Frustrated with Spelling?  Enhanced Dictation Comes to the Mac

Many of the students we have worked with have significant difficulty with spelling, to the point that they avoid writing, or write using just the words they know how to spell.  Sound familiar?  

Dictation is one way to use your voice to write, allowing for  a more fluid writing experience.  With the new Mac operating system, Mac OS X Mavericks (a free upgrade), Enhanced Dictation is now available.  On a Mac, find your Dictation preferences and click “Use Enhanced Dictation”.  After downloading a very large file (about 800Mb), your Mac will have the power of Siri-style dictation ready for you to use offline anytime. Tap fn twice, and there’s a new Dictation cursor that will type out what you are saying seconds after you say it. And you can keep talking, using voice commands like “new paragraph” and punctuation names to fill out your text and keep going. Try it out for yourself!  

A Reminder from a Conversation - SETT and sliced bread

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a Child Study Team case manager.

A student on her caseload experienced a traumatic brain injury several years ago and has difficulty with both reading and written expression. Overall, the student's academic abilities are on a Kindergarten/ First Grade Level reads on a pre-primer level.

This student recently received a neurological exam in a clinical setting. The summary of the exam included findings regarding neurological functioning, as well as specific assistive technology recommendations. The specific assistive technology recommendation was to use Dragon Naturally Speaking to provide support for writing and note taking. The IEP team had a phone conference with the doctor who conducted the neurological exam, who contended that "Dragon Naturally Speaking is the only support this student will need."

The case manager asked me my opinion. I told her that without ever meeting the student, it would be impossible for me to say if DNS would be an appropriate support or not. I also told her that DNS does not provide a student with reading support.

Here is the punch line of this story:
She asked me if I had a "list of reading supports" that I could "recommend" for this student.

From here I started speaking with her about the SETT Framework by Joy Zabala.
It is critical that we as AT Specialists remind others about focusing on the student and feature matching BEFORE any tools are discussed. Child Study Team Members and families are looking for tools to support their students, and only want what is best for their students. They can easily get sucked into the spinning vortex of a "great piece of technology". We must be the voice of reason who helps the team take a deep breath before they go out and purchase the next best thing since sliced bread.

Do You Have Questions About Dragon Naturally Speaking?

When I first started learning how to use Dragon Naturally Speaking, a powerful voice recognition program, I found it exciting, yet overwhelming. I got myself in lots of sticky situations and wasn’t really sure how to get out of them. For example, typing my email address, microphone problems (Why won’t my microphone work…oh, the mute button…), etc. Through reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) the manual, perusing various websites and listservs, asking lots of questions of my co-workers, and most of all tinkering around, I’ve come to understand and love using this tool.

I recently revisited the website, www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking and was very happily surprised at the wealth of information I found, and wished I had it when I was learning this program. I was on this website for hours. Here’s some of what I found under the “For Customers” link:

• There are a whole slew of instructional videos that are easy to use. If you don’t have someone to help you learn Dragon, videos are the next best thing.
• I found some PDF “cheat sheets” that would be helpful if you are learning Dragon or teaching it to others.
• You can read stories from Dragon users, including students, professionals, and home users.
• You can view their blog, which has lots of news about Dragon’s acquisition of MacSpeech and Dragon apps for the iPhone.
• Dragon has a monthly newsletter that you can sign up to receive. This is where I spent most of my time. There is some really helpful, practical information here.
• Second to the newsletter, I loved the Tips and Tricks sections, which gives some of the lesser known tricks that can make a big difference in one’s success with this tool.

Having this information readily available online has helped my consumers be more independent in their training process. Check it out!

Academic Version of Dragon Naturally Speaking Saves $$

I often recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred to college students I work with who have challenges in the area writing. It has been an extremely helpful tool for students with physical disabilities that have difficulty accessing the keyboard to type efficiently. With Dragon, they are often able to complete those long, college papers with greater speed and less fatigue. For students with learning disabilities that affect their ability to get their thoughts onto paper or have spelling challenges, Dragon has also proved to be very useful. While it is definitely not the solution for everyone, for many college students, it is an invaluable tool.

I recently discovered an academic version of Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred offered on websites such as Staples or Amazon.com. This version comes with a significant savings as compared to the typical version of Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred. The Academic version ranges from $50--$80, while the typical Preferred version ranges from $115-$200.

To be eligible to use this academic version, you need to provide verification that you are a student, faculty, or staff of an accredited higher education institution or a public or private primary or secondary school. You can not get the product activation code without submitting proof of this. From reading a handful of reviews on Amazon.com, it seems that some feel this process has been somewhat tricky to navigate, although others felt it was very easy. There is detailed information on this process provided at: www.nuance.com/educationvalidation .

I haven’t had the opportunity to personally test this out with a student as of yet, but I plan to do so as soon as the opportunity arises.