NOTE: If you still use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13, it’s time to upgrade to the latest version of Nuance Dragon voice software. I haven’t used Dragon 13 Premium in forever because Dragon Professional 15 is more accurate right out of the box. FYI – make sure your computer exceeds the minimum requirements for Dragon and turn up the accuracy setting. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask below.

This post is about Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium (and older editions) vs the current version (Dragon Home 15 and Nuance Dragon Professional 15)

If you’re brand new to Nuance Dragon voice-to-text software…

• Start here with this post about what is Nuance Dragon Professional
• Here’s some information about the latest version of Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking
• Some stuff about other editions of Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking
• And finally a comparison between the current versions / editions: Nuance Dragon Home vs Professional 15

Nuance no longer updates Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium. They only offer Nuance Dragon Home 15 and Nuance Dragon Professional 15.

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium vs Dragon 15 Table of Contents:

• Can I still get Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13?
• Difference Between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 and Nuance Dragon 15
• Difference Between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home and Premium / Student 13?
• The difference between Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium vs Home editions
• One reason why you might want to get Dragon Professional Individual 15, vs the cheaper Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13
• How accurate was Dragon NaturallySpeaking in transcribing this blog post?
• DISCLOSURE: There are affiliate links on this post. Read more.

PRO TIP: When I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Google Docs or Google Slides, I tend to dictate my notes into DragonPad first. Then, I copy-paste my words into the Google doc. (I do this if I have a lot to dictate like when I was writing these 21st-century learning lesson plans. If it’s just a phrase or two, I’ll get lazy and dictate directly into Google Docs.

• DragonPad is the custom word processor program that comes with Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking – kind of like NotePad.
• I usually don’t dictate directly into a web browser because I find I get better accuracy using DragonPad, but lately, I’ve been dictating directly into the slide notes on Google Slides. But you don’t get the full editing tools which is a little bit of a pain…

About using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 15 and Professional 15 with Microsoft Word

Yes, you can also use Dragon software to dictate directly into Microsoft Word. You have all the same capabilities that you do with DragonPad. For example, you can correct mistakes, select key sentences, and apply formatting.

I feel like when I was using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13, I got pretty frustrated trying to dictate into Word directly, so I started using DragonPad instead and it became a habit.

But now, seems pretty good. I’m going to have to experiment more with Microsoft Word and Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 15

• when I saved this Word document file, and then reopen it, Dragon remembers seems to remember what I said when I playback a sentence.
• If I save this Word document as a rich text format (RTF) file, then Dragon also saves a second DRA file (which is what I’m used to seeing when I save my work with DragonPad.)
• Bottom line is I might switch to using Microsoft Word instead of DragonPad to dictate my thoughts for the next little bit. But I am curious what’s in that DRA file because I used to think it was the voice recording, but now I’m not so sure. Stay tuned…

Can I still buy Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13?

You can still find Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 and other versions on eBay and Amazon, but I wouldn’t get it.

Here’s why:

• I find Nuance Dragon Home 15 and Nuance Dragon Professional 15 much more accurate than older versions of Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking right out of the box.
• (Nuance Dragon Home 15 and Dragon Professional 15 seems to use a much better speech-to-text engine than previous versions.)
• When you buy from Nuance directly, you get a 30-day money back guarantee, even from open software packages. Other stores won’t let you return opened and used software.

Here is Nuance’s official note saying goodbye to Premium. In a nutshell…

• Nuance stopped selling Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 in Aug 2018
• People who bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium have a perpetual license and can keep using the voice software, but Nuance stopped updating the software in Jan 2019.
• Nuance now focuses on Dragon Home 15, Dragon Professional 15 and their industry products for legal, medical, law enforcement, and other markets.

Difference between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 and Nuance Dragon Home / Professional 15

Off the top of my head, here are 3 differences that I would care about:

1. Nuance Dragon Home 15 and Nuance Dragon Professional 15 seem to be more accurate than Nuance Dragon Home 13

I have to make a few calculations, but anecdotally, it seems like Nuance really did make some improvements in the voice engine for Nuance Dragon 15. This is talking about how a brand new voice profile seems to make fewer speech-to-text mistakes right out of the box. (Calculations pending.)

(Generally speaking, I didn’t find significant improvements between previous versions of Nuance Dragon voice software (i.e. for example, the jump between version 12 and version 13)

2. It’s easier to fix mistakes in the new version of Nuance Dragon Home 15 than the old Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home.

They changed things up when they updated Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home to the latest version, Nuance Dragon Home 15.

It’s now easier to fix mistakes in Nuance Dragon Home 15:

• In Nuance Dragon Home 15, when you highlight a mistake to fix it, you can get set it up so Dragon speaks naturally by playing back your voice recording clips of what you said. So, you can listen to your original sentence, and then fix the mistake.
• Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home does not allow for voice clip play back and it doesn’t save your voice file with your document

This is a big improvement in their Home product. Before, you needed to get Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium or Professional in order to get this advanced editing / correction feature.

Now, all versions of Nuance Dragon 15 make it easy to listen to your voice playback to fix mistakes and remember what you said.

3. Nuance Dragon Home 13 allows you to create and save multiple user profiles.

The newer version of Nuance Dragon Home (15) does NOT allow multiple user profiles. They took away this feature.

(Or, at least made it a lot harder to have separate user profiles in Nuance Dragon Home 15. Hint: If you had multiple user profiles in Nuance Dragon Home 13 and upgraded to Nuance Dragon Home 15, those separate user profiles exist and work.)

You’d have to get Nuance Dragon Professional 15 if you wanted the latest version of the software that allows for multiple user profiles and user management directly from the menu options.

Difference between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 vs Premium 13 vs Student 13

2019 UPDATE: Nuance no longer seems to offer an educational discount. Read this post.

The following information was first published in 2013, and is kept up for archival and reference purposes.

So, you’re thinking about getting Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but you’re not sure what’s the difference between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home vs Premium vs their Student versions?

No problem. We got you.

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a speech-to-text voice recognition software for your PC. You talk, and the computer listens and types down what you say.

• Best part is that you don’t need an internet connection to transcribe and dictate.
• Worst part is that Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking isn’t free.

Sure, you can also control your mouse, search for things on the internet, or send emails, all without touching a keyboard, but I don’t really use any of these features. I just write blog posts with it.

For the past few years, I have been using Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium.

Overall, I find the speech recognition is excellent. It gets on average 97-98% of my words correct when I am dictating in Microsoft Word. This means, on average, I only have to correct 2 or 3 words for every 100 words that I say.

Before you continue reading, please note that I am compensated by Nuance for my reviews of Dragon speak naturally.

