Edtechroundup last night explored the best methods of sharing and encouraging staff to engage with technology, from that conversation I concluded the following summary.
ICT advocate would be well advised to consider the suitability of introduction (the time, place and readiness of the colleague) the delivery (f2f, email, CPD) as much as the product.
At the very least, the product / tool should somewhat be a) easy to adopt b) make learning more engaging or c) hold time efficiencies.
Speech-to-text apa Dragon Dictation meets ALL three criteria. To put my beliefs to the test, I am going to share Dragon Dictation with our Headteacher of Thursday, in the meantime I am using it to record my thought on Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott.
With that in mind, this time last year I recommended Dragon Dictation to another advocate at a social event only to find out that the app was a US centric, #fail. The good news, as part of their 2.0 upgrade, Nuance announced that Dragon Dictation now supports both U.S. and U.K. English. Its not that I can say its much improved, but as a first look, version 2.0 is promising, if not perfect. Apart from the basic speech-to-text, Dragon Dictation’s pop up tool bar allow dictations to be sent direct to email, text and and social tools and the auto save function has enabled me to make notes on complete chapters of Fierce Conversations before posting to my email. I would advise against using the 60 seconds limit of audio recording and stick to short, but important ‘snippets.’
I will continue to use Dragon Dictation as I read Fierce Conversations and I confident that when I come to review the book, the notes, quotes and reflections will feature heavily in the post. For example, the first note I made was to try act upon Scott’s recommendation to use the word ‘but’ less often and replace it with ‘and.’ Just reconstruct an every day example and I think you will agree, its makes for a subtle but and important improvement.