Imagine never having to touch your keyboard again. Imagine writing your reviews simply by talking to your computer, and seeing the words magically appear on the screen. More importantly imagine school pupils with severe learning problems producing coherent essays by using their powers of speech alone.
This is the scenario promised by voice recognition software. There are three main players in the field: IBM, Dragon and Phillips. I have used Dragon at home but have been working with IBM at school, primarily to help one pupil with very poor reading/writing but strong verbal abilities. This opinion is about the use of the product as an educational aid and will hopefully help parents and teachers to make informed choices.
I began using IBM voice recognition software in January 2000. The pupil was a 13 year old boy who had a reading age of 6, severe problems of a dyslexic nature, which affected his spelling. Despite these difficulties he possessed verbal skills above the norm for his age group. I felt the use of voice recognition software would help compensate for his writing weaknesses.
The first difficulty came in enrolment. To enrol you need to read about fifty paragraphs of complicated text that appear on screen. This was obviously impossible for my pupil and was overcome by pausing the enrolment and helping him to memorise the text, before restarting enrolment and reading the text. This was obviously time consuming and a source of great frustration for the pupil as it only served to emphasise his difficulties.
Once up and running there was then a period of adjustment while the software improved its recognition capabilities. This involved corrections of words incorrectly “heard” by the software. Again this involved a high level of teacher input as the pupil lacked the language skills to correct his own mistakes. This took about 10 hours of dictation but eventually the recognition rate reached 90% plus. At this level it was possible to let the pupil work unaided and then proof read and correct work when he was finished.
Combining it with a text reader enhanced the auditory function of the software, to allow the pupil to hear what he had written, rather than try to decipher what was to him a collection of unrelated letters.
The boy was also able to carry out simple format of text, such as new paragraphs, inverted commas, text size and alignment. By the end of the (Scottish) school year in June good progress was being made. His creative abilities were being allowed to develop without being restricted by a lack of writing skills. Poems were produced (including a rather soppy love poem!) together with short stories of around 1000 words. Homework and class assignments were carried out promptly and competently and resulted in well presented, well structured answers rather than the short hesitant scribblings which had previously characterised his work.
I was impressed, the parents were delighted and the pupil basked in the feeling of achievement.
And then came the summer holidays. Seven weeks of relaxation and play with no thought given to schoolwork - and the pupil was probably just the same!
Back to school mid-August and back to voice recognition. I was prepared for my pupil to have forgotten commands but to my surprise he remembered everything. He was desperate to start and began an essay on his summer holiday. To our horror voice recognition had fallen to under 10%. Why? – his voice had changed so much over the holidays that his speech was no longer recognised by the software.
The effect this had on the pupils self confidence was marked. He lost motivation and was demoralised by the thought of another enrolment, followed by another period of building up to a good recognition rate. The demands of teaching meant that I no longer had the time to spend on one-to-one to rebuild his achievement level to where it had been before the holiday. His voice continues to mature anyway – we would encounter this problem every summer.
What’s the solution? In an ideal world pupils would have the same software at home and be able to keep dictation going throughout the holidays. Alternatively access to school computer should be possible. In the real world of course this is not possible. However parents who have a decent PC and are prepared to invest time in their child will be rewarded. Just be aware that this type of software is a tool, not an answer in itself.
I am aware that this is mainly a review of a pupil, not the software so I will finish with some product details. You need a fairly decent PC to run the software properly – I ran it on a PIII 660mHz with 128-mb RAM without any problems. Slightly less powerful machines should also be OK. There is the facility to have a number of users, each with their own wordbank. The software is fairly intuitive for basic dictation and formatting. If you were to attempt complicated formatting it would be easier to use the keyboard/mouse (assuming no physical handicap). Specialised wordbanks are available for law etc.
Installation was quick and trouble free, but there remains the difficulty of the enrolment programme and the period of adjusting which may prove disheartening to many people. The quality of the enclosed microphone/headset was reasonable, but better quality sets can be purchased fairly easily.
Next time around I will try this programme with a female pupil and hope it can keep pace with the changes in her vocal cords as she matures. I feel the potential in this type of software is still to be realised and hope to help my pupils express their opinions in print.
Finally, if parents of dyslexic children are interested in finding out about the potential of voice recognition software there is useful information on a website for dyslexia. Look under dyslexic.com. Other useful sites are bda-dyslexia.org.uk and dyslexia.co.uk.
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