merge together, or if you want to snag a couple of pages from a giant PDF document, look no further than 123apps.  While you're at it, you can convert a wide variety of file types into PDF, or you can convert a PDF into an image file. 123apps also offers a wide range of video and audio editing tools. You can: Trim video Merge videos Add audio to video Rotate video Flip video Change video speed 123apps has a voice recorder as ...

Screen Recording using Control Center We've all been there. You plan to show a snippet of a video on YouTube. Your attentive students are watching. The following series of unfortunate events ensue: A bunch of advertisements start playing. You struggle to get the playhead to the right part of the video. The video buffers. Your students lose interest and start watching TikTok videos on their phones. Never fear. You have the power to avert this scenario by using your iPad to record a screen capture of the streaming video. By saving the video to your iPad, you can ensure that none of the above problems occur. You can then upload the saved video to Google Classroom. You can even add your own narration to the video while you capture it.  Watch the video below to see how. Videos that are saved in your Photos app can easily be uploaded to Google Classroom.  When creating a post in Google Classroom, select the Attachments icon and choose Pick Photo .  Easy peasy! For more informa...

Gmail has a little secret.  You actually have a limitless amount of email addresses that you can use with your Gmail account. Wait, what? Have you ever wanted to register for something online but already used your email address once and couldn't use the same email address a second time? Then I have a secret for you. It's called Gmail Plus Addresses . Gmail actually provides you with an unlimited amount of email address possibilities, all tied to your one inbox.  Allow me to elaborate. My email address is robitaia@hudson.k12.oh.us (or simply robitaia@hudson.edu).  But Google's little secret is that I can also receive emails to my inbox if someone adds a + and something else before the @ symbol in my address.  For example, if someone sent an email to robitaia+1@hudson.k12.oh.us, I would still receive it to my inbox!  Or robitaia+period1@hudson.k12.oh.us. Awesomesauce! I can use this address to register for a trial for some cool online resource. Maybe more than on...