Task #3 Voice to Text

For this task I entered an unfamiliar world. I had never used any voice to text technology but for this task I chose to use SpeechTexter. I was very user friendly for a first timer, it did however raise some questions and highlighted some of my own personal challenges regarding oral dictation. I am curious to see if any of my classmates encountered the same?

The first challenge was to dictate an unscripted story, which to me felt like walking into a new job unprepared and ready to fail. Being a graduate student naturally brings out the need to carefully craft written texts, revise them 100 times, then revise them again a final time before even thinking of submitting for another human to read. I was up for the challenge and threw myself in. Although the plan was to orally convey a precise message, my spoken, unscripted sentences did not flow as beautifully as text would have on paper. The complete absence of punctuation (which you can see below) is enough to derail any reader and in addition to that, my articulation was rather subpar to say the least. My first language is not English, it is French. I found myself hearing my own french accent during my dictation and many of the spelling mistakes in the text below can be attributed to this.

If I had had the chance to script the story, I would have tried to reduce grammatical errors by making a conscious effort to pause where commas and periods should be. Most of the mistakes in the text seem to be related to lack of punctuation, where the emphasis that I was dictating with my voice did not transcend into the text. I consider these mistakes because it prevented my story from coming to life. Readers will most likely not want to share my story, in their eyes it never had much life to begin with, at least not enough to want to share it with others. Although I do consider these to be true mistakes, there is a part of storytelling that should be spontaneous and I am not sure if it requires such preciseness and exactitude? Oral storytelling specifically offers a sense of authenticity that a written scripted text cannot always offer. Written texts are, to varying extents, disconnected from their author. In my text below there is no way for the reader to be able to identify or hear the intensity in my voice and the (in my opinion) powerful message I tried to convey to others in my profession. The journey I discussed was one that merits to be carefully crafted into a scripted text, this would ensure that the quality of the message is not compromised.

In closing, voice to text is a form of technology that I need to learn more about. In the present moment I do not feel compelled to use it for storytelling purposes and would have preferred recording a short somewhat scripted podcast.  Your thoughts?

My unscripted, unpunctuated story can be found below.

A Story of an educator in the making

Good morning fellow E-Tec 540 classmates for the week 3 task I’ve decided to tell a story about an educator in the making essentially my story as a clinical instructor in dental hygiene and how i became a student in the met program in 1998 I was a dental assisting students at a local College here in Southern Ontario I was motivated to learn I knew what I wanted I was driven to succeed  as  interested as I was in the content I was learning I was equally motivated by modelling and paying attention to my instructors and seeing how they taught I was inspired by the fact that they made each student feel important I truly looked up to them and the success they had achieved is what was motivating me to perhaps models Emma’s Educators and learn from those who clearly didn’t like their jobs and sparked an interest in the education field I put it in the back of my mind and I knew it was something I wanted to revisit at some point in my career either as a student or after I had graduated I graduated with honours from the dental assisting level to program and I was accepted the very next year into the dental hygiene program in this program I was challenged to a new level and it was very difficult I had less time to notice much about others my classmates my instructors I was purely focussed on succeeding and surviving the program which back then in 1999 was three semesters and now I want to this day in 2019 they have recently changed the program to three. School years which is 6 semesters so essentially as completing the content and half of the time that current students are to this day I graduated from dental hygiene with honours in 1999 I was very proud of myself it has been a very stressful time but then she my surprise I was asked to come back to teach the very following summer so I had graduated very months after I was asked to fill in as a clinical instructor in the dental hygiene clinic now even back then at the young age of 20 I knew that even though I was interested in teaching in the clinic and I had no teaching skills and I felt out of place it felt great and I was honoured to have been asked to teach that yet a part of me felt like I had no business being there my Educators at the time and the dental assisting and dental hygiene programs had told me that to become an instructor in the dental clinic or you going to lecture in the classrooms one needed five years of clinical experience in the field in order to be able to apply for such position so that’s when I set off I set my goals I was going to go work for five years I was going to come back fully ready with an armed with experience I wanted to become an educator and the dental sciences that was my goal during my years of practice which I ended up completing 19 years of in my third or fourth year of clinical practice there is much talk about undergraduate degrees in dental hygiene and how certain universities across Canada UBC being one of them were offering degree completion programs and I thought to myself if this is going to be the new Norm the new the graduating requirement for dental hygienists that I wanted to be able to be considered equally for positions and I apply to UBC for the dental hygiene degree completion program courses part-time while practicing dental hygiene during that time I was asked to come back on an emergency basis to teach a radiology lab and to being a structure in the clinic for one semester this was in 2015 the year I graduated from my undergraduate program with UBC and dental hygiene it was very timely it seems like it was a sign that I’ve it was meant to be for me to be a clinical instructor and I truly found my place I was happy to help out last minute because they needed someone to fill in these courses so I was immersed into a program which I had previously been a student out so my very own College here where I graduated from back in 1999 I was now teaching at in 2015 and I believe that I learned more than the students did that year I was not only learning the ropes in the clinic in the Radiology lab I was learning from the students what their needs were their expectations were from their instructors I quickly realized that today’s Learners are very different than the learner’s from 15-20 years ago and it started to make me feel as though I did not have the teaching tools to teach this new generation of learners I completed my semester in 2015 I was happy to have done it I was appreciative of the fact that they thought of me for taking this position on they have acknowledged the fact that I had achieved a new level of Education with my undergraduate degree in dental hygiene but I left there again feeling as though I did not have the teaching tools necessary to properly transfer my clinical experience into knowledge for my students there was something missing in the fall of 2016 I started doing some research looking up teaching degrees considering possibly getting a teaching certificate better certificate was not enough for me with my undergraduate degree with UBC and with the level of Education I had achieved there with my undergrad studies I wanted to set the bar a little higher and decided to pursue the Met program in the UBC graduate school in 2018 be very same college that I attended for two programs and taught at 4 to semesters in my career phone to me again and reached out to see if I would lecture and teach their professionalism and Ethics Course a type of teaching I had not done I had not lectured in a classroom I had been the Hands-On instructor in a radiology lab in the clinic in previous assignments so I was up for the challenge I thought this would give me a bit of exposure to the other dimensions of teaching and I would truly be able to see if I wanted to teach in the classroom if I want to keep my focus on being a clinical instructor during this term teaching ethics and professionalism I realize that much of the content that was being delivered to the students was being delivered in the same method that was delivered to me back in 1999 when I myself took the program I started to think that a lot of the content could possibly be delivered any more appropriate and varying format b-class was still structured in a way that made PowerPoint presentations 90% of the teaching tools it was made clear to me that they did not have to reinvent the wheel this semester and that I was  to deliver the material as it had been delivered before constructed for me I simply had to deliver the material using the tools if they had previously used which is Powerpoint now any educator reading this me realize how dated these methods are and the limitations in the struggles one may encounter while having to use solely PowerPoint and lectures to teach an entire course I was discouraged I thought my time in the classroom wood motivate me and inspire me to want to become an educator and instead I felt held back I knew that there was a better way to teach I had already acquired some of the tools to do so in the mat program so this propels me forward and although have to pause my studies in the Met program for a year or so for family reasons I know back full force I’m ready to complete the program I’m ready to fully armed myself with the tools needed to become a successful educator in the dental Sciences   The End

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