Speech to Text gives us an excellent opportunity to laugh a bit at technology. In this post, I want to compare my experience to Tamara’s. Both Tamara and I talked about stories that meant a lot to us. I talked about my vacation to Ecuador with my best friend, and Tamara talked about her relationship with her dog. Tamara used Speechnotes to record her transcript, whereas I used Camtasia. Camtasia generates the text from a pre-recorded audio file, so perhaps that explains why my transcript was terrible.

From reading Tamara’s transcript, I definitely can get the “gist of [her] story.” It is the story of how she got her dog, Doug, and how meaningful he is in her and her family’s life. I think it is a very sweet story, and I would love to have heard the audio from this story as well. Her dog is clearly a meaningful being in her life, and has provided some support as she has gone through the MET program, lying and her feet. I also wanted to thank Tamara for sharing her beautiful Doug picture with us because that visual provided me with a further connection to her aural story.

In comparison, my transcript… is a mess. I ensured I included the audio file for this very reason. To ensure that if no one could understand my transcript, you could atleast hear me tell my story of the time I went to Ecuador. The transcript I shared made little to no sense, even to myself. Aural stories can be incredibly meaningful, which is why both Tamara and I chose stories that meant a lot to us. However, in this case, the technology I used failed me tremendously. Tamara’s, although imperfect, was atleast understandable. Mine, on the other-hand, was 1428 words of pure nonsense. However, it included some great quotes such as: “that’s a young north of the equator,” “the older bearded climb over the landslide,” and “2020 hourse of troubled.”

In conclusion, this task really proved how much the tool you use affects the result, technology matters. However, for aural stories to really keep their meaning and their importance, I think they need to remain in an aural form, instead of using text to speech. If I had listened to Tamara’s story audibly, I think I would have gotten more out of it, specifically the meaning and the emotion of the story. However, when it is delivered as a speech to text file, the lack of formatting means I need to spend more time investigating the meaning, as opposed to listening and understanding.