May 2005 Update - VR in the Educational Environment

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 8 is the de facto standard voice recognition software in the educational environment.

OLP - or Open License Pricing is available to allow for the most cost-effective acquisition of Dragon, or DNS.  With Open License Pricing, a certain number of licenses can be made available to an institution, and the specific users can vary over time.  This can save a substantial amount of money and administrative time.

The current state of the art in digital recorders include the SONY ICD-BM1 digital recorder.   A digital recorder review may be helpful in assisting you to determine the best recorder for your purposes.

Voice Recognition & Document Management in the Educational Environment
Written 2003

There is a variety of environments in the educational setting that can benefit greatly from the use of voice recognition software and document management. However, it is critical that you use the proper combination of software and hardware in order to allow you to derive the greatest benefit from your investment.

This article will attempt to simplify the process of determining which products are best  for your particular situation. 

First we will outline a variety of potential users. 
We will then discuss the individual Productivity Tools, their potential uses and estimated costs. 

After describing the individual product lines, specific suggestions will be put forth for a variety of potential users such as 
Administrators, Teachers and Students.

List of Productivity Tools 

1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking® – Including Volume License Agreements and Manufacturer Specials.
   1. Medical
   2. Legal
   3. Professional
   4. Preferred
2. High Quality Microphones

1. Parrot Line – from VXI Corporation
2. Andrea USB – Great solutions for laptops
3. GNNetcom Voice Array
2. Digital Recorders

1. SONY ICD – MS1 – using Sony Memory Stick storage media
2. Olympus DS 3000 – and Smart Media Card storage media
3. OmniForm®

1. OmniForm Filler®
2. eOmniform®
4. OmniPage®
5. PaperPort®
6. Scanners

Productivity Tools – Detailed Analysis

Voice Recognition Software – Dragon NaturallySpeaking®

Dragon NaturallySpeaking may be purchased as an individual boxed product, and the MSRP is as indicated next to each product in the table below: Keep in mind that Volume License Agreements allow much more user flexibility at reduced cost.

Educational institutions can derive 2 significant discounts when purchasing voice recognition software.  First, and quite simply, as indicated in the table above, there is an immediate 10 % discount for all boxed (retail) product sold to an educational institution.  To obtain this discount you need merely fax your purchase order on your institution’s letterhead, or fax your student ID. At this time, we recommend all education sales be ordered via phone at 1-800-245-2133 as VLA pricing is not available online.

The best way to get great value on your purchase is to invest in ScanSoft’s VLA (Volume Licensing Arrangement) program.  A full explanation of the VLA program is beyond the scope of this article, and can be best understood in consultation with a 21^st Century Account Manager.  In this paper, we will attempt to provide a brief overview of the possibilities of a VLA agreement in an educational setting.  

First, your institution should determine, roughly, how many users there are likely to be for each of the variety of Dragon NaturallySpeaking products.  There are various price breaks as you increase the number of licenses needed on campus. Once you enter the next price level, you begin to save even more money per user and you can then order small quantities at your reduced price once you have attained a certain discount level.  Obviously, the larger the initial order, the lower the price per unit.  Discounts can be significant for larger investments, much like buying in bulk at the local wholesale club.

For more information concerning VLA pricing, please call 1.800.245.2133.  

Microphones

Software is only as good as the hardware you use. This is the case in general for any type of software, but especially so when using Voice Recognition Software. Accuracy can be greatly improved by using a high quality, noise-canceling headset microphone. A lot of things have to happen from the time you speak until you see the words on the screen. Your voice must be interpreted accurately by the software and converted into electronic signals, then converted into text that makes sense for the context you are using it in. Using an old, outdated or economy headset can cause recognition problems for some users and, in effect, the software can’t “hear” what you are saying very well. Just imagine trying to take lecture notes in a noisy construction zone and you get the idea.

Noise canceling technology does just what it says. It blocks out “noise”. We define noise as anything that interferes with the direct communication between you and the software. This could be a radio you play quietly in the background, a co-worker asking you questions or the lawnmower next door. We know that in a school environment, noise could be a factor during dictation. Next we list a few high quality, noise canceling headset options for you. As always, feel free to call us anytime with additional questions on these microphones.

