iLearn iGuess: Part 3

It amazes me how many apps that are available on the iTunes store.  When people say "there's an app for that", I think that it is true.

Today I'm going to discuss one app, that while not a social media app, is an app that helps open up the world for students.  Dragon Dicate is this app, and it works well.

There are a number of students in our high school that have difficulty reading and writing for a variety of reasons (EAL, ocular motor dysfunction, just can't, etc), so we use Kurzweil and Dragon Dictate to help them achieve success in their learning.  Last week, a student spent three days training Dragon Dictate to recognize his speech patterns on a computer.  When he was finally able to start using Dragon to write (speak) a paper in a word processor, the computer did not recognize his voice and kept making numerous mistakes.  The student got extremely frustrated (as did I).  This program was his opportunity to be a contributing member of his class and his chance to complete written assignments, and it did not work at all.  He became very frustrated and wanted to quit.  Not quite sure what to do, I said, "Hey, there's an app for that" and downloaded Dragon Dictate on the Student Services iPad.  No kidding, within 5 minutes of being frustrated, he was dictating into the iPad, and it was writing out his speech with almost 100% accuracy.  I'm not sure why this worked better than on the laptop, but it worked.  We were then able to email the text to him to put in a word processor for the final editing.

Dragon Dictate is helping this student (and others) feel better about themselves, complete their work, and be productive members of their classes.  The app did not require and voice recognition training, and was as simple as tapping the screen to begin.  What a great way to support our school's/province's model of inclusion.