Have you ever thought, “If only I had the right tools, I could do everything that I want to do?” You may have more power at your fingertips than you realized. Keep reading to learn how to maximize your Mac computer to help you read, edit, and dictate. • • • • Text-to-speech Though many text-to-speech programs exist, the quality of the voice is often poor, with a robotic and choppy quality. This can be distracting and interfere with comprehension. The voice named “Alex” on the Mac has a natural intonation pattern (It even takes a breath between sentences). You can adjust the rate to be faster or slower, depending on your preference. In addition, you can access it with a shortcut keystroke (such as apple key+ R). In other words, you don’t have to open up a special application to interface with the program you are using. Text-to-speech is always available. Possible Uses of the Mac’s Text-to-speech software: • Read an attachment sent to your email. The result is consistent trouble-free computing on a truly protected and parallel network, completely free of harmful viruses and unwanted programs. Placing no restrictions on a user's ability to access all system resources, users avoid the frustration of downtime due to software conflicts, operating system corruption, virus attacks, and many other problems. While Deep Freeze provides bulletproof protection, its non-restrictive approach also improves user productivity and satisfaction. Expensive computer assets are kept running at 100% capacity and technical support time is reduced or eliminated completely. • Read anything on the Internet. • Read your favorite magazine or newspaper (online). A long time coming. Editor's note: We're big fans of speech recognition apps here at Ars, and when MacSpeech announced its plan to license the Nuance recognition engine that powers Dragon. • Follow written multi-step directions. • Edit your papers or presentations by rereading them along with text-to-speech software. This is especially helpful for catching spelling errors, omissions, and substitutions. • Improve your reading rate by silently reading along with text-to-speech. • Increase your reading comprehension by seeing and hearing the text. • Build up your vocabulary by decoding hard-to-pronounce words. • Practice your reading fluency for a presentation by chorally reading along with it. Getting Started: You will only have to set this up one time, and then you will always have access to this tool. Here are the step-by-step instructions. • Go up to the apple in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. • Click “System preferences”. • Click the microphone, labeled “speech”. • Select “Alex” (under system voice). • Adjust the speaking rate (with the sliding bar). • Check the box “Speak selected text when key is pressed”. • Click “set key”. Close (with the red x in the upper left corner).• Highlight the text you want it to read, and press the command that you set up. • Try highlighting text in a document on your computer. Read along for one sentence or multiple pages of text. Try editing with “Alex” (text-to-speech). Try it out with this website or a favorite online magazine or newspaper. Parallels desktop for mac vmware. Note: Movies must be in the upper portion of the screen to play. If they are not, click the rotate button (two arrows in a circle). IPhoto If you have a digital camera, iPhone, or iPod with a built-in camera, you may wish to make iPhoto a tool in your toolbox. iPhoto is an easy way to store, categorize, and archive your photos; however, you might also consider using it for some of the following tasks. Possible Uses of the Mac’s iPhoto software: • Make vocabulary or name flashcards. Anatomy and Physiology students may take pictures of 3-D models and label the photograph. This may also be helpful for foreign languages. You can review the photos in a slideshow, by clicking through one-at-a-time, or by printing them out. If you’re in an occupation where you have to learn a lot of names, you can use the same approach.
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