Students diagnosed with dyslexia and some ELL students often have trouble with putting their thoughts and ideas into writing. My class’s own dyslexic student has trouble (and by no fault of his) focusing and doing writing work because it is hard for him get started and he is always pages behind everyone else. It is also taxing on the teacher’s part to either coax the student to do work or to make a compromise adaptation every single time.

Technology has a possible solution through speech recognition software and the example we will look at is the Dragon speech recognition. This software turns a student’s voice into text thus eliminating the need to for spelling and writing. Students speak into a microphone and their voice appears as words on the screen. The technical requirement to run such a software are a Windows based computer, a proximity microphone (one that doesn’t pick up background noise) and a word processor such as Microsoft Word. In the video by Rhodders (2007), the software also has the function to read aloud to the user what was typed, making proofreading that much easier for students who has trouble reading text.

The downside of implementing this type of technology in the classroom is firstly the cost. The software is not cheap at over $100 per license, the laptop itself with the software will also likely be used by the dyslexic student only so that’s another cost in the school‘s budget. This software does require good speaking skills in order to work and students who had trouble to read in the first place will need a lot of help in training before they can comfortably take advantage of this. Rhodders’ video explained that the student’s dad had to read him a passage over and over again for him to repeat it into the computer.

I am curious and would love to further explore the potential of this software’s ability to potentially help dyslexic students for as long as cost can be kept low. I do not like the idea of having a laptop bound to a student without some level of expectation that it is a privilege and not a right. I also have a class that is very active and tends to be loud when working, I do not feel that it is a good community builder to have a student potentially leaving the room constantly to work somewhere quiet by himself.

 

Reference

Freedom of Speech Ltd. (2014, April 2). Helping Bethany’s dyslexia at school using Dragon speech recognition software [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj85zQT184o

Rhodders. (2007, April 23). Demonstration of speech recognition: For Westminster eForum [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXHawlHLmtI