The Speech-to-Text feature for Google Drive is called “voice typing.” This free tool brings voice-to-text technology to Google Docs and supports different languages including Arabic (Standard Arabic and different accents), German, English, Spanish (various accents), French, Hindi, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Russian, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional, Hong Kong) and many other languages.
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Author Archives: Sourena
Scan a Document Using Your Phone or Tablet
Image-scanner apps on iPhone or iPad allow users to scan physical objects (real-time) as well as images on their phones without the need to use a large sized scanner. These images may then be converted into pdf files or other image formats for simple transfer to other devices or software. Continue reading
Downloading Audio and Video from YouTube
Often, when a video or audio is needed for a class lecture or project, access to the internet may not be reliable enough to ensure that the media is successfully presented. You might want to download the video and place it directly into your powerpoint presentation. Continue reading
Transmedia & Visual Story-telling
Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools and digital/multimedia material to tell stories. The idea of storytelling revolves around the idea of combining the art of telling stories with using graphics, audio, video, and Web publishing.
Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between 2 and 10 minutes. The topics used in digital storytelling range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events. Continue reading
How to write Arabic in Adobe Photoshop
If you ever tried to write Arabic in Adobe Photoshop you will find that copy/pasting Arabic text in Photoshop does not really work in the same way as it does for other languages or even for other scripts such as Cyrillic. Arabic letters get split (not connected as they normally should be) and the direction of the text is left-to-right instead of right-to-left.
To write Arabic correctly in Adobe Photoshop one needs to activate the Middle Eastern features in the software, and create a basic setup for several additional features for Arabic script. Continue reading
Voice Commenting on Documents/Images
We have introduced three new user-friendly online services that enable the teachers to leave audio comments on students’ works. Continue reading
Language Lessons with Native Speakers: WeSpeke
WeSpeke is a new language-based social networking service that connects speakers of different languages and provides a forum through which they can teach each other their respective languages. Continue reading
New Language improvements in Mac’s El Capitan
Apple’s latest operating system, El Capitan, features a host of enhanced performance capabilities, and supports several languages that have been unavailable on previous systems. In terms of general capabilities, El Capitan boasts significantly increased operating speeds: users can open PDFs four times faster, view messages in mail twice as fast, and launch apps 40% faster. Continue reading
Foreigncy: News Material for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Foreigncy is a new language learning aid designed specifically for intermediate to advanced speakers of Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew, and Russian. Its goal is to help students who already know the basics of a foreign language keep their skills sharp by completing intricately designed lesson plans that incorporate real news articles in their desired language. Continue reading
How to use Antidote
Antidote is the best and the latest in software designed specifically to help students with their writing assignments by including a comprehensive spell checker, an on-board French dictionary, a sophisticated thesaurus, and grammar and syntax guidelines. Antidote goes well beyond the capacities of Microsoft’s French spell-checker.