Let me say that when I woke up this morning, I had no clue that I would pick up the front page of a Swedish newspaper and be able to read the stories listed there. I don’t speak or read Swedish. It wasn’t even my intent to read any newspaper. I actually started my journey looking for new things in educational technology.

One of the tricks I’ve learned is that if you can find an educational conference (probably any type of conference) listed online, you can quite often google for their keynote speaker, or on a presenter who appears to be giving an interesting presentation, and find their materials online (if not on the conference web site, then on the presenter’s site). Many presenters are often quite generous in sharing what they are currently interested in, with anyone who asks them a question. And, several times, I’ve perused the materials that they plan to share with upcoming conference attendees.

So, I found a conference (MACE http://www.mace-ks.org/maceconference.htm), and saw the name of the keynote speaker, Janet Wozniak. Now until I started to write this article, I really did not intend to pursue if Wozniak was in some way connected to one of the Apple creators, but googling produced this:

http://twitter.com/JanetWozniak

If you note than in the bottom right corner of the image above, is a link to “Jobs”. A coincidence… nah, it doesn’t have anything to do with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

If you google on “Wozniak Apple” you find several entries, but this one was the most helpful. You see that he has been married four times, and the latest is “Janet Hill” Wozniak. You also get a picture to compare with the one above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak

One of Janet’s handouts, in PDF format, was called “Think Back” and the first link was to the following:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

I clicked on the link and first chose the News & Observer, and next the Fayetteville Observer, but before I was through, I saw that you could also find papers around the world and so I chose Europe and eventually the Sundsvalls Tidning (why I don’t know).

NEWSEUM.ORG PRESENTS “TODAY’S FRONT PAGES”

Interactive map of the newspapers that are participating (France obviously has a problem.)

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/pop_up.asp?fpVname=SWE_ST&ref_pge=map&tfp_map=Europe

I didn’t have a clue as to what the articles were about, at first.

I usually go to Babelfish for my translations, but they did not have a Swedish to English translation, so I found “Google Translate” and selected the Swedish to English option: http://translate.google.com/#sv|en|

I began to type in the words from the page, and didn’t even have to enter the special characters (although I’m pretty sure you might get a better translation if you did).

Here is part of what I typed into the translation window:

—

som blockerar sjofarten i Sundsvallsbukten.

I gar var de tvunga att ga in i Tunadalshamnen for att proviantera.

– Det har ar nog den varsta isen pa 25 ar, sager Alnobon Daniel Nasman, forste maskinist pa Ymer.

—

And here is what began to appear with “Instant Translation” turned on:

—

that block shipping in the Bay of Sundsvall.
Yesterday, they had to go into Tunadal harbor for provisioning.
– This is probably the worst ice in 25 years, “says Daniel Alnobon Näsman, second engineer officer on Ymer.

—

Having read most of the front page article, and understood it, with the help of Google Translation, I knew the ship, the Ymer, was an icebreaker, so I googled on “icebreaker Ymer” and found the following pictures and info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ymer_(icebreaker)

and a video tour via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzKKiXdUA0k

Sundsvall, and Tunadal harbor (via Google maps): http://maps.google.com/maps?source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Tunadal+harbor&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.160552,56.337891&ie=UTF8&hq=Tunadal+harbor&radius=15000.000000&split=1&hnear=&ll=62.418996,17.446289&spn=0.151329,0.44014&z=11

So, without being aware of it, I had not only discovered one of the “new things in educational technology,” I had actually put it into practice.

Voice to Text Software

 

Just before the holidays I got up early one morning and was watching television in the early morning hours. During a commercial break I saw an advertisement for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. There was a special holiday offer for the software. It was only $49 for the standard version and it said it came with a microphone and headset.

I didn’t write down the web address, but, I did make a note that part of it was “/holiday”. I figured I could google for the address. Later that morning at the office, I found the web address for the company, which is Nuance, got my Visa card out, and put in an order for the product. As I have said previously, the Standard version was only $49, but if you ordered an extra copy, you could get the extra copy for only $39, and that there would be no shipping charges apply to either.

The order was put in on the 17th of December, just a week before Christmas, and I did not expect to get it before the holiday was over. But the following week, on Tuesday after 6 PM, there was a knock on the door and the delivery man handed me the package and hurried quickly away.

A little later, I was unpacking one of the software boxes, and found that there was a headset included along with the software. I put the CD in my laptop and ran the setup, which probably didn’t take more than about 10 minutes. I then plugged in the headset and began to try out Naturally Speaking.

I was both surprised and satisfied with how well the software worked. I began to train it on how to understand my Southern drawl. The software had me read several passages which were supposed to help it understand me better. The program will also ask if it can look through your e-mail or Word documents and by seeing the words and word combinations that you use, supposedly, it can better understand you when you speak.

I worked with the software on my laptop over the holidays, and this morning I installed the other copy on my office PC. I’ve been very pleased on how well it understands what I am saying and what I wanted to do when I give commands. There is a learning process for you to understand just how to ask for certain things. For example, enclosing items in quotes, in parentheses, bolding or italicizing a phrase, or capitalizing all the letters in a word or phrase requires you to learn just how to ask.

There are several versions of NaturallySpeaking and it appears that the Standard version does not allow you to import audio. The Preferred version does. If you use the preferred version, you would be able to record your dictation on a voice recorder and then run the audio file through NaturallySpeaking.

Except for a few hiccups, this entire posting was created in Microsoft Word 2007 and then posted to this site.