Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education

I doubt if the creators of the application I’m reviewing today fully appreciated the amazing assistive technology implications of their product when they set out. They have demonstrated, however, that the advent of universally available voice recognition is not far off. Ira Socol wrote about this yesterday at SpeEdChange.

jott offers effective and accurate voice recognition via the telephone. The user calls a toll free number and dictates either an email or text message. You can send these to yourself or to someone else. The dictated text is also available to read on the jott website, where, as an added bonus, an audio recording of your dictation is also available.

You can, of course, copy and paste dictated text wherever you want to put it. With jott, you also have the option of dictating directly to online accounts such as Twitter or Google Calendar. You can even post directly to your blog.

Jott is easy to use, and I was amazed at the accuracy of the dictation. In fact, I had difficulty getting jott to make mistakes. It has spelled and punctuated accurately almost everything I have tried dictating. After setting up a free account, you simply dial a toll free number (in Canada or the US) and follow prompts to begin dictating. Since jott is web-based, your computer’s operating system doesn’t matter.

Please note that in Canada, unless you are in a major centre, you cannot use your cell phone with jott. That’s because Canadian cell phone companies block caller ID to toll free numbers. Jott’s toll-free service works fine, however, from Canadian land lines. In many of the more major Canadian cities, there is a local phone number that enables you to use your cell phone. I’ve listed those local numbers below.

It may be worth your while to check out some of the other services that jott offers. For example, jott will bring audio versions of RSS feeds from the internet directly to your phone.