multiple users in a classroom?

Submitted by kgregory on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 20:12.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking (All Versions)

I'm wondering if this software would be useful for transcribing student comments into text. First, is the speech of kindergarteners problematic? Second, do you really have to have separate user profiles and licenses? Is there some kind of school license that would cover multiple users? I'm looking for an alternative to getting each child to make a comment on a tape recorder and typing up all the comments. Thanks for any advice!

Katherine

UniVoice to the Rescue

Submitted by KnowBrainer on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 21:32.

Although NaturallySpeaking is usually
licensed to the end-user, Nuance makes an exception to classroom situations
but they expect you to purchase a copy of Preferred
9.5 for each computer. Although NaturallySpeaking includes a teen model, your
end-users are too young to take advantage of it. FORTUNATELY we have a possible
solution. We are the exclusive distributors of UniVoice which is a pre-trained
non-gender specific multiuser NaturallySpeaking profile that requires no
training and is designed to work with very young voices. Literally everyone
can use the same user profile. UniVoice was originally designed for verbal
disabilities but has been expanded to include nearly everyone. We've been
using UniVoice
for the last 2 years and we are just getting over acute laryngitis which was
so bad that we could barely talk. UniVoice couldn't help us with the missing
words that the laryngitis prevented us from producing but it was amazingly
accurate on the words that we could speak and when we could utter a complete
phrase, we sounded like we had a 3 pack a day habit and had been drinking a
pint of Jack Daniels every day for the past 20 years. Our team thought it was
hilarious but we are glad that it is almost over. Even under these circumstances,
UniVoice produced excellent results.