New Accessibility Options in Flipgrid and Other Microsoft Products

This week Microsoft unveiled a slew of new accessibility options for the services that teachers and students use most. One of those features is the inclusion of Immersive Reader in Flipgrid.

Immersive Reader is a free service that students can use to have text read aloud to them. Immersive Reader not only reads aloud it will also highlight parts of speech and individual syllables within every word on a page. What this means in the context of Flipgrid is that students who need assistance accessing directions or discussion prompts can now use Immersive Reader to hear those directions and prompts read aloud.

Office Lens is another Microsoft product that now includes Immersive Reader. This free app (available for Android and iOS) will now let you take a picture of text and have that text read aloud through the use of Immersive Reader.

More implementations of Immersive Reader as scheduled for later this fall. Those implementations include real-time translation and the math pane in OneNote. Read more about those features in Microsoft's announcement of the expansion of Immersive Reader implementation.

Three Ways to Digitize Your Physical Sticky Notes

Last week Padlet added a new feature to their free iPad and iPhone apps. That feature is the ability to snap a picture of a set of physical sticky notes then have those notes appear on a Padlet wall that you can manipulate in the app and or in your web browser. If you haven't tried it yet take a look at Kathi Kersznowski's demo video. (By the way, Padlet says the Android version of this will be available in a month).

It works! pic.twitter.com/Kz46Ygk8ze

— Kathi Kersznowski (@kerszi) June 8, 2018

Padlet isn't the first to offer this kind of sticky note digitization capability. Post-it has offered it in their free iOS app for the last four years. The Post-it Plus app lets you snap a picture of a set of Post-it (or other sticky notes) and then manipulate those notes in the app.


While not designed specifically for digitizing sticky notes, Microsoft's Office Lens apps will convert notes written on paper into digital notes that you can edit. You can use the digitized notes in OneNote, Word, and PowerPoint. Get the Android version here and the get the iOS version here.

Office Lens - Now Available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phones

Office Lens is an app from Microsoft that is designed for converting pictures of notes on whiteboards and paper into notes that can be edited in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. I wrote about the app eight weeks ago when it was still in a limited beta for Android users. Office Lens is now available for all Android users. You can find the app in the Google Play store. The iPhone version is available here and the Windows Phone version can be found here.

Probably the best aspect of Office Lens is that hand-drawn images and figures captured through the app can be separated from the text to move and manipulate as individual objects in PowerPoint slides. See the video below for an overview of Office Lens.


Applications for Education
Office Lens could be a great app for students to use to snap a picture of something on a whiteboard then add their own comments to it in a Word Document.

The option in Office Lens to separate hand-drawn objects could be a good way to digitize a brainstorming session. When I brainstorm I often do it in a paper notebook that has pages of edits. By taking a picture of the brainstorming session I could separate each part of the notes then move them into new positions on slides or in a document.

H/T to The Next Web.

Office Lens - Digitize Handwritten Notes and Diagrams

Office Lens is a new app for iOS and Android (still in limited beta) designed for converting pictures of notes on whiteboards and paper into notes that can be edited in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. If you don't need to edit the notes that your take pictures of, you can simply export the file created by Office Lens to JPEG or PDF. Probably the neatest aspect of Office Lens is that hand-drawn images and figures captured through the app can be separated from the text to move and manipulate as individual objects in PowerPoint slides. See the video below for an overview of Office Lens.


Applications for Education
Office Lens could be a great app for students to use to snap a picture of something on a whiteboard then add their own comments to it in a Word Document.

The option in Office Lens to separate hand-drawn objects could be a good way to digitize a brainstorming session. When I brainstorm I often do it in a paper notebook that has pages of edits. By taking a picture of the brainstorming session I could separate each part of the notes then move them into new positions on slides or in a document.

H/T to Lifehacker and about a half dozen other tech blogs I read this weekend.