There are many excellent software tools and technologies available that can work across multiple mediums on your device and alongside other software on devices.

Below are a few that learners have found useful. Many have free trial versions, but the full versions do come at a cost.

Glean

Free trial. Cost for full license.

Mainly useful in live lectures and tutorials, this also has a mobile app.

• Record classes.
• Add notes (can add text notes to your saved slides and recordings – can be speech-to-text).
• Combine resources in one place (link recording to slides).
• Refine notes.
• Study session timer.
• Assign tasks and tick them off.

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Otter

Free limited version. Varying cost advanced versions.

Mainly useful in lectures and tutorials (live or online). Also useful for team projects to collaborate with teammates. Has a mobile app.

• Live-chat feature to communicate.
• Highlight key points and takeaways and assign action items.
• Link to meetings and record these (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet etc).
• Capture slides shared in online meetings and pop them into the meeting notes.
• Generate a summary after the meeting with key information (email to all group members).
• Provide captions for in-person and virtual sessions.

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Texthelp Read&write

Cost individual or school licence.

This combines high-level speech-to-text and text-to-speech (reading and writing) tools that work across mediums with a few extras.

• Text-to-speech.
• Advanced grammar and spelling checker.
• Word prediction and similar word checker (identifies homophone errors).
• Voice notes (speech-to-text).
• Convert large documents into MP3 files for listening on the go.
• Convert paper documents and inaccessible PDFs into accessible digital formats.
• Screenshot reader: Capture images and text from docs, web, PDFs and transform them to accessible formats.

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Dragon software

Cost

Considered a high-level software tool that can navigate programmes on devices and is Windows-compatible. Lots of functions but the main ones for learners are listed below. Also has a mobile app.

• Text-to-speech, speech-to-text.
• Verbal computer commands (voice command to open programmes etc.).
• In-lecture note-taking/transcribing.

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