What does this mean, exactly?

• I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking independently in 2010. (In fact, I also canceled an order for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 and got a full refund, but that’s another story.)
• I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to write many of the posts on this blog. Here’s how I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and here’s a list of posts written with the speech software.
• I signed up to be part of Nuance’s affiliate program. If you decide to buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking through a link on this site, I get a finder’s fee (commission) if, and only if, you click on one of the links on this site. This does not affect the price you pay. The commission is paid separately by Nuance. The price you pay is the same whether or not you click through one of the links on this website. Here are the disclosure and privacy policies for this website.
• The views and opinions expressed are based purely on my own individual experience. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.
• See for yourself. Click here for the direct link to the official Nuance PDF: Dragon NaturallySpeaking feature matrix comparison page (PDF) comparing Dragon Home, Dragon Premium, Dragon Professional, and Dragon Legal

Not sure what’s the difference between Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home vs Premium (or Student/Teacher) editions?

Here are some things to know:

1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes in four different editions:

• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal

The average person only needs to decide between Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home vs Premium.

If you are a medical or legal professional, you can speak with specific medical or legal vocabulary sets, as long as you are using Dragon software versions for those industries.

2. Dragon NaturallySpeaking “PREMIUM” comes in a couple of different flavours:

If you want Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium, then you can choose from any of the following different types of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium:

1. A physical shipment costs $199.99
2. A digital download costs $199.99 (headset not included)
3. Upgrading (to a new version) usually costs $149.99 (Upgrading to Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 is no longer offered as Nuance is encouraging everyone to upgrade to Dragon Professional Individual. Goodbye Dragon Premium!)
4. The student teacher edition costs $99.99 (digital download, so headset is not included)
5. The wireless edition costs $299.99 (Plantronics Callisto Bluetooth headset)
6. The dictate anywhere mobile version costs $299.99 and you get a Philips digital voice recorder

All of these different packages of Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium come with the exact same software. The only difference is the price you pay and what audio device / hardware you get bundled with the software.

In other words, Dragon NaturallySpeaking student/teacher education edition is exactly the same as Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium.

3. Difference between Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home vs Premium / Education? What do I need?

(Remember that the student/teacher version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the same as Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium so we can just focus on the difference between Dragon NaturallySpeaking home and premium editions.)

Here’s a quick summary from the Dragon comparison chart on the Nuance website:

• Both Dragon NaturallySpeaking home and premium/education editions lets you turn your voice into text
• Both home and premium editions let you click, move, or drag the mouse just with voice commands.
• You can use the voice recognition software with a web browser or with word processing software (i.e Microsoft Word, OpenOffice writer, and WordPerfect)

The following features are not available in Dragon NaturallySpeaking home. (You’ll need Dragon premium or educational versions to do the following:)

• Use Dragon Natural Language Commands in Excel or PowerPoint. In other words, talk to your computer to give it instructions. (You can only give commands to Microsoft Word if you have Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home edition.) I personally never give voice commands other than basic formatting (i.e. new paragraph), but you might. (Jump down to see how I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking.)
• Playback your speech and documents for advanced correction and editing. (I use this feature a lot. Scroll down here to see how I use the playback command.)
• Use your user profile with more than one type of audio input device. (With Dragon NaturallySpeaking home edition, apparently you’re only allowed to use one type of audio input. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium, I can use my user profile with a USB headset, a Bluetooth headset, and enhanced Bluetooth headset, or a mobile dictation recording device.)
• If you want to use a Bluetooth wireless headset, you’ll need to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium. (Right now, I’m using a USB headset. The old bluetooth Calisto headset that came with Dragon 11 worked fine for me, but I’m having problems with the Dragon 12 enhanced bluetooth headset. Scroll down here for more info about my experience with audio devices.)

What’s the difference between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 and Professional 13 editions?

By the way, if you’re wondering what’s the difference between Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Professional, you get the following three features in Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Professional:

• You get advanced custom commands. Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium lets you create custom text and graphic commands. You can insert frequently used text and/or graphics just with your voice. There are a few different ways to save time using customized shortcuts, right now, I’m using Breevy, but if money was no issue, I’d check out Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional because it allows you to add variables to these text or graphic commands to create more sophisticated voice commands and automate routine tasks.
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium also gives you enterprise profile management for corporations and large businesses.
• Finally the Professional Edition lets you save synchronized audio from your dictation in Microsoft Word or DragonPad so you get an additional file along the transcribed text file.

How accurate is Dragon NaturallySpeaking Voice Software? Does it really work?

Most of the blog posts on this classroom technology site were written using Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking with a 97 to 98% word recognition accuracy.

Here’s what I do:

1. I turn on Dragon NaturallySpeaking and do the audio checks to make sure the microphone is positioned correctly and so the voice recognition software can adjust volume settings.
2. I turn off most of the background processes on my computer (i.e. Dropbox, one note, etc.)
3. I ask my cat to leave. No, seriously. Here’s why.
4. I write my first draft using Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Microsoft Word on my Windows machine. Right now, I mostly use my USB headset.
5. I talk to my computer, and then at the end of the post, I check for transcription errors.
6. If I read something that doesn’t make sense, I move to that sentence and use the playback command. (The playback command is only available with Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium. It is not available with the Dragon NaturallySpeaking home edition. Click here to see the Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Feature Matrix PDF for more information.)
7. As I corrected Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognition errors, I keep track of the number of word errors and punctuation/capitalization errors that the voice recognition software made.
8. At this point, I am done with my first draft, so I upload it to the blog, and I make revisions, fix the formatting and images/links, etc.
9. At the bottom of each post, I include the total number of words in the original draft of the post, the number of word errors, punctuation errors, and a few examples of mistakes. (This paragraph isn’t included when I calculate the number of words in the document.)
10. Sometimes, as I go through this process, I make changes to the original draft. I might change my wording, add or delete sentences, or otherwise revise my work. I do all of this tweaking in WordPress (Google Chrome) so that’s why the total number of words in the final draft might differ from the total number of words I calculate the accuracy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Here’s what I don’t do. A few things to note:

There are a few things you can do with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but I personally don’t.

1. Even though you can control your entire computer using your voice only, I really only use Dragon NaturallySpeaking for dictation.

I would rather use my mouse and keyboard shortcuts to control the computer because I find it quicker. (Having said that, if you’re using Dragon NaturallySpeaking because of a physical impairment, you should know that you’re able to control your computer with just with your words.)

The keyboard shortcut that I use the most is the plus sign (+) to turn the microphone on and off.

2. Right now, I’m not using the Bluetooth wireless headset that I got with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I use my own USB headset.

