Dave Figures Out His Cellphone, OCR Technology and the Internet

Yesterday, I learned that Google Drive has a "scan" feature, and that you can scan a document and convert it to editable text in a Google doc. This is extremely useful to me as both a teacher and a blogger. And no one else in the department knew how to do it! Even the millennials . . .

You press the little "plus" button on the bottom right and select "scan." Then you adjust the parameters so that the doc is within them. Then you go on the computer (of download Google docs for your phone) and you find the photo in the drive and click the center "open with" button.

You open the PDF with Google docs (on my phone, I make the PDF a docx) and you get an editable text. Initially, the fonts are often a little crazy, so you need to remove the text formatting. At first the converted piece of the John le Carre novel I'm reading looked like this:

But I hit the little t with the slash through it, and then selected the portion I wanted. It's from le Carre's novel Our Kind of Traitor, which I am thoroughly enjoying. Here it is:

‘Unfortunately, I do not believe in God, but this is irrelevant in life it is frequently necessary to simulate religious conviction. I like best art. Max also is very artistic. Maybe we shall both study art together at St Petersburg or Cambridge. It will be decided.' 

'Is he Catholic? 

'In his practices Max is compliant with his family religion. This is because he is dutiful. But in his soul he believes in all gods.' 

And in bed? Gail wonders, but does not ask: is he still compliant with his family religion? 

I tried this with a fifty-page PDF and froze my computer, so I'm not sure just how long a document you can convert. But it's free OCR technology and it's easy and fast.

OCR stands for "optical character recognition." I learned that yesterday as well.