I just read a Straits Times report about the controversy over whether the national examinations should be allowed to carry on despite a Supreme Court decision upholding a High Court ruling requiring that the Indonesian government upgrade teaching and school facilities nationwide before conducting another national examinations. The courts had made a ruling in response to a suit by a group of parents and students. Also the Jakarta Globe was quoted to have criticized that by going ahead with the examinations, the education ministry or Diknas, was assuming “all students across the country had access to the same opportunities and information, which is far from the truth.” In justifying his Diknas’ rationale for going ahead with the examinations despite the Supreme Court decision, the Education Minister Muhammad Nuh, argued that would be almost impossible to to wait for all schools to be standardised before Diknas can carry out the examinations.

From the controversy here, I think both opposing sides seems to have one thing in common. They both believe in the written examinations that is typical of the national examinations in Indonesia. It is implied in the Education Minister’s argument that the examinations must go on. It is also implied that the people who brought the law suit also believe in the examinations usefulness as they only seem to opposed the unequal opportunities that can skew the examinations.

In my view, both sides are wrong to place such emphasis on examinations in the first place. I have written a lot about this in my blog. Examinations as they are usually carried out are poor indicators of student intelligence and achievement. It does not matter if all the schools and teachers are of equal quality. The problem with examinations is the inherent philosophy and design behind such examinations. For these reasons alone, high stakes examinations should be abolished not only in Indonesia but also for the rest of the world.

“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.

Ok I know I mentioned Indonesian education in the header above but really this article is relevant for any school out there that does not have English as its main medium of instruction.

Google has introduced Google Translate translation service. It is free. Teachers and students can now have better access to websites for educational use. Students will find it easier to use the massive resources of the Web for their research work. Also for example, where once to design a WebQuest, a teacher will have difficulty finding web resources in their native languages, this hurdle can largely be overcome with Google Translate. Though not perfect, I think it can assist students and teachers to overcome much of the language barrier.

Anyway, at the very least no one can insult me (in written form anyway) in French and get away with it.  By the way. what are those French lines in the Beatles’ “Michelle”?