A week into the new school year during the pandemic. It is a new normal that is trying to function as normally as possible with social distancing and safety measures in place.
Most universities in Canada, for instance, have implemented a blended method that combines both online and in-person learning environments, while younger students across Ontario are also being given the option of attending in-person or attending online. Definitely a change that can disrupt the learning process.
Online learning will rely heavily on new technological platforms and routines. The Internet is key, of course, and while we normally advocate doing things digitally and remotely, such a method isn’t ideal without the right tools to supplement your study plans.
For students, studying remotely now during the pandemic is lacking in things like hands-on lab learning, personal engagement, and one-on-one feedback – all of which can impact your focus and progress.
Essentially, the new normal of this pandemic will be putting the online e-course model to the test like never before. To help with that process, though, we put together a list of some helpful tools and sources that can tweak your studying sessions, your school’s online work, and your remote learning process.
As the school year starts up, you’re probably just getting yourself oriented with your classes and gauging the size of the workload you’ll have to deal with.
It may be daunting after a long lazy summer, but anticipating the amount of reading you have ahead of you is a good idea. It’s never fun to all of a sudden find yourself lagging behind. You need to get ahead of the curve way before the heavy reading assignments even start. And we have a perfect tip for that: to help lighten the reading load use a convert text to speech tool.
Converting speech to text can come in handy in so many ways. It can free you up to get away from the screen for a bit or help you learn a language. Also, students with disabilities can use text to speech tools to easily access digital content. Text to speech tools are perfect if you need help with proofreading, catching up on your notes, or getting some eBook reading done.
So here’s a look at 5 different ways to listen to your reading assignments with these free easy to use text to speech tools.
Listen to MP3 Files of Your Text with SpokenText
For those who need to catch up on reading while commuting, running errands, working out or multi-tasking, SpokenText is a straightforward online text to audio converter. SpokenText allows you to convert any number of files such as PDF, DOC, PPT, TXT, HTML and Emails to an MP3 file. Once you have your MP3 files are created, you can then download and put them onto a mobile device. You’ll be able to take your readings with you.
Have Online Documents Read Out Loud To You
Have a document online that needs to be proofread? If the file is shared on the web with a file sharing or collaboration tool like Google Docs, then you can have the text read to you directly from within your browser. You can listen for grammatical errors while working with other things on your computer–all without missing a beat.
SpeakIt! is available for Chrome and allows you to read text displayed in the browser. For FireFox, there’s Text to Voice which can also let you download your text in MP3 format. And Opera users can try VozMe. Once any of these extensions are installed, just highlight the text you want read out to you and activate the plugin.
Convert Text From Multiple Sources With NaturalReaders
NaturalReaders is a popular text to speech tool whose online version comes with basic yet advanced features to get the job done. Click on Add Documents and you can start building and accessing your list of files from popular services like Dropbox, Google Docs, and more. Handy for students working on public computers or using Cloud services.
Get Social With Your Text On YAKiToMe!
People who are used to in browser music players will love the look and feel of YAKiToMe! It’s a free online text to speech service and network rolled into one where you can share your audio books and files with other YAKiToMe user groups. If you’re lucky, you may find a user with an audio version of a book you’re looking for.
YAKiToMe! lets you convert text from .doc, .pdf, .txt, .html, .xml, and email to speech. Choose a reader, a reading speed and an input method for uploading text: Field (copy-paste text directly), File, RSS, and Email. Then click on the Run Text To Speech button.
Convert PDF Text To Speech with PDF2Speech.com
PDF2Speech is exactly what its name suggests. It’s a free online PDF to speech converter. This is perfect for professional and academic uses where PDF reading is a common task. On-screen PDF reading can sometimes be a chore, but listening to one doesn’t have to be.
To use this tool, simply upload your PDF files to the site and hit the Convert button. This free service allows you to convert up to 20 pages which will allow you to get a good chunk of your readings checked off your list.
There are many simple yet powerful text to speech freeware tools to suit any occasion or need. The good news is that it doesn’t require a lot of money or any bloated text to speech download.
Everyone loves Facebook, and with good reason. The social network has rolled personal networking, content sharing, and business marketing all into oneplatform. And it’s due to things like Facebook fanpages that have made it easy for businesses and organizations to connect with their communities on a more personal level.
As a result, Facebook Fanpage administrators are always looking for different, more efficient ways to use them. In fact, one user had an excellent idea for her Facebook page that turned into an interesting question about PDF documents and Facebook Notes:
I would like to post a pdf (or Word) document to my Facebook page (not my personal page, to my business page). I would like to post it as a “Note” that everyone who has “liked” our business page can access. And I would like those who view the document to be able to print the document. Is that even possible.
It may sound like a simple thing to accomplish at first, but unfortunately, after some searching, we couldn’t find a direct way to do this. But we did manage to find a few interesting workarounds that came close, and we thought they were worth sharing.
Posting PDF Files With A Link
The first method involved sharing the PDF document as a link, which was probably the simplest way to post a document within a Note:
… We looked into this and, unfortunately, the only things you can embed within a note is an image and a hyperlink. Thus, the only straight forward way to add a document is through a URL linking to the document in your note (such as the Share link provided by our conversion apps or by websites like Scribd.com). And you can only restrict who sees the entire note with the Privacy option.
You’ll only have a link to your document, not the actual document itself. But, on the bright side, you can make the PDF URL an active link by using the HTML tags: <a href=“ Your PDF link here” >Your text here</a> with your link and hyperlink text:
To check your link, hit Preview. The HTML tags should disappear, leaving you with an active link in your Note:
Using a link to post a PDF works with group, fanpage, and personal Walls, as well. The only difference is that you have to post the .pdf link into your Facebook status like you would with any web link you want to share on your Wall.
Code Your Page Using Static HTML: iframe tabs App
The second option we were able to find, while a bit more technical, was more visually appealing than using a link:
If you’re a bit tech savvy with coding though, we found that it can be done via Static HTML: iframe tabs App —https://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/?fb_source=search&ref=ts. It will let you embed any type of code you want, including code for a PDF, and can be used for any Facebook app page. The PDF embed code can be provided from any document uploading site (http://youtu.be/UtBWa8dE36M ).
Here’s a direct look at the YouTube Video tutorial:
Using JPEGs And Photo Albums
However, in the end, the user solved the problem by using a few creative tactics, offering yet a third way to do it:
I converted my documents to JPEG and placed them in “Photos”. Everyone who has access to the page can open Photos, then open an album, then right click on each photo/document page and “print photo”. It’s weird, but it works.
Indeed, it does work. Even though the content was converted from PDF to JPEG, the PDF content was still viewable. It was a great trick that even allowed her to restrict printing access only to fans.
If you found a handy solution for this issue yourself, let us know. We’d love to add it to the list.
