“Educators should not hesitate to integrate technology features into instruction for students who struggle with academic tasks. These approaches can support learning by building literacy and language skills and independence…Use speech recognition technology to help struggling writers and spellers get their ideas on paper. The immediacy of the dictation process reinforces the vocabulary and use of writing conventions and punctuation…If you haven’t tried speech recognition software lately, you’ll find vastly improved capabilities, reduced training requirements and better microphones available at very reasonable costs.“

~ from “Research Matters/Technology to Help Struggling Students” by Heidi Pacuilla and Steve Fleischman, Educational Leadership, Feb. 2006, Volume 63, Number 5

I have been playing around with speech recognition software for awhile now. I think it has made significant improvements over the years. As an educator, my interest is of course, how this ICT tool can be used for education.

My impression is that using the software, students can be forced to be more conscious of how they pronounced words. This is good especially for non-native speakers. They can learn another language by practicing their reading and speaking using this software. The software will translate their speech into text. For example, an Indonesian student can speak or read in English and the software will translate it into text. The higher the accuracy of the text, I believe the better is their pronunciation because the software does require some close proximity in the vocalization to the correct pronunciation of words for the speech recognition software to be able to translate to text.

Using such speech recognition also means that students who can see speak their thoughts to the computer and have it on text. Spelling doesn’t become an issue anymore. I believe even poor spellers will be able to decode what they have converted to text. This can only improve their reading skills.

Of course, such software will be a boon for the physically handicapped as it allows them to put their thoughts down electronically. More importantly, with the increasing use of the web for the building of communities and socializing, it allows the handicapped to participate fully with everyone. Almost all the barriers to a social life is removed. It makes them a part of any community they chose to belong.

Speech recognition software is definitely something to look into for ICT for education. However, it would be useful I think to watch this video, to help you ascertain the kind of hardware and software that would help you use speech recognition software successfully.