Speech Recognition in Education

Speech Recognition in Education - Speech recognition is becoming more and more prevalent in our lives. We can now talk to our phones, our cars, and our computers. With Seward’s focus on eLearning, a discussion of
where speech recognition fits into this is in order.

http://blog.sewardinc.com/2010/11/16/speech-recognition-in-education/

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Comment by Suzanne Magerko on November 19, 2010 at 11:56am: We tried using Naturally Speaking with a middle school student who needs this accommodation for writing and note taking. The training was too difficult for him to complete and so just this week we are switching to SpeakQ and WordQ WordQ, a speech to text program specifically designed for use in education.
The other major factor that we have noticed besides software is the quality of the headset/mic. We found this website to be helpful in recommending good models: http://www.pcspeak.com/hints/general/hardware/microphones.shtml

Comment by Nell Kauls on November 18, 2010 at 9:49am: Thanks for your comment Douglas. Yes, we too struggle with some of the things you mention.

Comment by Douglas Woods on November 18, 2010 at 2:53am: At the present, I am evaluating NaturallySpeaking by Nuance. My first impression, apart from it taking an extremely long time to setup, is that speech recognition has certainly come on a long way since the days (back in the late 1980s) when I first tried it out.
I cannot at the moment back up claims that speech recognition is nowadays 90 or even 99% accurate; I still find that the software throws in a few strange words every once in a while. It is certainly better than it was and there seems to be far less time needing to be spent 'training' the software than I experienced in earlier packages.
I do, however, find myself getting frustrated after a while of use when the software appears to become less sensitive to my voice and is constantly prompting me to repeat myself. It is as if the software or the microphone starts to lose the ability to pick up sounds. I don't know if anyone else has found this or if it is a quirk of my setup. However, I am sure anyone who relied upon speech recognition would find this frustrating too.
One of the nicest features of the program is the ability to transcribe spoken recordings. This means I can dictate into a dictation machine, upload the file to my computer and have it transcribe my voice into a text document. I am not, therefore, limited to talking at the PC but can also record/dictate while away or in the field.
So yes, I'd agree there is potential in Speech recognition, it may still have its quirks and not be the easiest of tools to setup but its potential is well worth exploring.