Making Writing Easier

Introduction

Students' writing load can often be very heavy. Many students have project work to complete for example for Junior Cert Home Economics, for Leaving Cert History or Geography or for various TY projects. Perhaps technology could make all this writing easier, and quicker and, even help improve the quality of the written work.

  In the is section of the course, we explore tools:

• on your phones/tablets
• built into standard software, we use daily
• Mind mapping to help structure, plan and organise your written work 

These tools will allow you to plan your written work well and to speak to the phone/computer and it will type what you say.
This could dramatically speed up some of your project work.

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Click on the appropriate links below to see individual videos which show how to use these many tools to make writing easier:

Get your phone/tablet to type what you say
	Click here to see a video showing how to use Live Transcribe to type what you say & then copy/paste it to a word processor.	Click here to see a video on how to get your iPhone/iPad to type what you say to help with written work.
Get your computer to type what you say
	Click here to see a video showing how to access & use MS Office 365 speech-to-text tool, Dictate.	If you have a Gmail account you have access to Google Docs & you can speak to type using its Voice Typing tool. Check out this video.
Get help to plan & structure your written work
	Planning essays, projects or exam questions can be made easier & quicker using a free mind-mapping program. Click here to learn how to use Xmind to structure & plan written work.

 

Other Resources

Use the buttons to navigate to other parts of the Course.
Firstly, if you are going to use computers for your written work you must learn to touch type.  Indeed this is a life skill. Name a job where you won't be using a keyboard. Click here to check out the section of this course with free links and resources to get you touch-typing accurately, quickly and healthily.
When you have typed/dictated your written work it's then essential that you save that great work giving it an appropriate name and location so you can find it later for revision. This is called file management. Click here to check out the section of this course to get you going with good file management:
Once your work is typed or dictated you can then improve your written work using spelling/grammar checkers and have your work read back to you aloud to proofread/listen to help you spot errors or areas you want to improve. Check out the Making Reader Easier section of the course for tools to help with"prooflistening":