It’s pretty cool using a Bluetooth headset to talk to your computer. You feel like you’re talking to a computer in Star Trek. When I first got Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium, I got the wireless version and I loved it: “pace around and do other things and our words magically appear on the screen.”

There have been a few times when I’ve been connected to my computer with my USB headset and I’ve just narrowly escaped breaking my computer when I walk away. (The phone rang, you rush to get it, crash!)

Note: On my Windows 8 machine, I have no problems with the older BT300 Calisto headset that came with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11. But right now, when I can’t get the new enhanced bluetooth BT 300 II calisto headset to work properly. (You can dictate just fine, but when I try to correct mistakes with my voice, Dragon NaturallySpeaking seems to lag or hang.)

3. I don’t use Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking to surf the net.

In fact, I’ve disabled the Dragon NaturallySpeaking plug-in for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.

When I first used Dragon NaturallySpeaking, if I went to YouTube or another video site, Internet Explorer would crash and say that the Dragon NaturallySpeaking plug-in was not responding.

This would happen to me, even if Dragon NaturallySpeaking wasn’t turned on. (Just with the extension installed in the web browser.) I don’t surf the net with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, so I just disabled the plug-in.

4. Right now, I’m not correcting my mistakes using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking commands.

This goes against the basic training rule I’ve heard from people who teach students to use Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking: the more you train Dragon by correcting your mistakes (with your voice), the more accurate Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking gets.

Over the past two years, I dutifully went back and corrected mistakes using my voice, trying to train Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I would give commands like “correct that” so Dragon would know when it heard me incorrectly and would do better next time.

But right now, I have a theory that Dragon NaturallySpeaking works really well straight out of the box and in the classroom situation, students correcting in a noisy environment might actually make their user profile worse.

(In fact, a recent blog post I wrote with a brand new Dragon NaturallySpeaking user profile with NO training correctly transcribed 98% of the words.)

So, this post you’re reading was originally written using a brand-new user profile with absolutely no training. And, if you click here, you see that it’s actually quite accurate: Dragon NaturallySpeaking got 98.3% of the words correct.

After this little experiment is done, I probably will go back to correcting my mistakes and teaching Dragon in my quiet office, but for right now, it’s neat to see that Dragon NaturallySpeaking is incredibly accurate without any training whatsoever.

(Note: the only time I might train Dragon NaturallySpeaking right now is if I had to teach Dragon a new word with a unique pronunciation like a student’s name.)

Here’s a list of posts that I wrote using Dragon NaturallySpeaking

So, now that you know a little bit of how I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, here’s a list of posts that I use Dragon with.

Over the years, I’ve used Dragon with different audio devices: Bluetooth headsets, a USB headset. I’ve also used different versions of Dragon (11, 11.5, 12, 12.5, 13, 15) on different versions of Windows.

You can use the search tool to see how accurate the Dragon voice software is. You can filter by audio device, version, date.

THIS FEATURE IS COMING SOON! STAY TUNED!

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Summer Sale 2013:

I recently got an email from Nuance (July 2013), the people who make Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software, letting me know that they are having a summer sale.

It’s a pretty good deal, so if you’ve been waiting to buy speech recognition software, now is a good time to check it out:

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Summer Sale 2013 promotions:

You can now save $40 on Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home Edition 13.

• It currently sells for $59.99 (regular price $99.99).
• Click here to see the difference between the home edition and the premium editions.

Save $60 on Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 for Windows

• DNS Premium sells for $139.99. (Regular price of $199.99.)
• This post was written using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium. I generally get around a 97-98% word recognition rate. Click here to see how accurate the voice recognition software was in this post.
• (I’m not a Mac user, but the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Dictate for Macs is also on sale for $139.99. (Regular price $199.99)

Finally, if you’re a teacher or student, you can save an additional $40 off the sale price by getting the Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Education Edition.

• Nuance offers student licensing and teacher discounts on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium product.
• You can save $100 off the regular price of $199.99 for Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium.
• In other words, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking student teacher edition only cost $99.99.
• Please note, this educational discount is only available to qualified students, faculty, and staff. It is a digital download, but you have to prove your education status.

Difference between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium vs Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 15 and Nuance Dragon Home 15

John’s a pretty frugal guy.

A few years ago, his options would have been:

• Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 was only around $69 and has the same voice recognition software as the Premium and Professional versions.
• Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 went for $149 but has more features.
• Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 13 went for $300, and has even more features.

In 2019, John’s options are:

• Nuance Dragon Home 15 which is around $150
• Nuance Dragon Professional 15 which goes for $300, but has more features.

And for what John needs (which is just talking and writing down what he says), Nuance Dragon Home 15 is probably enough. (Not Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home. See below.)

I’ve used all 5 Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking versions listed above. (I started with the Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium wireless version 8 years ago and just kept on upgrading from there.)

Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium version is no longer updated by Nuance, so between Nuance Dragon Home 15 and Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium

The big quality-of-life feature you got with Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium was the ability to playback your speech when correcting documents.

When I want to correct something, right now I just say, “play that back,” and then I can quickly correct the mistake.

• Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home won’t do this play back. (See comparison table below.)
• Nuance Dragon Home 15 does this advanced editing play back.
• So does Nuance Dragon Professional 15.

Why is this a big deal?

• I think the playback feature makes correcting Dragon software a lot easier…
• And correcting Dragon NaturallySpeaking helps improve your accuracy,
• And more accurate voice recognition makes your life easier, so…

Here’s the Nuance help page where it compares the features in Dragon NaturallySpeaking between the Legal, Professional, Premium, and Home editions.

Here’s a screenshot of the PDF. You want to look for the section called advanced correction / editing to see the difference between the Premium and the Home editions:

One reason why you might want to get Nuance Dragon Professional 15, instead of Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium.

That’s because Nuance Dragon Professional 15 can save synchronized audio which means you can listen to the original dictation (and correct / train your audio profile) on a different date.

Or, more accurately, John can focus on talking and blogging, and when we get together, I can use his audio files to improve his Dragon voice profile. (In an ideal world, John would just save his work and fix the transcription errors on his own. But, let’s be real. I’m going to end up doing it.)

Here’s a copy of the DragonPad file that I made using my Nuance Dragon Professional version. (I saved it a few days ago, and then life got busy and I didn’t get around to fixing my transcription errors that recording session.)

Dragon saves a “.dra” file along with the transcribed text file.

With Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium, you can’t save your audio with the text file, so once you close your file, you’re out of luck.

Click here to see the help file on the Nuance website to see the Dragon feature comparison showing this key difference between the two. (You’re looking for the section called transcription tools.)

