Speech Recognition Input Skills

There were two input technologies that Bill Gates recently discussed, touchscreen and speech recognition. Right now I am currently using speech recognition. This whole document will be dictated, edited and eventually published to the blog using my Dragon system.

Using speech recognition is like anything else, it is an acquired and learned skill. Initially, it requires patience, practice, and a willingness to work through the initial issues. Daily use is essential. Besides training the computer to recognize your voice and specific speech patterns for specific words, you’ll also be fighting syntax of the language itself. This will be true, whether using Dragon, Windows speech recognition, or the over speech recognition found in Word 2003. You also have to learn to be more organized doing dictation. Dictation is a lost art, which you’ll need to recover and learn in order to effectively use speech recognition.

Think of dictation skills as dictating to a stenographer. If you need examples of dictating to a stenographer, watch any movie from the 30’s, 40’s or 50’s with business scenes. By implication, dictation requires an organized series of thoughts. This may require more discipline than most people want to deal with. This lack of discipline or organization of thoughts could become so frustrating that people are convinced that speech recognition is not worth the trouble.