Sunday, 1 August 2021

Use your voice for Family Stories


It's August 2021 and many of us in Australia are in lockdown to prevent the spread of the delta variant of coronavirus. It is also National Family History Month here, an excellent time to work on some of those unfinished projects.

Why not use the extra time at home to get ahead with family stories? Are your typing skills rather slow or are you limited by the technology you are using? Why not use voice to text? There are many easy options.

ON COMPUTERS

a) WINDOWS - Speech to text

On your Windows PC, press the Windows key + H. This will reveal the microphone  Simply speak to write.
If you do not have speech recognition turned on, head to Settings > Speech, to turn it on.

This tool will work in any program that has text fields e.g. Word, Blogger, Wordpress or wherever you are writing your family stories.

b) On a MAC

On your Mac, choose the Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation.
Click On. If a prompt appears, click Enable Dictation.

c) In GOOGLE DOCS

Just type docs.new in the browser search bar to get started. You will of course need to be logged in to your Google account. From Tools > select Voice typing. The microphone will now appear on the left side of your document. 

The piece below was generated using voice typing in Google docs. I only had to make one correction. The story of course needs refining, but at least it is started.

Oh dear, No microphone on your older desktop computer!
Never mind, use a mobile.

MOBILE PHONE OR TABLET

Office

Install the free Office app.
Choose Create Word
Tap the microphone on the keyboard to get started
Choose where to save the document your personal OneDrive, Google Drive or other cloud storage location.

Google Docs

Download from your app store
Login to your account.
Tap microphone on the keyboard
Tell the story.
Add photos from your phone, from camera or from the web.
The doc will be automatically saved in your Google Drive
Save as also provides a wide range of other formats including Word, PDF and epub.

Blogger

Download from your app store
Login to your account.
Choose  your blog, tap microphone on the keyboard
Tell the story.
Add photos from your phone, Google Drive or Google photos
Publish to Draft 
If you need to refine before publishing, open the draft post on your computer. 

WordPress

Download from your app store
Login to your account
Choose blog, tap microphone on the keyboard
Tell the story
Use + to add other features such as images
Publish to draft.
If you need to refine before publishing, open the draft post on your computer.

Inject a conversational tone by telling your stories with one of the many free options provided using voice typing. Now is an excellent time to get on with the task, sit in the sun, record your thoughts, edit later.

Wherever you are writing and saving your family stories, using voice recognition will help those typing woes. 

Have you tried voice typing?

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

15 comments:

  1. Oh Carmel. You are a boon to us all. My husband's best mate has been banging on about dictating to his PC for years now. I guess blokes might feel more comfortable doing this than women. I really must give it a go. Particularly when my hands are frozen cold as they have been these past few days or are just suffering from RSI from too much knitting the night before when I was watching Babylon Berlin on Netflix! :) Great first post. We're off to a rip-roaring start with this challenge :)

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    1. I like the Blogger option on the phone, sometimes some random thoughts start a post. Yes indeed it is chilly weather for typing. I haven't knitted for years but love the things I've seen on Instagram that you've been knitting for that precious grandson.

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  2. I haven’t tried voice typing Carmel. I wanted to do it when I had a broken arm but really didn’t know how. This is a great instructive post that would have been useful to me at the time.

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    1. What a pity I hadn't posted this earlier! The chat on #ANZAncestryTime made me revisit voice typing.

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  3. Wow, thanks for this Carmel. I never knew voice typing existed nor did I know to use docs.new to open google docs.
    Very informative and helpful.

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    1. Thanks for commenting. Other options in Google Drive have quick ways in too. So sheets.new opens a new spreadsheet, slides.new opens a new presentation and form.new opens a new form. Have fun trying the voice typing.

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  4. I love voice typing, it is so much better now than when I first used it with the expensive Dragon software. While I use voice recognition regularly in Word and Google Drive I didn't realise I could use it in the Blogger Android app that I had removed from my phone several years ago. THANKYOU for letting me know I can use the app for voice typing now - I have now downloaded it - will be so useful for starting off posts on the fly.

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    1. Once Google followed the iOS keyboard by adding that microphone it opened up all sorts of possibilities for voice typing. Yes, the improvement in speech recognition technology over the years has been phenomenal, I too had removed the Blogger app as being useless until I revisited voice typing.

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    2. I've even been using voice typing to communicate with opponents in the messaging facility of the Words with Fiends app. I have a close friend who won't engage via social media but
      uses WWF as her communication tool!

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  5. Thanks so much Carmel - perfectly timed. I have used voice typing a little but want to use it more so this is great. I’m a fast typist but good to be able to not always have to type.

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    1. Would love to be a fast typist but CBB to use a program to practice, generally use about three fingers on each hand.

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  6. Thanks very much for this post Carmel. I used to use Dragon software at school and now use the microphone on Notes app on iPad. Never thought of voice to text for my posts on the blog. Will now have to try it out.

    Sue

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    1. Thanks for dropping by. Trying things out and discarding those that don't work for me seems to be my way of operating.

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  7. Hi Carmel
    Well, none of this works for me on my Lenovo Windows 10 computer. I get an error message that my chosen language is not supported even though I have selected UK English. My Google docs does not have Voice Typing under Tools. Any suggestions as to how I can get this to work?

    Margaret

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    1. So glad you eventually resolved the problem by using the Chrome browser for Google docs.

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Thanks for visiting, I welcome your comments.


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