Years ago I attended a trade show called Comdex, which today is no longer a trade show due to all the competition. Back in the day, Comdex was the show to attend above all others if you were a geek. Of course I was never fully admit to being a geek, but I would be less than honest if I did not admit to having some tendencies.

I do tend to get geeked over little things that I think are pretty cool. One of those things I recently came across those years ago was voice recognition software. At the time it was a very new and novel concept, today everyone has heard of it but very few people use it. I can tell you why, at least in the past it was not something very reliable. Computers weren’t fast enough to make it work very well, and it made so many mistakes that it was better to just type versus take the time to speak and then make all the corrections you had to.

Recently, in my reading of various blogs, I came across a review of the new version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9. That piqued my interest because this was the same title I had tried in the past with decent but not reliable enough results. So, like the good blogger that I am trying to be, I decided to give it antoher a try and share my results here. I have to say, after having only used it for an hour or so, I am very impressed.

After first installing the program, it only required about 20 minutes of “training” the software to recognize the patterns of my voice and create a good match. Right out of the box, I would give it a 95% accuracy even on a difficult words. That is not to say the software is perfect, but what makes it even better, is that it gets smarter over time. The more you correct mistakes that the software makes, it “learns” some of your common phrases and the way you say them. Even with just having made if you come in corrections I am finding that almost all of my words are being recognized. You need to speak clearly, and have a decent headset-based microphone, but beyond that you simply just speak and it types.

I have used computers most of my life, at least when they’ve been available. Because of that, I’m a pretty decent typer. I haven’t tested my keyboarding speed lately, but I am pretty confident I type at least 60 to 80 words per minute. No matter how fast you type, though, you can speak faster than you can type. What amazes me, is that the software can keep up with even as fast as you can talk. As long as you don’t slur your words, and enunciate at least decently, it will figure out what you’re saying. In fact, it does best when you just continue your phrases, rather than try to speak in a stilted fashion. Hence the name, “NaturallySpeaking.”

What I think is made it even more fun, is that you don’t have to be “in their program” to use the voice recognition. You can be in your favorite word processing program, instant messaging window, or anything practically that accepts text. I had an entire conversation with a friend in and IM window all without ever touching the mouse or keyboard, including writing the content and sending the message each time. Now that was fun. In fact, this entire post was written using this very software.

Things like typing HTML code or other short bursts of text really are not made more efficient with voice recognition software, but when you are writing long letters or other kinds of content, I’m beginning to think this would be a great solution.

I for one and deftly going to give it a fair try. Here’s the link, in case you’d like to give it a try as well.

Link: http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

When I studied teaching and spent some time in the schools, I was always interested to see how technology was being used. Honestly, usually teachers were struggling to find ways to figure out how to use the technology they had available. I found this to be one of the major shortcomings at the time for the pushes to get computers into the classroom. There was funding to get the computers in there, but nothing was being done to train teachers on how to make the computers a useful part of their curriculum. I had the opportunity several times to conduct trainings in local elementary schools and a few conferences on various technology topics due to some of my affiliations with the education department at BYU. The reception was always overwhelming, including teachers crowding me after the session with questions and the desire to receive further training.

The article this morning made me smile because a teacher has found a unique and novel way to include a current technology trend at such a young age, and make it both enjoyable and useful to kids. I really am not all that old, but when I was in high school keyboarding was still taught on typewriters. We had a few computers at the front of the class that we could do the speed tests on, but the rest of it included changing out 10 and 12 pt heads on the old machines. I can hear the snickers from a few readers now. Fortunately my parents had done all they could to keep a current computer in the home from the day they could afford one and I had learned how to type well before high school. After two weeks in class I was sent to the office as a TA and was able to skip the typewriter nightmare because I had passed off all tests they could throw at me.

Kudos for this teacher for engaging these fourth graders in such a fun and educational way. Not only are the kids learning to express themselves, they are learning practical skills that quite honestly many adults do not have. Way to go!