Title: Five Free Tech Tools to Make You More Productive Inside and Outside of Brightspace Barry Dahl of D2L Updated November 2019

1. Five Free Tech Tools to Make You More
Productive Inside and Outside of Brightspace
Barry Dahl, D2L

2. Barry Dahl
Teaching & Learning
Advocate, D2L
D2L customer and employee
for past 16+ years
Welcome

3. Five (or so) Productivity Tools
1. Voice-to-text
2. Text expanders (typing accelerators)
3. Password Management
4. Chrome Extension for Excessive Tabs Use
5. Access phone through PC
Screen recording videos

4. 1. Voice-to-Text Using Phone
Advantages
• Can be done offline
• My phone does excellent voice recognition and text
conversion (YMMV)
• Easy to edit and save the transcribed text in
Evernote, Google Docs, or similar
• Free (well, already paid for at least)

5. 1. Speech-to-Text Demo

6. 2. Text Expanders
• Use a “text expander” when multiple, similar text
blocks (emails, feedback, comments, etc.) may be
needed.
• A text expander can reduce the amount of time
that you spend communicating with students.
• Free program that runs in the background. It will
also correct common spelling mistakes.

7. 2. Hat Tip to Audrey Williams and Brandon Ballentine – Pellissippi State CC

8. 2. Free Text Expanders
Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone:
Phrase Express: www.phraseexpress.com/
Windows:
Texter: texter.en.softonic.com/
Mac
System Preferences => Keyboard palette => Text tab => then set up
some text strings

9. 2. Phrase Express Demo

10. 3. Password Management
Last Pass remembers all your passwords, so you don’t have to.

11. 3. LastPass Browser Extension

12. 3. LastPass Password Generator

13. 3. LastPass Vault

14. 4. Chrome Extension – One Tab
I use Chrome a lot
• Usually with many tabs open – too many!
• Memory seepage is a constant problem
• Closing tabs is problematic because I’ll forget about
them
• What to do?
Install the One Tab extension.

15. 4. One Tab Demo

16. • Reduce phone distractions
• Manage Android phone on
PC or Mac
• Transfer files easily
• Send and receive texts
• And more, especially more if
you root your phone
5. AirMore

17. Manage and use your phone on your PC
Media Management
This application allows you to transfer music you want between mobile device and PC quickly
and easily. Help you well organize your music in your device on browser.
Convenient Communication
With AirMore you can send, forward and delete messages with clicks. Simple and fast group
texting from browser will make chatting with others more efficient.
Practical Features
This powerful file manager can quickly access to your files. You can create, move and delete
them conveniently. Meanwhile, it provides two file structures to view your device content.
Security Assurance
This wireless Android and iOS file transfer enables you to transfer files between PC and mobile
device in a secure way, for your permission is needed to access your device.

18. 5. Lots of Apps

19. 5. Access Music and Photos Easily

20. 5. Send Texts (SMS) from PC

21. 6. Screencast-o-matic

22. 7. Relax, Just Do It

23. 7. When you want to go to it

24. 7. Relax.li

25. Seven is the New Five!

26. 1. Speech-to-Text Demo

27. 2. Phrase Express Demo

28. 4. One Tab Demo