Friday, October 25, 2013

Frustrated with Spelling?  Enhanced Dictation Comes to the Mac

Many of the students we have worked with have significant difficulty with spelling, to the point that they avoid writing, or write using just the words they know how to spell.  Sound familiar?  

Dictation is one way to use your voice to write, allowing for  a more fluid writing experience.  With the new Mac operating system, Mac OS X Mavericks (a free upgrade), Enhanced Dictation is now available.  On a Mac, find your Dictation preferences and click “Use Enhanced Dictation”.  After downloading a very large file (about 800Mb), your Mac will have the power of Siri-style dictation ready for you to use offline anytime. Tap fn twice, and there’s a new Dictation cursor that will type out what you are saying seconds after you say it. And you can keep talking, using voice commands like “new paragraph” and punctuation names to fill out your text and keep going. Try it out for yourself!  

Followers