Kindle Tip: Make It Read Your Notes to You

One of my favorite features of my Kindle is the ability of it to convert text to speech – particularly its ability to begin where I finished reading and advancing the text as it reads it.  This means you can read a book, switch to listening to it when you are driving, and then switch back to regular reading when you get to your destination.  It is a fantastic feature that comes in extra handy on long road trips.  It is also surprisingly useful for studying your notes for school.  Simply transfer your notes to the Kindle (which is a great platform for reading them), and turn on the text to speech and your Kindle will read them back to you.

I used this feature a couple weekends ago when met my parents, my brother and brother’s family for dinner.  I was in the middle of law school exams (actually I still am – I take my last exam this afternoon) and needed to maximize my study time.  On the way to dinner and back (about an hour of driving altogether), I was able to listen to a semester’s worth of case summaries from my of my Criminal Procedure notes.  Not only did it help me take advantage of my driving time, but it was also a nice switch from taking in the information visually.  I repeated the process with my Professional Responsibility Notes studying at home last night.

I’d recommend anyone in school who owns a Kindle to give this a try.  I’ve found this feature incredibly handy.  Putting your notes on your Kindle is also a great way to put them in a compact form for reviewing while on the go.

Incidentally, the Kindle’s text-to-speech is one feature none of its competitors currently offer.  Next to the ability to directly and wirelessly shopping for books on the device, it is one of my favorite features of the Kindle.   The recent software update now allows you to select between a male and female voice and adjust the speed of reading so you can get through your text faster.  What was already good keeps getting better.  Now if only Apple would come out with text-to-speech for my iPhone.  (C’mon Apple, the iPod Shuffle already has text-to-speech, why not the iPhone?)