1. VXI/Parrot Aruba- MSRP $69.99. This is a great USB microphone for either a desktop or a laptop. VXI is well-constructed and great for good accuracy. The Aruba enables a computer to implement voice-based applications through the USB port. Applications such as, internet telephony, on-line games, video conferencing, choice recording, and voice chat, with specific support for IBM Via Voice and L&H and Dragon systems software offerings. This monaural headset utilizes VXI’s award-winning noise canceling microphone technology to block out any outside noise that could interfere with conversation. The Aruba doesn’t need a sound card, so distortion and noise resulting from sound card isn’t a factor.
2. The Andrea ANC 700 - MSRP $59.99 is a great non-USB option that would plug directly into a compatible soundcard.  This is another high quality, affordable option for a school that has built in noise cancellation sound cards as well.

Digital Recorders

Digital recorders offer the option of recording your voice away from the PC and perform transcription automatically through Dragon Naturally speaking later on! This means you are not tied down to your PC when you want to do voice recognition interaction.  By using an adapter, you can transcribe your voice files into text and organize and group your voice information much like you would e-mail. The software included with most digital recorders will allow you to organize your voice dictation in various ways. You can separate your dictation by date, class subject, or any other way you wish to organize your dictation. Next we will take a look at a few specific options available to you. 

• Sony ICD-MS1 - Sony and Dragon are known to work well together. In fact, the MS1 digital recorder was designed with Dragon Naturally Speaking in mind.  With a 16 MB memory stick, you may dictate for up to 1 hour.  This recorder is compatible with memory sticks up to 64 MB, and thus can allow for hours of dictation while on the go.

• Olympus DS3000 – This was optimized by Olympus for speech recognition, and has some very nice ergonomic features.

OmniForm

ScanSoft’s OmniForm comes in two versions. OmniForm 5.0, and OmniForm Premium 5.0.  We will discuss OmniForm Premium 5.0 because this product is substantially more powerful, and much more likely to be used in the educational environment.  However, if you are on a very stringent budget, you may wish to consider OmniForm 5.0

OmniForm Premium 5.0 is designed to assist everyone in an educational institution who needs to produce, distribute and fill out forms, and manage form data.

What types of forms, you may ask.  Your imagination, and your need are the only limitations.  OmniForm Premium 5.0 has been successfully utilized in a variety of academic institutions to produce forms such as: student evaluations, IEPs, course registration, employment applications, purchase requisitions, accounting reports, and applications.

OmniForm Filler

Having produced a form using OmniForm, anyone who needs to enter data into the form can do so easily using OmniForm Filler.  This software, unlike OmniForm Premium, does not allow the user to design his/her own form. However, it does allow the user to fill out a form which has been designed using OmniForm.  In many situations, an institution may purchase one or two orders of magnitude more OmniForm Filler licenses than it does of the OmniForm Premium.  This keeps costs down, and allows each user to fill out forms electronically, automatically build a database for each record of form data, and manage this form data which can then be exported to any ODBC compliant database for further analysis.  

eOmniForm

eOmniForm, as its name would suggest, allows for the production and publication of fillable electronic forms on the Internet, specifically ScanSoft's SSL compliant eOmniForm.com website.  This is a wonderful feature for institutions which need distributed form filling.  After the form is published on the web as an HTML file, anyone with web access can fill out the form, either by typing or speaking, into the form.   The form is then sent, via email to the intended recipient.

Just imagine: Publish an OmniForm generated electronic form to the web, send an email to your students linking to the url, the students fill out the form (aka multiple choice examination), it is sent back to you by email, where it can be quickly and accurately graded, as it is compared with the correct answers in your database of the original eOmniForm.   

OmniPage

OmniPage is an OCR (optical character recognition product.)  In fact, it is the best one in its class.  It can be used with any scanner to rid your office of the reams of paper that tend to clutter it up.  After having scanned in your papers, (much as you would do with PaperPort), you can then edit the actual text. 

PaperPort

PaperPort allows for the organization of documents, images, and in fact any set of files which you may have on your computer or network.  In common use, incoming papers are scanned and assigned to an individual file folder.  Since the quality of the scanned image is so clear, the original paper can, in most instances, be recycled.

Scanners

In order to utilize PaperPort or OmniPage, it is necessary to have a reasonably high quality scanner. If you anticipate scanning a substantial number of documents, it is recommended that you purchase an automatic document feeder. However, these are not suitable for small sized or irregularly shaped papers.

Specific Recommendations or ‘User Profiles’

Administrators 

As an administrator, it is your concern to maintain a successful and efficient institution. Maintaining profitability in a private setting, or economy in a public setting, is of significant importance.  

