The Best Kept Secret on Google: Dictation! … And How to Do It!

This may be the best kept secret on Google!

Yesterday I was talking to 2 special education teacher friends of mine after a long day.  Each of us has students who are great story tellers, but reluctant writers. We were discussing strategies for encouraging them to participate in Writers Workshop. I told them that I let students use the voice-to-text feature on Google Docs to write the first draft of their story.

To say they were amazed would be an understatement. They had never heard of such a thing.  I had unintentionally shared with them the best-kept secret of Google: Dictation!

Today I am going to share that secret with you. Below you will see a brief video tutorial on how to use the Google dictation feature in Google Docs. It is a great way to encourage students to write more in Writer’s Workshop. I often use it myself to makes to do lists, quick notes on the go or sometimes draft blog posts.

It even works through your smartphone for quick writing on the go without having to try to type on that mini pop-up keyboard. Below the video you’ll find a link to a free download of a reference guide for beginners using the Google Dictation voice commands in Google Docs. As always, I welcome your questions and comments below, or by filling out my suggestion box form on the top menu of my blog.

This Video Shows How to Use Google Dictation:

*Disclaimer* You should never video a tutorial at midnight because you say silly things and let them just hang out there. In the video I ridiculously say that you can use this to type while you are driving. As there is no way to open this app on your phone with your voice it would be very unsafe to try to do so while you drive. I get a lot of ideas for posts or products while i’m driving so I often pull over and put them in a Google Doc (using google dictation of course ;P ) quickly before getting back on the road. Yup that’s me talking to myself at the park and ride. Ha ha ha 🙂 Don’t text and drive! ********************************

Here’s the link:

Click the image to download

Now you can keep this secret to yourself, or share the love with a friend and be everybody’s hero. It’s up to you.

Enjoy!