Below I have copied and pasted my speech-to-text transcript of the story The Little Red Riding Hood (I had to refresh my memory of the details by watching a short cartoon version on YouTube!).
Once upon a time there was a little girl who always wore a red coat and her name was that cold Little red riding Hood one day her mom asked her to take some biscuits to her grandma who had fallen ill so Little red riding Hood went off down the trail to her grandmas house her mom had told her not to stray away from the trail or she would get lost but along the way little red riding hood stopped to pick some beautiful flowers she was enjoying herself so much that she did not noticed something big and dark and scary approaching her it was a wolf the wolf as little red riding hood what she was doing and little red riding hood answered that she was off to see her grandmother was sick and she wanted to deliver some biscuits to her The wolf using his kind voice asked a little red riding hood where her grandma lived and she acted him down the trail in the forest so he had an idea the world left little bit Ridinghood and quickly scurried towards her grandmothers house he ran so fast he was out of breath finally he got to grandmothers house and knocked on the door Little red riding Hood‘s grandmother called from the bed who is it and the wolf replied in his best little girl voice it’s me little red riding hood the grandmother called for a Little red riding hood to come in and when she did the wolf came in and quickly gobbled up the grandmother before she could do anything feeling satisfied the wolf looked through the grandmothers closet and put on some of her clothing that would make him look more like grandmother he put on a nightgown a hat and even spread some of grandma‘s perfume so that he would smell like her he then crawled into bed and waited for a little red riding hood to come a few minutes later little red riding hood knocked on the door and the wolf called out in his best grandmothers voice who is that little advising had replied that it’s her granddaughter and the wolf called for her to come in so she did and she walked straight to her grandmothers bedside but when she did she noticed that her grandmother looked different and sounded different so she asked her grandmother what was wrong and the wolf replied that she has a bit of a cold but little bit Ridinghood kept pressing but grandmother what did you say you have and the wolf replied all the better to hear you with and little bit Ridinghood said that grandmother what big eyes you have and I will reply all the better to see you with a Little red riding Hood kept on but grandmother what big teeth you have and at that moment the wolf replied all the better to eat you with and jumped out of bed and ran after Little red riding Hood but little red riding hood was able to escape the cottage and run back down the trail yelling for help a man that was chopping wood nearby in the forest heard little red riding hood yelling and rushed to save her meanwhile the wolf catches up to little red riding hood and the man the man grabs the world shake some upside down so the wolf spits up grandma he then carried the wall deep into the floor so that he could never bother anybody else again little red riding hood and grandma went back to her cottage to eat the biscuits And have a nice afternoon together
I struggle with telling stories on the whim, so this was challenging, and I thought I would instead do a re-telling of an existing story. Nevertheless, without having scripted it, it is certainly missing important details. I found myself constantly adding on to each sentence as I remembered facts and details, so the flow is choppy, and lacks voice.
As you can tell by reading the story, the Voice-to-Text function on my iPhone made many, many mistakes. Aside from completely omitting all punctuation, the recording misheard or simply did not hear several words throughout. I consider these to be mistakes because they drastically alter the meaning of many of the sentences, resulting in confusion on the part of the reader, and takes away from the overall plot of the story.
Oral storytelling can offer so much that written storytelling may not always convey. Good oral stories are told with dramatic voice that engages the listener, smooth flow with appropriate pauses to build suspense, and allows the listener to visualize in ways that written stories don’t always allow, especially if there are pictures already present alongside the written stories.
Having been a special education teacher for the past three years, my literacy program looked quite a bit different from mainstream classrooms because most of my students’ had severe written output challenges. Speech-to-Text was an essential function in many students’ daily writing activities. This was a great tool to use, as it allowed for students to share the ideas in their head freely, when otherwise they would not be able to. Storytelling was never assessed based on what a student could write, but what ideas they could share – however they could share those. It’s not fair to judge as student’s writing capacity if the goal of the lesson is to demonstrate one’s understanding of what a story is, the components of a story, and the imagination guiding that story. Nevertheless, there are downfalls to this function as well. Because my students struggled with literacy, they were more often than not, unable to read the story they had just recorded. When they could, the same issues would occur that I mentioned above – there would be no punctuation, words were missing or misheard, and then the student would have to spend a substantial amount of time (often with one-to-one support) fixing these “mistakes”.
In my personal and professional opinion as a teacher, Voice to Text functions are wonderful additions to a balanced literacy program when used for small tasks in school. Outside of school, I personally use this function often when responding to messages on my phone or writing short emails, but I still have to go back and alter the recorded texts 99% of the time.