Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Otter is a web tool and mobile app that allows you to record audio and generate live transcriptions of your recordings. With its AI (artificial Intelligence) capacities, Otter provides automated meeting notes for popular video conferencing services including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. 

Alt text is text that you can add to images and videos to describe what they are and or what they contain. Adding alt text can make your materials that you post online more accessible to more visitors.

Late last year Microsoft introduced real-time captioning and translation of PowerPoint presentations. At that time it wasn't available in all versions of PowerPoint. That changed this week when Mike Tholfsen, product manager for Microsoft EDU, Tweeted that real-time captioning and translation is now available in all versions of PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, and Web. 

Yesterday Mike Tholfsen Tweeted about Microsoft's Teacher Training Packs. Teacher Training Packs are collections of resources that are designed to help IT administrators, technology specialists, and curriculum directors lead professional development workshops centered around various Microsoft tools (most of which are completely free for educators).

This article is part of a series on innovative teaching methods in higher education. Check back for more stories in the coming weeks.

Like many of her peers, Ann Wai-Yee Kwong struggled in statistics while working towards a bachelor's degree in psychology at UC Berkeley. But because she is legally blind, she had an added challenge of not being able to see the diagrams and notes projected in the lecture hall or assigned for homework.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. Perhaps you have a student with dyslexia and want to find out more about it. This post contains informational articles as well as links to different apps that have helped students with dyslexia.

21 Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs
Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students with special needs or any sort of learning challenge. In particular the Chrome web browser allows users to install a wide variety of web extensions that provide tools that can help all learners, regardless of ability level.

In this blog post we will take a look at 21 Chrome web extensions that can assist students in five main categories:
Text to Speech
Readability
Reading Comprehension
Focus
Navigation

Edge is Microsoft's web browser that replaced their classic Internet Explorer. Edge has a lot of handy features including a customizable read-aloud function. The read-aloud function has been available in the Windows version of Edge for quite a while.

In a world of rapidly advancing technology it’s crucial to ensure companies and organizations are doing their best to make digital developments accessible to everyone.

While browsing the internet, catching up on social media, or texting on mobile devices might seem like second nature to some, accessibility-related barriers prevent millions of people with disabilities from easily using basic forms of technology and, in some cases, even discourage them from going online. 

Below are two of the best text to speech apps out there. We have already reviewed these apps in previous posts and today we have them in one list for you to try and choose the one you like. These add-ons have integrated iSpeech technology which allows them to read any text you select for them. Watch the attached videos to see how each one of them works.

Earlier this year Google added automatic captioning to Google Slides. This week, via The Verge, I learned that Microsoft is adding automatic captioning and translation to  PowerPoint starting in January. 

I’m guilty of having a bias in favor of all things G Suite for Education that sometimes leads me to ignore some of the excellent products that Microsoft has been developing. I’m aware of that bias and I’ve been making a concerted effort over the last six or seven weeks to give more Microsoft products and honest try. One of those products is the free Learning Tools add-in for OneNote and Word.