Yes, I know there are other big differences between Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 15 Individual and the cheaper Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13.

• For me, the other key difference is custom commands where you can automate tasks in Dragon Professional 15.
• Also, Dragon Professional 15 is Windows 10 certified and provides full text control and natural language commands in Office 2016.

But for John, the big thing is just being able to blog with his voice. That’ll make his life a lot easier.

And the cheaper Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 will do that for him.

(It does mean, I can’t easily help John train and correct Dragon because it won’t save his audio file, but personally, with Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13, I found it was anywhere from 96-99% accurate, anyway.)

So we’ll see how things go with John as I get him to dictate when we get together to work on his blog.

Aside: John isn’t completely new to voice dictation.

• When he texts his sister, he holds up his iPhone and he just says what he needs to say into the iPhone.
• So the idea of talking into a computer is there. It’s just I find the iPhone voice recognition isn’t as accurate as Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
• Especially when you compare talking into a phone with talking into a headset with a microphone at a fixed distance from what you’re saying.

One day, maybe I’ll get John a wireless headset and that’ll let him walk around. It’ll probably make him dictate a little more naturally, as John is a walker.

But, my personal bias is I find the USB headsets just to be a little bit more accurate when I dictate, but I’m sure this is my impression and not reality.

Also: John, when you read this, remember you have a 30 day cancellation

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Individual 15 was 96.92% accurate in transcribing this blog post

I talk, it types for me. Overall, in the first draft, there were 1561 words and 48 errors made by the voice dictation software.

I used DragonPad and just talked out the entire blog post, saved the file, and then went back and fixed my mistakes (to help train my Dragon voice profile and get it used to me.)

Hmm. I wonder how many spelling mistakes the average person makes. If it’s more than 3 mistakes per 100 words, then in this case Dragon Professional Individual 15 would win the accuracy race.

Mistakes that Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking made:

If you look at the table below, you can see the kinds of mistakes Dragon made.

New vocabulary I taught Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking from the writing of this post…

• Google Doc

DISCLOSURE: There are affiliate links in this post.

Basically, if you click on one of these links and end up purchasing something, I may receive a little commission for the lead. This is a common practice for websites.

This doesn’t affect my opinion, just like it doesn’t change the price you pay. (You pay the same amount for the product whether you use a link on this page, or use a different way to get to that webpage.)

Affiliate links do, however, help keep the lights on for this website and help pay for hosting fees and technical costs. Thanks for your support.

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The post Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium vs Dragon Home / Professional 15 Review appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

So right now I’m using the AudioNote app on my iPhone. The app popped up a little window saying that I could upgrade to the new AudioNote 2 which has higher quality recordings. You get a free trial month and then it switches to an annual plan of $9.99 USD ($12.49 CAD) per year.

I’m not really sure if I need the new version of AudioNote. To be honest, I bought AudioNote when it first came out and the original price was $4.99 Canadian…. Now it’s in the iTunes Store for $14.99 US and $20.99 Canadian.

AudioNote is a fantastic notetaking program. Here’s why.

Reason 1. You can both type and add drawings into your notes.

All you have to do is switch to pen mode and you can start to annotate pictures or circle words.

Even better, you can switch to highlight mode and you can highlight certain lines that the teacher said was important.

Finally there is a photo mode which allows you to take a picture and insert it into your notes. So, you could take a picture of a diagram from the textbook and then switch to pen mode to annotate certain parts of the diagram and then switch to textmode and start typing some notes.

I only wish that Google documents could let you draw diagrams in addition to typing notes. It would be a game changer.

So many of my students like to type on their phone and take notes, but the problem is you can’t circle words or add highlighted lines easily. And then some students get sucked into trying to draw a Google drawing and it just doesn’t work easily.

Hmm. Maybe Google will buy out AudioNote one day…

Reason 2. Your notes are synced to the audio recording

But what makes AudioNote even better is that all the time that you’re taking notes, you’re actually recording a voice memo and more importantly it syncs to the text and the drawings that you’re taking in your notes.

This means that when you play back the audio it highlights the notes that you took, the words that you typed, and the diagrams that you drew as it plays along in sync.

Reason 3. You can type in new notes as you listen back to your audio recording

What’s even cooler about AudioNote is that it makes a great review tool because as you are in playback mode you can actually type and draw in new notes and AudioNote is smart enough to be able to sync the audio recording with the new notes that you’re typing.

Reason 4. Touch a word you typed and AudioNote will jump to that part of the audio recording

It gets better because when you’re in playback mode, you can touch a word that you typed or line that you drew and it’ll jump to that part of the audio recording.

Also, there’s the traditional time scrubber which lets you move forward and backwards in the audio recording, so kinda like in a regular video you’re able to move forwards or backwards just by moving the slider

I also like how , as you’re typing, it adds a little timestamp of what part of the audio recording it’s at on the left margin.

How could you use AudioNote in the classroom?

I need to use this app more.

1. Note taking at University

I think if I was a student at university or college, this would be a great app to take notes in because you can record the professor teach through the lecture and then later on when you’re reviewing your notes you have the original audio recording and it’s synced to your notes which is pretty cool.

Although this would be a great tool for the classroom, I think in terms of privacy issues, this would be a harder sell. I’m not sure teachers would want every word they said to be recorded, or for students to be recorded, unbeknownst to them. But in university, a lot of students are ready taking audio recordings of the lectures, so this is an app that does it one step better.

2. Note taking in meetings

I think I should use this app more in small group meetings, especially as long as everyone around the table knows that this is an audio recording app. Sometimes in a meeting someone says something and it’s brilliant but then you can never get it exactly the way they set it in the moment is lost. But with AudioNote, it’s kind of like “live” pictures on an iPhone. You can scrub back a few seconds to see what the person said.

3. Recording lessons for students to watch later and interactively jump around to different sections of the lesson.

Teachers could use this app to record lessons to share with students. The teacher would have to pay for the app, but you can export or share the AudioNote file to students for free. And students can download a free AudioNote viewer program for Windows and Mac computers.

The Mac and Windows version of AudioNote lets you view an unlimited number of AudioNote files, but you restricted to only a little bit of recordings. Chances are, some students and families will think they have to buy the software, which isn’t necessary.

Still, this might be a neat way to do a math lesson. I suppose you could record the file at home, draw the diagrams and equations out as you’re talking through a problem. And then afterwards, when you teach the lesson, afterward students who didn’t get it could simply view the file and watch the parts that they got stuck as a work through their own questions.

You could also do this with a literacy lesson. Take a picture of the paragraph that you’re analysing. And then talk through your thinking process as you highlight or circle or draw words on the picture of the paragraph. This would be a great tool for your visual and audio learners and students who maybe didn’t catch it the first time. (Or, students were absent.)

It might be hard to record the note live in front of the class (because sometimes announcements happen, or classroom management needs to happen…), But you could prepare the lesson beforehand at home, or maybe using a headset and tweaking the volume settings might let you record only your voice and not some of the background students talking.

Should you buy AudioNote?

I would get the AudioNote lite version to try the program and see if it works for you.

You could also get the AudioNote 2 version and see if the program works for you. There is a one month free Pro trial that you could test out to see if the AudioNote 2 version is better than the AudioNote.

I feel like there other demo apps/whiteboard apps that let you annotate notes for lessons that might be better or cheaper than AudioNote – I think that something I’m going to look into myself.

But as for taking notes? I think AudioNote is way better than Google docs because it’s so easy to combine text and drawings. (But Google Docs is so much easier for students because so many schools live in the Google ecosystem. And it’s easy to switch between a Chromebook and your phone and your computer at home.)

If you have AudioNote, should you switch to AudioNote 2?

So, with all of this, I’m not entirely sure I need to upgrade to AudioNote 2. I bought this app in 2011 for $4.99.

Seven years later, the app costs $16 more on the Canadian iTunes Store. Sure, if the app publisher had an annual subscription model of $10 a year, they would’ve made $70 off of me. But to be honest, at that point, I’m not sure if I would use AudioNote. I only use it every now and then because of the privacy issues of having to let people know that you’re recording them. It doesn’t always work.

Also, I’m not a fan of the monthly or annual subscription model. I like buying my apps and having it forever.

Finally, I’m not sure that you get a lot more features out of the subscription version of the AudioNote 2 app.

It says you get higher quality recording but I don’t find the audio recording that bad. I use it in meeting notes so that I can remember what we say in our group. The audio recording for that is just fine.

With the subscription version of AudioNote 2, you get the ability to import pre-recorded audio. I guess if you’re a university student and you’re trying to turn your audio recorded tapes into your notes, I guess that’s a good thing. But then you still have to type your notes and again anyways because it won’t automatically sync to notes that you’ve already taken in a different program.

The Pro version of AudioNote 2 says you get “time of day” time stamps, which I guess means that you get the actual date recorded into the note and the actual time? I’m okay with it just being the timestamp of where it is in the audio recording so like 10:00 minutes into the audio recording.

All in all, I think I’m gonna pass on upgrading to AudioNote 2.

How could you use AudioNote in the classroom?

Here are some links:

• Get the AudioNote app
• Get the AudioNote2 app
• Get the AudioNote Lite app
• Download the Windows or Mac version of AudioNote

About this post…

I wrote this post using Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 15and Microsoft Office 365.

There were 1,566 words in the first draft. Dragon NaturallySpeaking made 27 dictation errors (listed in red font below). You can see the kinds of things it got wrong in the table below.

Overall, the voice recognition got 98.3% of the words right, which ain’t bad.

Mistakes Dragon NaturallySpeaking 15 Professional heard…

Here are the listening errors that Dragon made when I wrote this post.

(For example, it thought I liked (kitchen) sinks, instead of syncing things together.)

This was a brand new profile using a brand new USB headset, so Dragon isn’t used to my voice yet. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly this version of Dragon (Professional v15) will pick up my vocabulary.

Disclosure:

• I trained “AudioNote” and “AudioNote 2” as vocabulary words before I began. Dragon NaturallySpeaking did pretty well, except for one time when it thought I said “all you know”
• I added words to the vocabulary once a mistake was made (i.e. “sync” or “Chromebook”), to help teach Dragon NaturallySpeaking how I pronounce some words.
• There are affiliate links in this post. If you click on them, I may receive a small commission from the advertiser. This doesn’t affect the price you pay, but it does help keep the lights on here.

The post AudioNote App – Taking notes / drawing diagrams in the classroom with audio sync! appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

I also still use Dragon Naturally Speaking speech-to-text software to dictate my blog posts. Finding a Nuance Dragon Professional Coupon Code that works is rare, so I’ve published a list of sale links here.

Here’s the original post from Mar 2018:

School has been busy.

Setting up a website is easy… and yet hard at the same time. Sure, there are lots of teachers who like Google Sites, but personally, I just can’t get over some clunky experiences that I’ve had with them.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Google, and I’m a big fan of Google Docs in the classroom. Our students are used to Google Docs, so having Google Sites within that classroom management system works.

Plus, Google has come out with “new” google sites as opposed to “classic” google sites. There are some differences listed here, but I’m still not sold.

(Back in the day, you couldn’t have students leave comments on your class google site, without them being an “editor” and having the ability to edit the webpage itself. No thanks.)

So, I use WordPress.

I like how you can customize and run your own code if you rent out server space. Over the years, I’ve been through a few different companies.

For the past few years, I’ve been with SiteGround. Some nice features, but when I tried to have 25 students log into our class website (using buddypress), the website just crawled.

Now, I’m trying WPEngine. That’s significantly more cash for a class website, but on the other hand, it seems to work better with a class set of students logging in at the same time.

Today, I migrated this classroom technology site over to WPEngine. We’ll see how things go.

The post Moving to a new server: WPEngine WordPress hosting appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

So I recently got a new touch screen computer to help me be a better teacher.

(At least, that’s what I tell myself. It might have something to do with having new technology toys to play with, but isn’t that what classroom technology is all about?)

I am the proud new owner of a Dell Inspirion 17 7000 series laptop. It’s a touchscreen 2 in 1 tablet from Dell.

I like it a lot. It’s blazing fast, I’m running Windows 10, and I can click here and there on the screen with ease.

(Don’t ask me about how heavy this brick is, though…)

I went for the touchscreen because one of my students brought their touchscreen computer from home to use in the classroom.

The touchscreen is pretty good…

• Newer apps, like Microsoft Word 2016 will change the layout of their screen depending on whether you’re using a mouse or touch. (Touch mode provides more space between commands to optimize for use with touch.) Save 16% off Office 365 with a yearly subscription

  

  
  

  

• The touchscreen on my laptop isn’t good enough to draw with pen or use in graphic programs like Adobe Photoshop (Free Trial) so I’ll have to think about that for next time.
• Some web applications are better than others at recognizing touch. Right now I’m exploring different online planning tools for the classroom. Kanban tool lets you click and drag the cards around with your finger on the touchscreen, but Trello does not.
• Touch is awesome. The coolest thing I’ve discovered is that you can swipe on Windows 10 with their mail app to quickly get through the emails. It’s like swiping on your phone – makes a little bit easier to archive and get to the daily grind. Maybe this year I won’t have 6000 unread messages by the end of June.
  

  

The Dell Inspirion 17 isn’t all fun and games.

• I brought it into the classroom today and noticed that my new computer does not she have an old-school VGA port. Food for thought: if your school projector is old-school with no HDMI, might be something to think about before you invest in new hardware.
• I went for the 17 inch big-screen because I like the screen real estate. I thought the weight wouldn’t matter but this laptop really is a brick.
• Some teachers might miss having a DVD or CD drive to play movies in the classroom.

So why did I choose to invest in a touchscreen computer for my classroom? Because I want to improve marking efficiency.

My dream is to be able to talk and give student feedback directly into Google classroom and then just touch different parts of the screen instead of having to hunt around with my mouse.

Google classroom is getting better and better. I use it a lot last year and will continue to use it this year.

(Especially because apparently they listen to user feedback. My students and I gave feedback to Google directly from the app. I suggested that students needed a way to be able to sort or change the order of classes on the front screen and recently when Google rolled out this feature, they sent me an email saying hey just wanted to give you a heads up that we took your feedback and make some changes.)

The only thing I wish Google classroom had was an integrated marked book. Right now I’m checking out this Google Classroom gradebook add-on and it looks pretty cool for a paid add-on but the fact that it can import all of your marks from Google classroom and make pretty spreadsheets and pretty reports that you can send the parents that’s a huge time saver. Especially because it looks like you can email parents directly. Automated wow.

We’ll have to see how this touchscreen works, but hopefully it’s an improvement to getting descriptive feedback to students with informative comments about what they did well, what they need to improve on, and explicitly how to get there.

This post was written using Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 15 and Microsoft Office 365. There are 646 words in this first draft. Dragon NaturallySpeaking made 12 word errors which you can see below. The voice recognition software got 98.1% of the words correct.

How good is New Dragon Professional Individual

voice software?

My favourite voice recognition error in this blog post was where I said “improve marking efficiency” and Dragon software heard “improve marketing efficiency” – I guess sometimes we do need to sell our lessons better to our students…

But overall, getting 98% of the words in this document correct is pretty impressive. Here are the 12 dictation errors that Dragon made:

The post Why I bought a touchscreen computer for my classroom appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

Last week, Google (Alphabet) announced to the world that users will be able to post their own stories, photos and experiences on Google Earth.

It’s kind of like turning Google Earth into a social network: users can post private or public stories about their world for others to see.

(And, all without advertising revenue. Google Earth Director Rebecca Moore told Reuters, “Google Earth is our gift to the world… and not everything Google does has to make money.”)

It sounds like this will be an extension of the Google Earth Voyager tool which currently lets students visit interactive sites and map-based stories.

Table of Contents:

• Who writes Google Earth Voyager Stories?
• How is Google Earth changing over the next few years?
• How could this be Earth shattering educational technology?
• Doesn’t this classroom technology already exist?
• How will this change the classroom in 2-3 years?

Note: This post was originally typed and published in July 2017. Well, it’s been almost 2 years since the first publication. Let’s see how things have changed! Updates are being made using Dragon, speaking naturally. Look ma, no hands!

Who writes Google Earth Voyager Stories?

Right now, Google Earth voyager story guides are written by Google Earth partners. They tell stories written or curated by professionals about a variety of topics, including…

• A trip to the south pole
• life in the Amazon
• or even great historical explorers (anyone teaching Grade 7 History and Samuel de Champlain in New France?)

Crazy.

Your students can view current content about the world, all from their web browser.

(Well, ok. Google Earth doesn’t have satellite photos of Quebec city in 1608, but you can use streetview to explore modern day Quebec right now.)

How is Google Earth changing over the next 2-3 years?

It sounds like Google Earth is becoming more like a social network, where regular, average, typical people around the world can add posts, stories, videos, photos into the Google Earth framework.

Rebecca Moore, Google Earth’s Director told the crowd in Brazil at the “I am Amazon” launch that soon people could post “the story of your family history, the story of your favorite hiking trip – it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be profound.”

The difference will be that average Joes will be able to post stuff – unedited, uncurated stuff.

And this becomes an incredible teaching resource to bring into the classroom.

How could this be Earth shattering educational technology?

Well, let’s be honest. Lots of teachers base their program around a textbook…

• That the school bought a few years ago…
• Which was already in print for a few years before that…
• With content that was researched just slightly before…

So the idea that you can have a living textbook in the form of Google Earth, with content from everyday people sharing snippets of their life… It’s wikipedia meets global satellite photography on an epic scale. 

Textbooks can be great tools. They’re safe, comfortable and easy for teachers to use from one year to the next.

(They’re also familiar for parents and students: read this chapter, answer those questions, use the glossary, and google the answers online when you’re stuck.)

But textbooks also have the danger of providing outdated information, as well as perspectives of the authors.

Hans and Ola Rosling make the argument in their TED Talk about “how not to be ignorant about the world.”

“Teachers tend to teach outdated worldviews, because they learned something when they went to school, and now they describe this world to the students without any bad intentions, and those books, of course, that are printed are outdated in a world that changes. And there is really no practice to keep the teaching material up to date.”

So, imagine a world where we start the conversation with printed textbooks to learn about global warming, fair trade farming, or developed / developing economies…

And then use Google Earth as a tool to find real-life case studies about the world today.

Doesn’t this classroom technology already exist?

A little. Google Earth and Google Maps are already great teaching tools.

• You can see geo tagged photos on google maps to see what websites and users have posted around the area.
• Students can zoom in and see relatively current satellite images about places they are studying.
• You can use Streetview to zoom in and walk along where the Google Streetview camera has driven or trekked. (Heck, people can even upload their own 360 degree streeview images.)

We don’t need to rely on textbooks for our view of the world.

Right now Google Earth Voyager allows students to look at prepared curated content. Students doing a novel study on Harry Potter, could use Google Earth as a virtual textbook to study the Harry Potter world in Britain

How will this change the classroom in 2-3 years?

Students will be able to find Google Earth Voyager content and stories made and produced by everyday citizens.

Even better, in 2-3 years, students will be able to create and publish their own content on Google Earth just like that.

And that could be a game changer.

The post Google Earth will change the way you teach (in 2-3 years…) appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

If students knew keyboard shortcuts, then they could get class work and homework assignments done a lot quicker.

Seriously. Students who know their way around a keyboard and a computer are definitely at an advantage.

As a literacy teacher, I told my students, if it takes you twice as long to read a page, then it’ll take you twice as long to do your homework.

And, that’s assuming you’re reading at grade level.

