Five winning stories will be selected by a panel of judges, and the winning entrants will each receive an Amazon Kindle 2 as well as Dragon NaturallySpeaking upgrades for three years.
As an online educator, I had a colleague tell me about Dragon Naturally Speaking a few years ago. I was always in awe of how fast she could turn around a graded paper, or dash off a note to a student in AIM or e-mail. So, I decided to give it a try for myself. I have found that my feedback to students is more comprehensive, my discussion posts richer, and my e-mail responses more direct through the use of speech recognition software.
Before using this software I would try and limit my comments in papers because after 50 papers or so my hands were just too tired to give them more than the bare feedback relative to what the problem is. Now, with naturally speaking I can write feedback comments that are specific to that student without costing me any additional time. I have found that it works in most online software applications.
P.