Recording & transcribing voice (and other audio)

Anyone remember Dictaphones?  They were small voice recorders that people used to record/dictate their thoughts and conversations for later transcription or playback.  They're yet another device made obsolete by smartphones. 

A teacher recently asked what students can use on their Chromebooks for dictation. 

Here are two tools that work well for audio recording

TwistedWave is a very simple audio recording tool.  You may need to enable Flash to get it working the first time.  You'll also need to allow access to your computer microphone.

SoundTrap is more like an online Audacity or GarageBand. It allows you to record multiple tracks and has lots of other features (such as musical loops and effects).

There are also tools that convert your speech into text on the fly

Google Voice Typing is built into Google Docs.  Find it under the Tools menu.  Just click the microphone icon and start talking.  When finished, click the icon again, then go in and clean up any errors.

Read and Write for Google is a tool that is available to all CVSD students.  Teachers can also use it for free (see me to get it set up).  It has a text to speech tool among other helpful reading and writing assistants.