The following is a guest post by Dr. Marshall Jones. Dr. Jones is Professor and Senior Director of Learning Technologies and Graduate Studies in the Richard W. Riley College of Education at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC USA. Dr. Jones teaches graduate courses in Learning Design and Technology and undergraduate courses in technology integration. His research interests and consulting experience include project evaluation, instructional design, mobile learning, elearning, the design and development of constructivist learning environments, emerging technologies, learning analytics and new media.
For me, one of the most difficult things about teaching online is all of the typing that has to be done. Discussion boards, emails, feedback on assignments, EVERYTHING has to be typed. And even if you're a very fast typist and accurate typist (I’m neither), it will take you a long time. Recently, I've been using voice typing in Google Docs as a way to cut down on typing time. Voice typing works pretty much the way you think it might, you speak into a microphone and the software translates your speech into text. If you've ever used speech to text on your phone, it works pretty much the same way. Here's a tutorial video that I made on using voice typing in Google Docs:
YouTube URL: Voice Typing with Google Docs.
It really is that easy. Getting used to speaking your punctuation does take some getting used to, but after awhile I don't really think about it. However, I have found myself on occasion speaking my punctuation to a room full of people. That can be a little embarrassing.
Here is what I do when grading in Blackboard. I have two monitors connected to my computer. On the left monitor I will open up a Google doc. I will label it with the class name, section number and semester. On the right monitor, I will open up a student assignment in Blackboard. If I am grading a paper in Blackboard, I will read the the assignment in Blackboard and speak my feedback into Google doc. Then, I just copy from the Google Doc and paste the text to the appropriate place in Blackboard. I use it both for Point comments, the comment that you make that point to a particular word or paragraph, but also for broad general feedback as well. Because I can talk faster than I can type, this saves me an enormous amount of time. I also have been able to increase the amount of feedback that I give to students. The ability to provide more feedback in less time is a win-win.
You will want to do some quick editing of your feedback back in Google doc before you paste it into an assignment. Speech to text works very well, and it is getting better all the time, but it is not always perfect. And is sometimes embarrassing. Let's just say that once Google misheard the word sectional. My students all know that I use voice typing in Google Docs and while I still do proofread it for errors, my students have become pretty good at understanding that a strange turn of the phrase is likely a speech-to-text error and figuring out what I meant. And they appreciate the increased amount of feedback that they get on their assignments.
I use voice typing more and more for all sorts of things that I used to type. I use it to compose emails. I use it to speak text that I want to post on to a discussion board on blackboard. And, if you're curious, this entire blog post was written using voice typing in Google Docs.
Marshall Jones, College of Education
If you feel like you've got a great tip to share and you're interested in writing a guest post for our blog, please contact us at instructionaldesign@winthrop.edu.
For me, one of the most difficult things about teaching online is all of the typing that has to be done. Discussion boards, emails, feedback on assignments, EVERYTHING has to be typed. And even if you're a very fast typist and accurate typist (I’m neither), it will take you a long time. Recently, I've been using voice typing in Google Docs as a way to cut down on typing time. Voice typing works pretty much the way you think it might, you speak into a microphone and the software translates your speech into text. If you've ever used speech to text on your phone, it works pretty much the same way. Here's a tutorial video that I made on using voice typing in Google Docs:
It really is that easy. Getting used to speaking your punctuation does take some getting used to, but after awhile I don't really think about it. However, I have found myself on occasion speaking my punctuation to a room full of people. That can be a little embarrassing.
Here is what I do when grading in Blackboard. I have two monitors connected to my computer. On the left monitor I will open up a Google doc. I will label it with the class name, section number and semester. On the right monitor, I will open up a student assignment in Blackboard. If I am grading a paper in Blackboard, I will read the the assignment in Blackboard and speak my feedback into Google doc. Then, I just copy from the Google Doc and paste the text to the appropriate place in Blackboard. I use it both for Point comments, the comment that you make that point to a particular word or paragraph, but also for broad general feedback as well. Because I can talk faster than I can type, this saves me an enormous amount of time. I also have been able to increase the amount of feedback that I give to students. The ability to provide more feedback in less time is a win-win.
You will want to do some quick editing of your feedback back in Google doc before you paste it into an assignment. Speech to text works very well, and it is getting better all the time, but it is not always perfect. And is sometimes embarrassing. Let's just say that once Google misheard the word sectional. My students all know that I use voice typing in Google Docs and while I still do proofread it for errors, my students have become pretty good at understanding that a strange turn of the phrase is likely a speech-to-text error and figuring out what I meant. And they appreciate the increased amount of feedback that they get on their assignments.
I use voice typing more and more for all sorts of things that I used to type. I use it to compose emails. I use it to speak text that I want to post on to a discussion board on blackboard. And, if you're curious, this entire blog post was written using voice typing in Google Docs.
Marshall Jones, College of Education
If you feel like you've got a great tip to share and you're interested in writing a guest post for our blog, please contact us at instructionaldesign@winthrop.edu.
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