Well, in our digital world, if it takes you a really long time to move around Google Docs, then it’s going to take you a really long time to get your work done.

So, here are a few keyboard shortcuts that work in most programs. Chances are, one of them, your students didn’t know.

(Heck, maybe there’s a few in here than you didn’t know, either!)

Although normally I use Dragon, speak naturally in a clear voice, and dictate my blog posts out, this time I typed out the first draft of this article. After all, it is about keyboard shortcuts…

1. Cut, Copy, Paste

I see so many students highlighting some text, and then right clicking (or going to the edit menu) to copy and paste text.

This problem is compounded with the fact that most classroom computers don’t have a mouse. (We get students to use the touch pad.)

And on top of that, if your students are using a Chromebook, then your students have to get used to a two-finger click to get the right-click additional menu to pop up.

It’s easier if you can remember:

• CTRL C (“C like copy”) to copy text
• CTRL V (“the ‘v’ is right beside the ‘c’) to paste the text.
• CTRL X (“to cut it out like scissors) if you want to get fancy.

2. Bold, Italic, Underline

Hands up if you see students highlighting a word, and then clicking the icons at the top of the screen to bold, italicize, or underline a word.

Keyboard shortcuts are faster. Highlight the stuff and then…

• CTRL+B (“B for bold”)
• CTRL+I (“I for italics”)
• CTRL+U (“U for underline”)

Keyboard shortcuts usually make sense. Usually.

3. Undo, Redo

This one I find a little sneakier. The students who are pretty good with technology seem to pick this one pretty quickly.

Ever make a mistake?

Most students don’t realize there’s an “undo” button at the top of Google Docs (or many programs).

There’s even the “redo” button beside it, in case you want to “undo” your “undo” and redo it. Ahh, you know what I mean.

You can also undo / redo steps by going to the edit menu:

But, stop reaching for that mouse – a quicker way is to use the keyboard shortcut:

• CTRL+Z is to undo the last thing you just did.
• CTRL+Y is to repeat the last step you just did. Why “Y”? Probably because because it’s right beside the “z”.

This is useful because CTRL+Y “redo” lets you repeat whatever you just did, over and over again.

• Lets say you just made a word that perfect shade of purple.
• Now, you can select another word, and then
• CTRL+Y to get that exact colour.

I find this useful in Google Sheets – I might change a cell to a certain colour, and then I can CTRL+Y to repeat that custom command.

4. Switch between tabs / windows

This is a good trick if you have multiple web browsers or tabs open.

Sometimes, when I’m teaching from my laptop and I’m projecting on the big screen, I want to switch quickly between two different webpages.

ALT + TAB

This switches to the last window you just had open. (And then you can ALT+TAB back to your current window.)

When I’m doing report cards, I switch from a chrome browser open with a Google Doc of all of my comments… and then I use ALT+TAB to switch to a browser where I enter my report card comments.

CTRL+TAB

CTRL + TAB switches between the open tabs in the same web browser.

I don’t really like this keyboard shortcut as much because it’s harder to switch back and forth between two specific web pages.

• CTRL+TAB goes to the next tab on the right.
• If you want to go to the next tab on the left you need to hit CTRL+SHIFT+TAB which just gets awkward for me.

(I’m just not that good with pressing the SHIFT key. My pinkies are weak.)

5. History (Find a webpage that you viewed earlier today)

Sometimes, my students are doing some research, and find a cool source. But, then, they close the page and move on.

When they can’t find the page they were on, they start to get frustrated.

No problem. You can view a list of all of the websites you’ve viewed today with one short cut. Just hit:

• CTRL+H (“H for history”) and you can see all of the websites you’ve been today (and yesterday, and the day before, and…)

I suppose this can spark a larger conversation about privacy, how to clear your web browsing history, how this doesn’t mean you’re truly invisible and most importantly, how if you’re logged into your school (or work) email on your home web browser, then chances are, all of those web pages from home will show up at your school search history.

But, that’s a conversation for another post. This one is about keyboard shortcuts.

6. Select an entire word, paragraph, or everything in the document

We have chromebooks at school, but no mice. Some students are better than others at using a trackpad.

Every day, I see students painfully trying to select an entire page, or paragraph using the trackpad. Sometimes, a keyboard is much quicker:

• Click once to move your mouse to a word.
• Double click (click twice quickly) to select that word.
• Triple click (click three times in a row quickly) to select the entire paragraph.

The triple click is key. Sometimes, students are trying to select the entire file name of a document. Just triple click and get the entire title.

The “triple click” was the one keyboard shortcut that I find myself using with students a lot lately. But here are a few other good ones.

• Click once to move your mouse to a word.
• Hold down the SHIFT key and use the cursor keys (→ ← ↑ ↓ ) to highlight lines as you move up and down the document
• Hold down the SHIFT key and hit PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN to select multiple pages.

All of the precision you want to highlight and select text, with none of the mouse headaches.

And, of course, if you want to select the entire page:

• CTRL+A (“A for all”) to highlight the entire document.

What keyboard shortcut do you find students need to know, but don’t know?

Think I missed something? Leave a comment below.

Of course, keyboard shortcuts assume you’re able to use a keyboard.

If you don’t have fine-motor hand control, you might consider using Dragon, speaking naturally, and using your voice to move your cursor. One of our visitors left a comment about how he uses Dragon for voice control.

The post The one keyboard shortcut your students should really know. appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

My buddy suggested getting out of the house. Hang out in a coffee shop and work away on the free wifi. So, here we are – double double in hand, and marking bins left at home.

Here are 10 things that I want to think about over the next little bit:

1. Google Classroom and why I love it (mostly.)
2. Google Maps as a research tool
3. Trello as a way to organize life
4. How to explicitly teach planning to students
5. Voice dictation into Google Docs
6. Keyboard shortcuts that make life better for students
7. Free typing programs. Where are they hiding.
8. Google Chromebooks, and why I still love them in the classroom.
9. Bloom’s Taxonomy and digital literacy
10. Three things I wish Google Slideshow could do (that Powerpoint does better.)

There we go. That’s my future vision of where I want to be. I will be “unstuck” when I’ve written about these 10 ideas. Go team.

The post March Break and Getting Unstuck appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

Here’s the updated post about Dragon Professional 14 from June 2016:

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog but since it’s June (2016) I thought I would reboot it. Right now I’m speaking using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

(No wait, I think it’s called Nuance Dragon Professional Individual. I don’t really get it. I think it used to be called Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but now they’re just going with things like Dragon 13 premium. The professional version might actually be Dragon NaturallySpeaking 14 but I don’t know…)

UPDATE: There’s a newer version of Dragon Professional.