To the extent that the entire mood of your institution may be colored by your use, or lack of use, of technology, it is critically important that you utilize technology in just the right way.  Spend too much money on state of the art ‘gadgets’ which all too often lead to losses in productivity, and the entire school system will be hindered in its goals.

By the same token, the proper utilization can save substantial sums of money, which money can be spent on more important purposes.  Additionally, it can offer a from the top down incentive to the remainder of the staff and student body to maintain a forward looking approach to accomplishing a variety of goals.

Let’s see how this translates to your particular situation. 

As an administrator, whether it be of a large university or a small private elementary school, you are likely overseeing a substantial number of secretarial employees, each of whom has a variety of computer skills.  Your institution may be rather old, and storage facilities may be at a premium. You may be in a large city, and the expense of maintaining large quantities of paper files is enormous. We will first discuss getting information into your computer, and then discuss managing this information.

Voice Recognition Engine

Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Professional Suite for the computer adept, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred for the average computer user can assist significantly in lowering your costs associated with producing your written paperwork. 

The advantages of the Professional Version are worth the additional $500 in cost, only for certain users.

In order to obtain the greatest value for the investment in technology, it is helpful to determine exactly what usage each of the staff will get from their new capabilities.  For those who are in need of the additional sophistication of the Professional Version, the cost of $695 is well worth it.  The additional features which will increase the productivity of the Professional user are: 

• Extensive macro capability and support, which can be useful for filling out boiler plate text.
• Larger vocabulary
• Vocabulary which is specifically geared to professionals, including educators.

Microphones

In addition to determining which version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is required, it is important to determine which microphone is most appropriate for each user.  Obviously, accuracy is of paramount importance. However, each of the microphones which we will discuss in this article is appropriate for voice recognition users.  They are differentiated more by their specific features rather than by their quality or accuracy.  There is no one ‘right answer’. Rather, it is important for you to determine the local environment in which you will be using the software, and then you can determine which of the rather large variety of excellent microphones available is most appropriate for your situation. 

For instance, in the event that you currently find yourself switching between typing and talking on the telephone, it will be helpful for you to have available a microphone which can be used interchangeably on the telephone and on the PC.  Microphones which fit into this category include:

VXI Bahama 1

Plantronics switchbox and microphone

 If you are a peripatetic speaker, and find yourself walking around your office while you are speaking on the phone, or dictating into your portable dictation machine, you will want a wireless system.  These come in a variety of styles.  Each of the following has a specific audience:

Logitech Cordless Freedom

Emkay RF 5185

 If you have a PC that has a significant amount of ‘electrical noise’ or has an unsatisfactory sound card, you have a number of options. Obviously you can purchase additional hardware. However, this can often be expensive, and if you are connected to a network, it can be rather time consuming.  An excellent method of obtaining satisfactory voice recognition results in this instance is to use one of the second generation USB microphones such as:

 VXI Aruba

Plantronics DSP – 100

Telex 8400

Please consult the following table to quickly determine which microphone or microphones will best suit your particular needs:

Digital Recorders 

For those of you who are truly on the go, a wide variety of portable digital recorders is available. The Sony ICD-MS1, and the Olympus DS3000 are rather popular, and can be utilized in two very different modes.

First, they can be used as can any standard portable dictation device. However, because they are digital, the sound quality as well as the user friendly features are amazing.  Sound quality goes without saying. There are no longer tapes to snap and break, and the dropouts that your current transcriptionist hears will be a thing of the past.  Using up to 64 MB of removable RAM, these portable digital records afford the ability to dictate for hours on end, anywhere in the world.

However, if you wish to use these recorders for voice recognition, this too can be accomplished. This allows you the freedom to take advantage of many of the benefits of voice recognition technology without the drawback of being ‘married’ to your computer. Admittedly, the accuracy rate goes down noticeably when using voice recognition software in this fashion.  While an average user can easily obtain a 98% accuracy using voice recognition while speaking directly into their computer, and a power user can obtain over a 99.5% accuracy, at rates of over 160 words per minute, this is not yet possible with the portable dictation machines.  Accuracy rates in the low 90’s are to be expected.  This, however, should allow your transcriptionist to produce your written reports in a small fraction of the time that was needed previously.  Correcting 1 out of every 10 words is, in most instances, significantly more efficient (translate significantly less expensive), than is typing 10 out of 10 words from the spoken tape. 

Document Management - Imaging and Forms

Equally important, however, would be the use of paper handling programs such as OmniForm, OmniForm Filler and PaperPort.

