Task 3: Voice to Text

Transcribed text (Google Voice-to-Text January 26, 2023)

Have you ever lost a student during dismissal whether you have or not you can imagine how nerve-racking it is hi everyone I am going to share with you what happened last week with my teaching partner to give you a bit of context I apply for Ed leave this year so I am job sharing with another teacher I work for 3 days and she works for two my teaching partner has been away for a bit though as her children were sick should we turn last week and was trying to get back to the routines last Wednesday at around 2:45 I received a text from her asking me to message a student’s mom on seesaw which is a platform we use to connect with families as she could reach her life This parent usually picks up another student who’s also in this in our class For the purpose of the story I will name the students Johnny and Emma so on Wednesday my teaching partner released Johnny with whom she thought was Emma’s Grandma moments later we have Johnny’s Grandma at the door hoping to pick up Johnny so we inform the office and had our secretary call Emma’s grandma and it turned out that Emma’s grandma lives in New Brunswick and she was very concerned receiving the call Then our secretary contacted unless other grandma and she  also was clueless about this whole situation Johnny’s mom Was then contacted and she rushed to school the police was called the and Men was not notified After about an hour Johnny’s mom received a call from Her own mother asking her when it would be the best time for her to drop off Johnny So you turned out that they have mistaken the schedule for pickup.Johnny was safe. It took my teaching partner a few days to recover from this before we scheduled a meeting to discuss  and reflect on what should be in place so this doesn’t happen again One of the dismissal tips was to release students if you had a Time preventing and all at once stampede Let them get their backpacks ready by their table groups and when students are released they must point at the adults and tell us who they are we Just remember go slow to go fast later

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English? What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

When observing this text generated by Google’s voice-to-text feature, there are several distinct features that render it deviant from the conventions of written English. These include grammar and spelling mistakes, lack of punctuation, and run-on sentences. I had no idea that you had to verbalize punctuation! It did not pick up my voice correctly. For example, at one point I said “She returned last week”, but it registered “Should we turn last week”. It registered “could reach her life”, instead of “couldn’t reach her phone”. “The and Men was not notified” instead of “the admin was notified”. And, “if you had a Time” instead of “a few at a time”. I would estimate that about 65% of the content was transcribed correctly. A notable observation is that most of the proper nouns (For example, Johnny/Emma/Wednesday) were properly capitalized. Additionally, the numerical values I dictated were correctly interpreted, such as “3 days” and “2:45”.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”? What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

Overall, voice-to-text can consist of numerous errors. It was pretty difficult to watch how my speech translated incorrectly on the screen. I purposely waited and paused my speech to avoid the ums and ahs. However, I noticed a few times I used “so” as a filler. When used excessively, this filler word may reduce my credibility and authority as a speaker. I felt rushed as the red microphone symbol stared at me, waiting for more words to come out of my mouth. As a teacher (and an introvert), I always let families know the best way to reach me is via email. Not only does it allow me to obtain a digital record of our communication, but it also provides me with more time to ponder the questions asked.

Additionally, I did not say “comma” or “period”, which resulted in run-on sentences in my text. If I could script the story beforehand, I would have approached it from a written perspective. There would be a clear beginning, middle, and end. Ong (2002) discussed the differences between written and spoken language. Can we perceive emotions accurately through texts? Look at this example below. Try emphasizing a different word in this sentence each time you say it.

He isn’t flying to Toronto tomorrow.

• Emphasizing the word, ‘he’ implies that it is someone else that is flying to Toronto.
• Emphasizing the word, ‘isn’t’ implies that he is not doing this anymore.
• Emphasizing the word, ‘flying’ implies that he is not flying, and may be traveling using other transportation.
• Emphasizing the word, ‘to’ implies that he is flying by or from Toronto and not to.
• Emphasizing the word, ‘Toronto’ implies that he might be traveling to another location.
• Emphasizing the word, ‘tomorrow’ implies that it is not tomorrow, but a different date.

As you can see, emphasizing a different word in the same sentence can completely change its meaning.

Reference

Ong, W.J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge. (Original work published 1982).