So now that we’re heading into summer, I thought I would play more with voice recognition software.

A long time ago when I started teaching, the only real voice-recognition software was Dragon.

But now there are a lot of free options including Google Read and Write, and heck you can even talk directly into Google Docs. So I started to wonder how good these options are and maybe I’ll do a little testing over the next few weeks.

Right now, I’m doing a little experiment. I’m recording the audio with audacity as I dictate into Microsoft Word using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

This is a paid premium voice-recognition software, but we’ll see how it compares to other voice-recognition software over time.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking lets you correct words and train it to recognize your voice so I figure in a few weeks after I’ve trained Dragon using this new brand-new profile I’ll play back the audio of this transcript and see if the transcription accuracy rate is any better.

Why would a teacher want to play around with Dragon Professional 14?

Here are four reasons to think about if you’re looking into getting Nuance Dragon Professional 14:

1. It’s quicker to mark and provide feedback with online learning.

Right now, classrooms are exploring blended learning environments – that’s where some of the learning happens in the physical classroom and some of the learning happens in an online digital space.

For example, Google classroom is a cool way that students can submit their work online and upload Google Docs.

UPDATE: For those teachers who are using online communication with their students, or blended learning environments, here is a lesson plan on effective communication which helps students to get their message across more clearly, regardless of the medium.

You might find yourself making the same comments as feedback, so one shortcut that you can do with Dragon professional is you can create standardized comments or phrases that you use over and over again so instead of copying and pasting over and over again you could simply say something like

“enter writing comment number one.”

Example of a speech command you can train Dragon Professional 14 to do!

You could also do this with learning skills on report cards. You could say something like,

“enter report card comment.”

2. Speaking into your computer is faster than typing into your computer.

I have a friend, John. He’s a great guy, and I’ve seen him type.

(He uses two fingers and does the search and destroy method of typing: click, click, click… )

John will look at my emails and say things like, how do you find the time to write so much. I’ll tell him that it doesn’t really take me that long because I can type really quickly.

But this guy takes forever to write a paragraph so voice-recognition software might actually help him to write more information and provide more descriptive feedback in an email.

(UPDATE: Two years later, I let John try out my copy of Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 15 for the first time. Here’s the story.)

If typing is painful for you, then this is something you might want to consider.

3. If you’re dyslexic or you have a learning disability, hands-free typing may help you.

The neat thing about voice-recognition software is that you just talk and the computer types for you and then afterwards you just go through and double check your work to make sure it’s spelt correctly or the way that you want it.

UPDATE: Nuance Dragon Professional also lets you move around the screen, open programs, and close files just with your voice, but I still haven’t delved too deeply into those features, yet. This guy does. You can read his comment about his experiences here.

4. It’s easier to talk than type or write when your hand is in a cast.

It happens. You’re playing sports, you take a bad hit, next thing you know you’re in a cast. At this point, most people would probably be at that two finger or one-handed typing approach but with voice recognition software, you simply click the mouse in the right spot and then you tell the computer what you want to type.

(In fact you can move your mouse and click on different parts of your computer without any hands at all, but there’s a little bit of a learning curve to learn to the voice commands to control the computer with just your voice.)

Yes, it’s a little bit geeky.

Yes, it takes a little bit of time to get used to it.

But as voice-recognition software technology gets better and more efficient, it’ll be interesting to see how this changes the classroom.

How do you use Dragon Professional 14?

The post Dragon Professional 14: Why Teachers should use voice recognition appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

Sometimes, when you’re on the Nuance website, just as you’re about to leave, they will offer you a discount.

When I bought the voice recognition software, it offered me a 20% discount which I took right away. (Darn.)

Yesterday, I was peeking around the site and just as I was about to leave, it offered me a 10% discount.

The long and the short of it is that discounts vary and you should look around. If you use this promo code link, you’ll get 25% off the regular price for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 premium.

In other words, instead of spending $199.99, it will only cost $149.99. You save 50 bucks.

The post You can do better than a 10% discount for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 premium. appeared first on Classroom Teacher.

Right now, I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 with Windows 8.1 Pro.

But, in a few months (on July 29, 2015) to be exact, my computer will apparently auto magically download and upgrade to the newest version of Windows.

And, I like that it’s free.

I wasn’t expecting to upgrade to Windows 10.

• There was a little innocent button at the bottom of my screen inviting me to get Windows 10.
• A few clicks later, and I’m on the waiting list.

And then I had to figure out what was new about Windows 10.

I watched their lovely promo video, but nothing really jumps out at me. Apparently I can do familiar things, unexpected things, and even great things. We’ll see.

Windows 10 will have voice recognition.

I’m a little bit interested because it looks like you can dictate text using speech recognition in Windows 10.

I’m not sure how accurate it will be compared to using Dragon, speaking naturally, and getting my Windows machine to type down what I say – we’ll have to wait to find out.

I watched a quick preview of Cortana, Microsoft’s voice assistant. (It kind of looks like Siri… on a Windows PC.) It was an early build at Microsoft’s preview event, so I’m sure it will improve.

The reporter was in a crowded room speaking to a laptop microphone which didn’t understand all of his instructions.

(I’ve seen Dragon NaturallySpeaking work in a demonstration in a loud crowded exhibit hall with impressive accuracy. Mind you, the demonstrator was talking into a USB microphone headset and not the laptop microphone like in the Windows demo.)

Personally, I don’t use voice recognition to control my laptop.

(If you have a physical disability, or carpal tunnel syndrome, then using voice recognition to control your computer might be essential.)

Recently, a visitor left a comment about how he uses Dragon to control his mouse:

“…I use a USB headset. I am paralyzed from the neck to the feet. Multiple sclerosis. I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking software since 2010. I think I had versions 11 and 12.

I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 since 2012. It’s amazing to control the mouse and computer settings (I’m still using Windows 7).

For writing in French, the software perfectly transcribes my voice. I even wrote a 214-page novel.

For the Web, it works very well with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

I also created commands to make my job easier. For example, to automatically write my mailing address and e-mail.

This software has changed my life. [It] gives me freedom.

F. Marcotte Comment

Personally, I dictate into Microsoft Word and I use my mouse to click on things, but I could see how voice-recognition could speed up the process.

After all, we speak into Siri and our phones with simple commands. Maybe that’s the next step for PCs and desktop computers?

How will Windows 10 voice recognition compare against using Dragon Naturally Speaking?

Time will tell. I really should do a comparison review one day…

The post Windows 10 is coming and I just reserved my free upgrade. appeared first on Classroom Teacher.