Voice dictation?—not right now, thanks     023

Technology is being increasingly used in classrooms and at home to assist students in learning, and of course this includes writing. One very interesting piece of technology is voice dictation software. This is where the user dictates text into a microphone and it appears on the monitor, right in the document where it’s supposed to be. It seems magic, and the answer to many writing problems, but like all technology it has to be used appropriately and productively.

Surprisingly, it’s not new technology. IBM had a product called ‘ViaVoice’ in the 1990s. However at that time computers had nowhere near the power they have now and this reduced effectiveness. As you might expect improvements continued to be made and during the first decade of the new century call centres started using the voice recognition component to save costs. At the present time voice recognition systems, including voice dictation, are now routinely used by both large companies and small businesses. Some medical specialists, for example, use voice dictation to write case notes and even letters to GPs, and this is done in front of their patients. It can be that easy and that fast.

But not always! Despite the huge advance in computing speed, which allows voice dictation to be extremely accurate, the user still has to do learn how to use it. Voice dictation programs prefer even dictation, with clear phrases, clauses and sentences. If this type of dictation is not provided then errors multiply. Thus the program encourages the user to write more than necessary, material which has to be later edited out. Indeed learning how to use voice dictation effectively, in my opinion, takes a few months. In some ways it’s like the transition from handwriting to writing directly onto the computer screen by typing. It’s a different psychological process and this is what is important.

Students are best to delay considering voice dictation until after Year 12. This type of technology needs a period of time to learn, and Year 12 with all its different pressures, is not the appropriate time. Technology can even be an impediment to good writing. Readers are referred to an article on this website, Parents/Why children can’t write, where the example of Sydney Grammar School is considered. At this school students are not allowed to use computers for writing until Year 10. And Sydney Grammar School certainly achieves results. In terms of NAPLAN Writing results, published in the Australian newspaper (20-21 Jun 2015), it ranks eighth out of all Australian high schools.

I use ‘Dragon Naturally Speaking’ voice dictation software. I regularly achieve accuracy of at least 99 per cent on long stretches, which is just a few mistakes per page. Even after years of use the product still amazes me with the words it gets correct. But it has taken practice. If you wish to buy this product for your son or daughter you need only purchase the basic version. More expensive versions allow interaction with the Internet, for example. Medical specialists purchase versions which are able to recognise complicated medical terms.

There are also products such as scanning pens. The user simply runs the pen over a line of text, and the pen reads the text with a tiny camera in the tip and then sends the text to a file on the computer. Once again the words appear as if by magic and it looks easy.  However, this product also requires practice.  Both products are definitely something to think about for university. Using them saves a great deal of time and energy, and also helps guard against repetitive strain injury at the keyboard. But thinking is still required—and that’s the hardest work of all.

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services