Tech Trends - Industry ArticlesVoice Writing Will Take Over Keyboard Useby Michael RutterMore years ago than I care to remember, I started my career as a typing teacher – on manual Underwoods, no less. They were big, heavy, cumbersome machines – mechanical dinosaurs (likely collecting dust in some museum nowadays). I also remember the day the IBM Selectrics electric typewriters arrived – mechanical dinosaurs. A lot has changed in the last few decades. The microchip has not only affected the business landscape, it has revolutionized how we educate our students. “Will the mouse and keyboard go away? No. But their importance will be reduced. ” Perhaps the most interesting and exciting new trend about to sweep our schools, and reshape our world view in the process, is speech or voice recognition. This technology might be as important in this decade as the mouse was in the 1980s. Some of my students like to call this new magic "voice writing." All it takes is an inexpensive headset, a software program and a bit of training. Voice writing is the wave of the future. Surprisingly, considering our high-tech heritage, some in the Utah educational community have been a bit slow accepting this new technology. Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons why our students should leave the public education with voicing skills. Perhaps the most important is marketability. Like it or not, voice is here to stay. This skill certainly makes a student competitive, but more importantly, it greatly increases a student's level of productivity. Like a ground swell, voice writing is already transforming the world of work (look at the legal and medical fields). With speech recognition software, keyboard time is greatly reduced and productivity is increased. Imagine consistently getting 90-98 percent written accuracy while you are "writing" three or four times faster than one using an old fashion keyboard -- and doing it in a few hours. And with this software, carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injuries, which are common with mouse and keyboard, are greatly reduced. And my favorite consideration: Voicing improves one's written word. Slow keyboarding hampers the writer's ability to express himself or herself. Will the mouse and keyboard go away? No. But their importance will be reduced. The paradigm has shifted. Keyboard speeds and keying instruction simply isn't as important as it once was. Move over Underwoods. This article appeared inThe Daily Herald |
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