“I’d like to find a way to scan text, then have that text read to the student.” Isn’t it great to have these kinds of questions that just wander in?
While there are a variety of computer programs available for optical character recognition (OCR), I had only encountered this on the PaperPort Notes app. That process, while fine for me, wouldn’t work well for the intended use.
OCR is defined in this way:
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used as a form of data entry from some sort of original paper data source, whether documents, sales receipts, mail, or any number of printed records. It is a common method of digitizing printed texts so that they can be electronically searched, stored more compactly, displayed on-line, and used in machine processes such as machine translation, text-to-speech and text mining. OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and computer vision.
Another app, VoxDox, proved to be a better choice than PaperPort. Here’s more information:
Voxdox is a new free text-to-speech app, available now for iphone, android and tablet that will read out any form of text for you in your choice of human voice.
With Voxdox you can convert files, papers, articles, contracts and even full-length books to quality speech in over 20 languages, and then share them with your friends, class-mates and colleagues using Voxbox, the app’s integrated social database.
Voxbox has already become the first choice solution for thousands of people around the world for sharing information in the fields of business and academia. By using Voxbox, your networks can find you in seconds and download high quality audio files generated from your text as well as the text itself. After downloading the text they have chosen, all that is left to do is press “play” and it will be read to them in one of a range of human voices
Lifetime pricing–available as an in-app purchase–is available for $9.99, although there are other prices available for less aggressive scanning:
- Lifetime Subscription – $9.99
- 100 Conversions – $.99
- 400 Conversions – $2.99
- 1000 Conversions – $6.99 (Limited Time Offer)
- 1 Month Subscription – $1.99
Here’s more on the pricing from VoxDox folks:
In our new Android version we have a new pricing model. We now have a few pricing options starting from a “Bronze” subscription for 6.99$ and up to a “Gold” subscription for 13.99$. All of them are one time charge lifetime subscriptions. The difference between them is the number of pages the user can convert per month and some advanced editing options which are available only for Gold members.
…every user gets 500 pages for free and 5 more pages for free every day.
Regarding our iOS version, you are correct, the lifetime subscription is a one time charge of 9.99$
We have a few pricing models for educational institutions with a significant discount but we usually discuss it with every institution according to their needs and the number of expected users.
Here’s a demo video from their web site hosted on YouTube:
Are you using something else to scan text to digital format and read it to students?
Check out Miguel’s Workshop Materials online at http://mglearns.wikispaces.com
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