Evaluations

Other Formats

Installation

After installing the software I decide to familiarise myself with the program and to give it a ‘trial run’. Unfortunately, at this stage, I had not received the required microphones so I contacted the school’s ICT coordinator to supply a substitute microphone. This microphone turned out to be of poor quality and made voice recognition difficult. When a new user is added to the computer the programme runs a ‘New User Wizard’ to learn how the user speaks. This involves reading for several minutes. Once I received and used the new microphones I realised how much of a difference it made to voice recognition and how much quicker one could finish voice training.

As outlined above I became familiar with the software before introducing it to the students. Both students selected were quite proficient in laptop use, security and storage which in turn made the task of introducing the software easier

Navigation

The students were initially not successful in using the programme independently. One significant problem was attempting to train Dragon Naturally Speaking to recognize a student’s voice. This involved the student reading aloud for several minutes. My initial assumption was that Dragon Naturally speaking would help students with Dyslexia to talk to their computer instead of typing.

I also found that some students with Dyslexia have difficulties learning to type due to coordination type problems. At the very beginning of training the student is asked to read a few lines to give both a volume and quality check on the microphone. The problem was that the students had difficulty reading the training text. Both my students complained that the text window was very small and difficult to read. This was partly solved by asking the program to give a ‘Demo’ i.e. the computer speaks the text aloud and the student repeats. However the main body of text which involved reading for up to 30 minutes had no such ‘Demo’ facility. The training programme seems to be designed for people who are proficient readers or do not have Dyslexic type difficulties. The publishers advise that people with such difficulties are given assistance in the initial voice recognition training period.

Documentation

No information on supporting documentation was supplied with this evaluation

Some additional information can be found on Nuance Knowledgebase website