Microsoft Lens, turn physical paper into accessible digital text in seconds.
🔍 What does it do?
Microsoft Lens is a scanning app that uses the iPad camera to “read” the world around it. It automatically crops and cleans up photos of whiteboards, worksheets, or book pages. More importantly, it uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn the text in those photos into digital content that can be read aloud, edited, or translated.
🎓 Why is it useful?
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Instant Accessibility: Students who find reading difficult can take a photo of any page and have it read to them by saving their scan into OneNote and using Immersive Reader.
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No More Manual Typing: If you have a physical worksheet but lost the digital file, Lens can scan it and “extract” the text to a Word document for you to edit.
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High-Quality Scanning: It automatically fixes “wonky” angles and removes glare from whiteboards, making classroom notes clear and easy to read later.
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Glow Integration: Scanned documents can be saved directly into your OneDrive, OneNote.
⚙️ How does it work?
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Open the App: Point your iPad camera at a document, whiteboard, or book.
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Select a Mode: Swipe between Document (for paper), Whiteboard (to remove glare), or Actions (to extract text or tables to a copy and passable piece of text). You can also extract text from previously taken images.
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Snap & Trim: Take the photo. Lens will automatically find the edges of the paper, but you can adjust them manually if needed.
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Choose a Destination: Tap Done and select where you want it to go. Please note that choosing Immersive Reader directly on the save screen does not work, please save to OneDrive and then tap the image once it has processed to access Immersive Reader in OneNote for audio support.
🚀 Beyond the Basics
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Alongside OneNote: A pupil can take a photo of a textbook page and export it to OneNote. Once in OneNote they can select Immersive Reader, here they can change the font size, background colour, make use of picture dictionary and have the text read aloud – giving them independent access to the curriculum.
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Jotter to OneNote: Pupils can take photos of their handwritten work in their jotters. Lens cleans up the image and saves it into their OneNote Class Notebook, creating a permanent digital record of their physical work
