Dictation on the iPad with Book Creator

Book Creator is one of my go-to apps on the school iPads. I work at an international school with students from all over the world. A great accessibility feature of iPads is the dictation feature in the keyboard.

I have used dictation in Book Creator as a way for young learners to be able to get their thoughts typed up more efficiently. I find it really helpful for young learners to be able to speak aloud their sentences and see them being typed up by the iPad.

Well, did you know that this in-built feature works for languages other than English? In the screenshot below I have used the Indonesian keyboard to access dictation in Indonesian. It works so well! What a fantastic way for students to practice pronunciation. Go on try it now with a language that you can speak ...

Go to Settings - General - Keyboard

Choose any keyboards you wish to make available. 

Now open Book Creator. When you want to dictate, select 'Add Text' from the plus menu. 

When you dictate - click the world icon on the bottom left of the spacebar and select your language. Press the microphone icon and speak your sentence. It's works best if you only dictate short sentences with either a hands free microphone or work in a quiet space.

Dictate a Story in Book Creator

When working with young students, typing can be quite a difficult thing for them to do. In Book Creator, you can easily make a voice recording of the child telling the story but often having the written text there can make that story even more powerful.

Just recently, I was training some assistant teachers on how to use Book Creator. I run a lot of workshops, and Book Creator is one of my most used apps on my iPad.

I love it when I learn something new. So I just had to share this with you.

During the workshop, I was doing my usual explanation of how to create a book, add a photo and then add some text. The participants were asking about the predictive text feature that is now available at the top of the keyboard. I explained that this can be very helpful for students as it can support their spelling. I also explained about the globe icon and how that can change the keyboard when you enable different keyboards in your settings. This allows users to type in other languages that require special characters like Chinese or Arabic.

Next I told the participants about the microphone icon and how that is used for dictation. You tap on it and speak, and the iPad will type whatever you say. I showed it in the moment and was very impressed with how accurate it was. If you say 'full stop' it will also type a full stop. If you say 'new paragraph' it will also skip a line. This is a wonderful way to help students understand about the function of punctuation. Honestly, even I was blown away!

So I am now thinking of how this tool can be used with Kindergarten students. Our young students can now type their own stories. Amazing. Our students in Grade 1 and 2 can dictate their stories with words such as 'full stop' which will help them to make that important connection to the function of punctuation. I am so excited about this and can't wait to see how it can be used. I made a short tutorial video for you to watch with the help of my son who was very excited to dictate his first book.