Task.fm: Text and voice reminders for students and teachers---EASY! EASY! EASY!

There are many different cell phone reminder services available online. Many of which I have written about. A few examples include Sendible, Abbyme, Remember the Milk, Google Cal, ReQall, and Alerts. Recently I have been using Task.fm. Task.fm is a reminder service that uses uses semantic technology to translate human speak into an email, text and/or voice reminder. This means that you only have to type in your reminder on Task.fm, such as "assignment due at 4:00pm on May 26th". Task.fm will automatically understand the date and time of the reminder (no need to select dates and times from a menu or schedule). The only negative that I found with this site is that you get 10 SMS or voice reminders for free and then you need to pay for them. If you like this site, I recommend you emailing Task.fm and asking for a free educator version!! It does not hurt to ask.

Jott is out of Beta...Alternative Speech to Text Free Services

The bad news is the one of my favorite resources Jott, is out of beta. This means that some of the best features you have to pay for. While it is not expensive, I am not a proponent of asking students or teachers to pay for resources. Therefore I wanted to compare a few other tools similar to Jott that allow for FREE speech to text translation/messaging services.


Dial2Do
I am becoming a big fan of this site. It is quick and easy to use. You call in to Dial2Do, tell them what you want to do ("email" "text" "twitter" "reminder") and then speak your message. Almost instantly it is transcribed (definitely faster than Jott) to a text-based message. I am a big fan of the "text" option, since I can send myself a text message reminder (such as someone giving me directions, I can call Dial2Do and have them speak the directions into the phone, and have them instantly "text messaged" to me!). Like Jott, Dial2Do does have group messaging serivces. Therefore with one phone call you can send multiple text and/or email messages. Each message also becomes an instant downloadable MP3 file. Dial2Do backs up all messages in your Dial2Do account. Even better, if you choose to send yourself "reminders" you can check them off the list in Dial2Do. That could be very helpful for teacher and student organization.


ReQall
I have written about Reqall before.

ReQall: A phone management tool for students w/out Internet Access

Reqall is a free web-based service that allows anyone to call (U.S., Canada, or UK) a number (1-888-973-7255 for U.S./CA), and you can then say your message reminder to yourself. ReQall gives you up to 1 minute to say your message. ReQall will transcribe your message to text and put it in your private file on the web. You can also call ReQall and instead of adding a new message you can say "ReQall" to hear an old message that you left for yourself (or that someone else left for you). Since you can only record for 1 minute, it is not a service for long interviews or practicing debates, just notes, reminders, and quick oral language practice. ReQall also has folders to organize your ideas, such as saying "note" before starting your message, so your message will show up in a specific "notes" folder on ReQall's website. ReQall is very similar to Jott. The main differences I see between the two applications is that Jott links up with outside resources such as Twitter, Google calendar, or LiveJournal. Currently ReQall does not do this. But ReQall allows you to hear your message and other messages via cell phone or landline, so you don't have to have Internet access to hear your notes and reminders (while Jott can do something similar I find it more confusing). This is a nice feature for students who have cell phones, but do not have Internet access at home.

Classroom Connections:
Utilizing ReQall, students could use their cell phone as their sole management tool. Besides sending themselves reminder messages with ReQall, it also allows students to send messages to others. For example, students could send messages to their teacher's ReQall accounts. This could be great resource for field trips, when teachers want to check-up on students to make sure they are documenting their learning experience during the field trip. The teacher could ask the student's to ReQall a short message or note concerning different learning experiences, and send the message to the teacher. Furthermore, the message from the student will immediately show up in the ReQall box of the teacher, so the teacher just has to call ReQall from their cell phone. Additionally, all the notes are saved to the students and teacher's ReQall account on the web. All of this can happen in real-time during the field trip.

Another interesting way to use ReQall (or Jott) would be with ESL students and students who have speech disabilities. Since ReQall automatically transcribes every message, students can see (within a few minutes of the call) the written transcript. If the student's spoken English was annunciated well, their transcript should have few text errors.