I bought my son a new windows 10 laptop for school and am wondering if there are any good tools to help him with his writing assignments?
Most of the writing tools I’m aware of tend to be Web based, like the Purdue Online Writing Lab [which, by coincidence, started out life as my graduate research project at Purdue many years ago], and they offer a ton of great resources like information on how to cite references in “APA” or “MLA” format and the general structure of an essay. It turns out that there’s also a great tool built in to Microsoft Windows 10 that can offer up lots of help too, and makes it really easy to transition to the Web as needed: Cortana.
Turns out that a lot of what students need as they work on a paper, essay or report are becoming core features of all the voice activated systems too: You can ask the Amazon Echo to confirm the spelling of a word, for example, and Siri can tell you definitions – even right off your phone. Cortana was designed for Windows Phone, but as that operating system rather lost the mobile wars with its decreasing share of installations, it’s simply been migrated to Win10 systems! Not only that, but you don’t even have to type because you can set up a Windows 10 computer so that it’s always listening for the phrase “Hey Cortana” to start working. So cool!
Let’s go through some of its slick features. First off, a common query from students is about synonyms. That’s a breeze for Cortana:
You can see I searched for “synonym for lazy” here. If I were using the voice-activated Cortana interface, I’d simply say Hey Cortana, synonyms for lazy and it would produce the same results.
If you can get synonyms, how about definitions?
The above can be produced by typing in “definition of camera obscura” or whatever other word or phrase you desire, or you can just say Hey Cortana, define camera obscura to get the same useful information. And it’s all just a click away, no apps needed, no learning curve, just talk to your computer or type into the search box that your son’s already familiar with from his earlier efforts with Windows 10.
What’s useful for every writer – even if you’re just writing a comment on Facebook – is that Cortana can also do quick fact checking. For example, do you know the date of the signing of the Magna Carta? Cortana does:
Who knew there was an argument about the exact date? This was a straight Web query and was handed off to Bing, which had a convenient answer all ready to go. This is also how Cortana deals with spelling. If you are typing, it’s clumsy in its spelling advice, but if you have voice set up, it’s easy to ask Hey Cortana, how do you spell mississippi?
The query->web approach Cortana uses for queries it can’t answer directly means that there are almost infinite questions you can ask as you’re working on a paper, essay or report. Like Who wrote Winnie the Pooh? Sometimes the additional box pops up immediately, other times you’ll have to tap or click to launch the Web search:
In this case, a single click and lots of useful information shows up from Bing:
I never knew that Winnie the Pooh was named after the city of Winnipeg, but that makes sense now that I think about it!
Oh, and don’t forget that Cortana is quite capable of solving mathematical equations too:
We can’t end this Cortana demo without a token joke or riddle. So here it is:
Now you know. Show your son how to use Cortana and he’ll be cranking out those research papers in no time!
Pro Tip: While you’re here, check out our extensive Windows 10 help area. We have tons of content…