Voice Search

I learned about the video, Cheryl and Morgan: Learning Independence  from several sources this week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyRQJBBVI7g&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

The teacher featured is Cheryl Oaks, a longtime “web friend” of mine, who I first “met” through Seedlings, a podcast by a trio of Maine educators. (This story is the most recent of several “Search Stories”, which you’ll find on this page.)

The feature discussed in this video is Voice Search

Screen shot

You can find out about using Voice Search at these links:  on a computer, and on mobile devices–

The Official Google Blog wrote about the video, and linked out to a few pages I had never seen before.

One is the Inside Search Blog, Another is a page titled, simply, Features “Here is where you can explore a wide range of Google Search features. You can find different categories, such as Research or Fast Facts, to find new ways to search for information and get answers”.  

There have always been ways to narrow a search in the side bar of the standard Googel search results page (Images, Maps, Videos, News, Shopping, Books, Places, Blogs, Flights, Discussions, Recipes, Applications, Patents, 6 time frames to within which to limit the search, language, site, reading level, file type and usage rights) which is only about 21 choices.  On the Features page I count about 49 choices.

Some of these are “tricks” for finding  “fast facts”, by entering search terms in the URL bar.  For example. putting define: in front of any word will bring up all the definitions on the Internet for that word. Entering a number, its unit of measure and “to” whatever unit you like to have it converted to gives you and instant conversion.  For example “132 miles to km” returns the information as the first search result.

132 miles = 212.433408 kilometers

It’s well worth your time to explore all the hints and helps, and to install or enable Voice Search.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1c0w5QiryM&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Cross-posted at Using ICTs @ ISOCS