There are learners in classrooms everywhere who cannot express themselves effectively in writing. For some of these learners, voice recognition software has provided an alternative “keyboard” that has made writing possible. Unfortunately, voice recognition is not a magic bullet. In my experience, complete success with voice recognition is rare among school age children, including learners at the secondary level.
I have not seen research on the subject, but I believe that immature voices, challenges with thought processing, articulation issues, and inadequate support by teachers/teaching assistants are critical factors that mitigate against success. THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THERE IS A FREE ALTERNATIVE that may be effective for anyone who has access to Microsoft Word. This offers learners a means of showing what they know and of telling their stories without writing and without using voice recognition software.
Voice Comment is a “hidden” feature of Microsoft Word that I believe teachers and parents everywhere need to be aware of, so they can make it available to the learners they support. With this feature, a digital recording can be inserted easily into any Word document. The recording shows up on the page as an audio icon. A teacher, parent, or friend can listen to what has been recorded simply by double-clicking on the icon.
[For learners who face challenges with both reading and writing, I suggest combining the use of Voice Comments with WordTalk, the free add-on that turns MS Word into a talking word processor, complete with an extremely helpful talking spell checker. For more information about this, please visit UDL4ALL, a wiki where I have collected resources to support the installation and use of WordTalk.]
Here’s what the Voice Comment icon looks like on the “Quick Access” toolbar in Word 2007.
To place the icon on the toolbar, you must follow the steps shown below. (To download instructions for MS Word 2003, click HERE.)
1. Open the drop-down ‘Customize Quick Access Toolbar’ menu which is found to the right of the toolbar, and select ‘More Commands’
2. In the dialog box that opens, click open the drop-down menu under ‘Popular Commands’ and select ‘All Commands’, as shown below.
3. Scroll down to ‘Voice Comment’, select it, and click on the ‘Add’ button to add the icon to the Quick Access toolbar.
February 11, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Hi Paul
You’re absolutely right. The Insert Sound Object should be placed in the toolbar as default by school administrators. All students should have easy access to it. I actually prefer adding the ‘Insert Voice’ to the toolbar. That way formatting of text is not affected. The audio comment is added in the margin of the document. An added benefit is that text can also be added in the review box containing the audio file. This is especially useful when students are making voice notes during a reading task or if teachers want to embed a comment when reviewing the student’s work. I have a help file on my wiki outlining this feature.
Jim
February 11, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Thanks for this helpful contribution, Jim.
Here’s the URL for Jim’s wiki: http://inclusivetechnologies.wikispaces.com/
–Paul
February 12, 2009 at 8:12 am
Thank you so much! I will certainly try this out with one of my 9 year old students.
February 17, 2009 at 12:37 pm
ARGH>>>>>
Paul, I have spent the last hour trying to make this work. After calling in my techie, we discovered that this doesn’t work on a MAC! If you know of a way that it does, PLEASE let me know!
February 17, 2009 at 1:15 pm
To dmlagrone, and any other Mac users, I’m terribly sorry for not including a disclaimer that I work almost exclusively in a PC environment. I think we should be able to assume that features available in MS Office on one platform should be available on the other. Apparently, this is not so. So, I’m sorry if I’ve inadvertently caused frustration and you’ve been unable to get Voice Comments to work on a Mac! –Paul
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February 19, 2009 at 12:44 am
Nice post Paul. I feel like this is one of those posts, I will refer to for a long time.