[senco-forum] Dragon Naturally Speaking / exams

We currently have a year 11 student who has suffered from tennis

Do please ensure this student has *lots and lots* of practice using
Dragon before taking their exam, preferably to the extent that the
logistics of using Dragon is pretty much second nature and requires
very little conscious effort. She'll be at a big disadvantage if she
needs to divide her conscious attention between answering the exam
question and manipulating the speech software. This is particularly an
issue when correcting errors in translation, which on occasion may
require a complex series of voice commands. Furthermore under exam
conditions she'll be under considerably more stress than usual,
substantially reducing her ability to multi-task between composing her
answer and consciously manipulating the speech recognition software,
especially if she's had insufficient practice for this to become
pretty much second nature.

One other important point: It's vital that she tests her speech
recognition system well in advance in the room she'll be taking her
exams in advance. Why? Because different rooms have wildly varying
acoustic properties. This can cause wide variations in recognition
accuracy, possibly even to the point where the software becomes
unusable. Now most people will jump to assume the main factors that
are seriously detrimental to accuracy are general background noise and
echoes within larger rooms. Whereas in practice I've found Dragon is
surprisingly good at coping with these conditions. No the real killer
of speech recognition accuracy is *resonance*, which is especially a
problem in small rooms with bare walls and minimal furniture -- just
the sort of room that's likely to be allocated to an exam student using
a speech recognition system!

Hope this helps.

David Bowles

> We currently have a year 11 student who has suffered from tennis
> elbow on and off over the last 18mnths. Up to now she has had
> managed with a laptop, but a current flare-up has left her unable to
> use her arm at all and she is becoming increasingly anxious over
> looming exams. She is experimenting with speech to text software:
> Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's early days, but she seems quite
> excited, if not relieved, that she has this alternative to writing /
> typing. My question is: what experience have people had of using
> this for exams? Is it preferable to having an amanuensis? What are
> the practicalities of setting it up on the day of the exam ~ all our
> laptop users have to have a 'wiped' laptop in exams ~ what's the
> situation for 'Dragon Speakers' as they've probably spent weeks
> training the darn thing ~ are they allowed to use their own lap top in exams?

> Forgive me if there is a very simple explanation to all this ~ I'm a bit of a techno-phobe!!

> Thanking you in anticipation
> Jenny