OmniForm, in particular, has a large number of uses for the administrative staff of any university. The larger the university, the larger the savings available from the efficient use of OmniForm. However, even small educational institutions can benefit from the amazing freedom from manually filling in forms that OmniForm can offer.  Specific uses of OmniForm in a university setting include the following:

(1)                  Course registration

(2)                  Admission forms

(3)                  Housing request forms

(4)                  Student incidence reports

(5)                  University employee forms

a.    Payroll

b.   Time sheets

The use of Paperport in the university setting is a bit easier to understand.  Paperport is one of those programs that you can’t believe you lived without, shortly after you’ve implemented it system wide.

Paperport allows you to scan in essentially any piece of paper that you might otherwise find on your desk, in a folder, in your filing cabinets (You know - the ones which are overflowing and cluttering up the hallways by now).  After it has been scanned, you can discard the original, since you have an electronic photocopy of it on your hard-drive.  You can use virtual filing cabinets to sort the scanned papers in any fashion you may wish.  Using a scanner with an automatic document feeder (a piece of hardware which can easily be purchased for around $500), reams of paper will disappear from your work area, to be retrieved electronically, at the click of a mouse, with substantially greater ease than you can retrieve them from your drawers.

With the ability to search for text strings within the documents, you will be able to find exactly the document you are looking for significantly more easily than you currently can.  Having found it, you can review it, print it, email it or fax it, again, with merely the click of a mouse, or a few spoken words. 

Brief Synopsis of Potentially Appropriate Solutions Categorized by User Profile

1)           Administration – Staff - School Boards

a)             DNS

(1) DNS PRO for Deans, and other High paid professional

(2) DNS PRO for administrative assistants, etc.

(3) Preferred if cost is a major factor.

ii) Microphones

(1)               VXI  10 – 3

(2)               VXI Aruba

(3)               VXI Bahama if they use telephone and PC interchangeably

(4)               Telex if USB

(5)               Plantronics – Most Comfortable

iii) Digital Recorders

(1) Deans – Presidents etc. get SONY ICD – MS1

iv) OmniForm – eOmniform – )OmniForm Filler

(1) MAJOR – and we need to elaborate here a lot.

v) Paperport

(1) Electronic Filing –

(a) Space is at a premium

(b) Paperless

(c) Organization

vi) Scanners

(a) High quality, with document feeder.

b)      Middle - High Schools

c)      Special Educational institutions

2)           Teachers – Faculty – Guidance Counselors

a)      Universities

b)       DNS

(1) Preferred for each teacher and assistant

ii) Microphones

(1)               VXI  10 – 3

(2)               VXI Aruba

(3)               VXI Bahama if you use telephone and PC interchangeably

(4)               Telex if USB

(5)               Plantronics – Most Comfortable

iii) Digital Recorders

(1) Not really needed, unless money is no object, and you are a technophile

iv) OmniForm – eOmniform – OmniForm Filler

(1)               Grading Papers

(2)               Creating Tests

(3)               Keeping records on patients

(4)               Lesson Plans

v) PaperPort

(1) If you are interested in maintaining long standing records of student’s work product

2)           Students

a)      Universities

c)    DNS

(1) Preferred for high school students. Professional for University students. Medical or Legal suite for graduate students, as apprppriate.

ii) Microphones

(1)               VXI  10 – 3

(2)               VXI Aruba

(3)               VXI Bahama if you use telephone and PC interchangeably

(4)               Telex if USB

(5)               Plantronics – Most Comfortable

iii) Digital Recorders

(1) Not really needed in high school.  University students can benefit from the ability to verbally jot down notes while between classes.

iv) OmniForm – eOmniform – OmniForm Filler

(1) University studnts may find some of the imaging software useful in producing larger term papers.

v) PaperPort

(1) If you are interested in maintaining long standing records of your work product over the years.

Summary and Conclusions

Most educational institutions are currently using outdated methods to input data into their computers.  Modern methods, including voice recognition, paper scanning, optical character recognition and electronic form design offer substantial savings in time, energy and cost.

More importantly, however, these newer methods of information input, design, maintenance and evaluation allow for significant increases in efficiency in essentially all information users.

It is axiomatic that educational institutions are replete with 'information'. Admittedly, it is usually considered that the students are the sole intended recipients of this information, or knowledge. However, the entire administration, faculty, ancillary staff and student body are actively involved in generating and accessing information.  Clearly, it is quite advantageous to do so in a systematic and efficient fashion.  The methodologies noted above are a few of the ways that modern technology can assist those in an educational setting with the information overload of the 21st Century.