tech. assistance

Franklin has been making spell checkers for a long time, and they’re pretty reliable (though I haven’t found one that will figure out that “wuns” is spelled once; you have to be able to spell pretty well to use a spell checker). (www.franklin.com will get you there — the “spelling ace” is $25 and the one I’ve seen most often. I like the “language master” myself because it does a few more tricks.)

Speech-to-text has come a long way but still takes a fair amount of work and certainly a lot of computer speed and memory. http://www.edc.org/spk2wrt/ is a great website for information from people in the trenches about that technology. I suspect they also know about text-to-speech (talking browsers) and how to get those things to work. Either one has its share of challenges to keep the technology functioning — probably like cars when they were first invented :)

Ditto to everything Sue said with one other thought. My understanding from people who work with this stuff is that the WP software that has word prediction and the ability to read text back is a lot more reliable for adolescents thanspeech to text. It has a lot to do with the change in quality of their voices I think, as they mature- as well as the consistency in their pronunciation. Co Writer and Write Out Loud come to mind…Don Johnson has a good selection of quality stuff- there are articles in the LD In Depth section here under technology.

Robin

My son uses Dragon Systems’ Point & Speak. Works fine. To set it up, he had to read a printed text over a two-hour period (not all at once), to “train” the computer to recognize his voice.

www.dragonsys.com
www.naturalspeech.com

Good luck. Carol

Has your son’s voice changed? I understand that speech to text progams need to be retrained when voice changes occur- not just the real dramatic ones like adolescence, but even the smaller changes that are just a result of kids becoming larger- or the program stars to make a lot of mistakes.

I have an autistic student whose verbal expression is much better than written. I followed up with the parents about using this type of technology, but the father was leery. He himself is in the computer industry and has more knowledge than anyone I know. He said the drawbacks are multi-fold. First, the recognition software isn’t wonderful, word substitutions often occur, and grammar suffers also. My personal opinion is, try it out and see. Visit some online software sites and see what’s out there. As a trial basis, I would find a vendor in your area that will allow a trial period and return of teh product if it doesn’t fit your needs. All in all, though, this will only serve as a way AROUND a problem of written expression. I’m not saying don’t try this route, I’m saying at the same time keep working on those skills, because there will be times when she can’t use that technology. Hope that helps.
Mark

My son is twelve. He’s been using the program for a year without a problem. His voice hasn’t begun to change.

Carol

Mark’s right about the point & speak software not being perfect. There are a few mistakes. Sometimes a word needs to be repeated; some incorrect words get used, but the overall effect has been that our son will work on his own for the duration of a complete assignment, as opposed to getting away with as few sentences as he can possibly use. Also, what I feel is of most value is the fact that he’s “composing” his work as he goes and reviewing it himself. I do a final review for errors once the bulk of the work is finished. He and I make the corrections together. The program just puts him so much more in charge of his own work.

Carol