The following text is my story using Speechnotes.co in its unedited version.

It’s May long weekend and we are headed to the cabin for a fun weekend with family. The weekend is beautiful! It is the first sunny and warm weekend we have had all spring we spend the first day opening up the cabin and getting it ready for the summer we pull that chairs out we spray things. We pull out the kayaks ankle for a paddle we paddle across the lake oribe really to visit some family at another cabin we spend the day in the sunshine on the beach and on the water it is too cold to go for a swim. That night we enjoy a campfire and make a special dessert we called toasty the next day we decide since it is windy and not good to be on the lake we will instead go for a quad ride we open up the garages and attempt to start the quads one of them starts no problem the next a little help so we give it a boost the third will not start we can’t figure it out aftermath after much frustration we give up and use a fourth quad instead we decide we will take a nice short ride on a dry Trail we put our helmets on some of us put rain boots on i’m headed out on the trail the quads are working great we are bumping along a very familiar trail that we all enjoy our kids are taking turns Drive we decide on the way back to take another route so off we go through the trail taking much longer than we originally planned it is a great Trail only a tree or two in our way that we had to stop and removed from the trail as we came to the end of the trail we come across a large puddle probably about 100 ft long the first quad goes through some mud and water they make it about 2:30 of the way into the puddle when they got stuck my dad and my nephew wear on the quad they did not have rain gear or boots on the water was up to the seat on the quad hit the quad hung in a precarious position angled downwards handlebars lower than the backside of the quad my son was riding with me and we got off the quad took a look around at what we thought maybe we’d be able to do or how we could help we ourselves weren’t sure if we should forage forward or turn around but the first quad. Pebble they couldn’t start it they had to get into the water up to their knees to try to winch out but the quad wouldn’t start making the winch unusable my son got off the quad and decided to walk his way around part of the puddle best I chose a different path than the first quad I went through the mud almost getting stuck put the quad in 4 by 4 and made my way out the second part of the longer puddle where the first quad was stuck proved to be more challenging I crossed on the opposite side of the puddle where the ground seemed to be a bit higher we made it to the other side of the puddle my daughter was driving side-by-side she made her way through both pedals with plenty of power and no issues at all now we still have a quad stuck. Motor won’t start in the middle of a puddle where the water is well past the knees of my father I take the side by side drive into the puddle on the same side of him as him and when the side-by-side started down-low I stopped my dad slashed his way through this mud hole over to the side by side win where we hooked him up and slowly and carefully I use the side by side hold that quad the mud hole once out of the mud hole we had to figure out how to get this party started we would be doing it. I learned how to find battery on the quad and how did jump start it so did the three kids who were with us we got the second quad started no problem as we’re putting all our tools away. Do it again we were not able to get it started so once again we had to get the tools out and jump start the quad we left it running this time now that the quad was running we thought we were good to go unfortunately my quad while going through that mud hole must have hit something sharp because I now had a very flat tire so I also learned how to use the air compressor compressor on the side by side and I was able to fill my tire and Limp my quad home where we plugged the hole properly it was quite the adventure we washed off all the quads how do you well deserve to dinner and headed out to visit cousins for a night of campfire fun it was a rather normal weekend at the lake as there is always one Adventure or another to be had. The next day we cleaned everything up put all the toys away and headed home for another week of school and work we still have to get our quad figured out and fixed as we never could get it started one more thing on a long to-do list

Speechnotes 🙂 https://speechnotes.co

Reflection:

I found this task, of using voice to text technology, quite difficult! I do not ever use speech to text technology and I am not always a storyteller. Using the Speechnotes website, I told a story from a weekend at the lake. I like to be able to change what I am writing and reword/reread my thoughts to ensure I am communicating them properly. I found myself speaking slowly and pausing my speech more than I normally would. The text from my story is void of proper conventions of the English written language. The first two sentences I was saying the punctuation but that was awkward, so I stopped. The text has very few periods and no commas. There are no indents for new paragraphs showing a new section of the story. There is the odd capital letter in the middle of a sentence. I find it difficult to follow the text without grammar rules being followed. There are also multiple substitutions for words I said such as “ankle” and “oribe” and re-reading it I am unsure of what was actually said. There are certain parts of the story, such a pulling my dad out of the mud hole, that if the reader did not have experience riding trails on a quad, they would not be able to understand because of all the substituted words and the lack of extra description on my part. The two most common mistakes in this text are the lack of periods and the substitution of similar sounding words (ankle = and go). When I read the text in my head, I couldn’t figure out some of the word substitutions but when I read it out loud, slowly, some of them started to make sense to me.

I would have had much more success with a scripted story using speech to text technology. I was recalling a story and found it difficult to think about what I was saying while watching the Speechnotes program dictate. A scripted story would have allowed me to reconcile and order my thoughts before trying to share them. I would have added more details to make the story easier for the recipient to understand. Written storytelling allows the author to edit their story ensuring they are communicating certain messages to their audience. Oral storytelling can be more difficult to piece the parts together. Oral storytelling allows room for interaction with the author while written works could be read without the author present. Writing is usually more deliberate than speaking, making finished written pieces more carefully crafted than spoken word (Gnanadesikan, 2011, p. 5).  In written form, the story is static, unchanging from one reader to the next. Oral storytelling allows for change from teller to teller as one remembers or emphasizes different parts each time. Gnanadesikan (2011) explains that with writing we lose intonation and emotional content (p.9). With written word, we rely on punctuation and descriptions to convey emotion or create intonation in our minds. This exercise made me aware of the differences in my communication of a story when it is told orally vs written. The two are very different!

References:

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internetLinks to an external site. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).