Success!

Kayleigh, Jessica, Madi and myself presented our EdTech project for our class the other day – and it went great!

I focused my research on Speech-to-Text software, which is essentially an assistive software that recognizes spoken word and converts it to printed text. There were many things I learnt during my research for this project, but here are a few of the highlights that I found the most interesting and/or surprising:

  • Speech-to-Text software is often advertised to large companies and those in marketing, law, and medical fields which require a lot of transcribing and note-taking to promote efficiency
  • In my experience with the software, I have seen it be very frustrating for students to use. I discovered there are certain programs that you can install that promote 99.9% accuracy, recognize hundreds of languages, and can be installed on your device to gradually adjust to the student’s voice.
  • I learnt that students can gain independence by using the software, as they will often feel embarrassed when working with a transcriber by taking the time to brainstorm. They will thus rush through the process and not truly think and plan out their ideas before commencing writing. In this way in many others, speech-to-text software promotes independent and autonomous demonstrations of learning.

Personally, the above information is what captured my attention the most as I was doing research and created those “ah-ha!” moments. I shared these points, as well as several others about speech-to-text software with the class during my group’s presentation. We have created a class resource with all of our information which can be accessed here. Overall, I felt that our research was very worthwhile as I learnt a lot not only from my focus but from my partners’ topics and other groups as well. I feel that this is extremely relevant to my career and towards creating an accessible, inclusive, and caring classroom environment.

-Jess