Has anyone successfully used Dragon Naturally in school?

[Iceflower]

Ds (AS) has many difficulties, but when asked what one thing would really help make school more bearable is "if there was no more writing". He has low muscle tone and a hyperflexible thumb making pen grip very tiring.

He has managed to get up to 25 wpm typing using Nessy Fingers but he can obviously think faster than that, so a laptop is not frustrating. Occasionally he is offered a scribe, but I really think something like Dragon would really help. School has strung me along for a year, saying they were looking into it, but the CT said the SENCO has decided it costs too much. I have done my own research and it only costs around £170 for a single user licence.

What I would like is to be able to present success stories and if possible, name LAs where schools use Dragon.

Anyone? Please?

Not yet but DS2 has it at home and it is very useful for longer pieces of writing. DS2 is going up to high school next year so I need to have a meeting with learning support to discuss it, I think school are generally happy with laptops but I haven't heard of anyone using Dragon. My plan is to get DS a digital recorder (or he could use a phone) so that he could make verbal notes and print out later, he would have to be allowed out of the classroom to do it as it would be embarrassing for him and distracting for others. We'll see how it goes.

The school should be able to get it cheaper than £170 with an educational discount. (it wouldn't be re-usable by anyone else , I don't think though.)

Hi wiggly, thank you. Did ds2 find it easy to get to grips with Dragon? I'm toying with the idea of buying one and presenting it to school!

I have already met with the HT of a ms school my ds will probably go up to, and they also do not use Dragon, but have a child who uses it at home (it's not you, is it???) They have said they will look into introducing it to Learning Support as a number of children currently there would benefit. They didn't seem to think the cost was prohibitive, but did say it was easier for a secondary school to absort such costs!

I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking from Amazon for around £30 which included a headset with microphone so I'm sure the school would be able to get it for alot less than £170.

We have found that my son can't use it because his speech isn't clear enough.

If you have an iPad, there is a free Dragon Naturally Speaking app.

Hi, iceflower, DS2 struggled a little bit at the start, he has a slight lisp (and a Scottish accent!) but he was keen to persevere (the lure of technology) and it did improve fairly quickly. Quite good for encouraging DS2 not to mumble.

That's interesting about the ipad ap ,we're getting one tomorrow so will check that out.

I hope this doesn't give the impression we are all gadget junkies here, it's just that DH's business means he has to be up to date with the lastest tech stuff.

DS (11) has Dragon at home but he wasn't able to program it - couldn't read the text and he also had multiple verbal tics at the time which Dragon tried to interpret as words - the end result was not pretty! I use it though and it is fantastic. If you have a digital recorder you can get additional software that transcribes the dictation into written text. I intend to try again when he is a bit older (or in a hiatus between tics).

Have you seen the demonstration on YouTube of Dragon Naturally speaking by a 16 year old who used it at school (I tried to do a link, but can't get it to work!)Www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXHawIHTmtl&feature=youtube_gdata_player? Try searching for 'Demonstration of speech recognition software, for Westminster eforum'. It's quite old, but since the software has only improved since then I think it's quite compelling. I purchased the software for about £90 and,like you, thought I would 'present' it at school having perfected it at home with DS (mild cerebral palsy and VI - poor fine motor skills, visual processing issues). When I originally mentioned it to school they didn't seem keen, which is why I decided we'd try it at home and present it to them again if it was successful. Admittedly, DS wasn't keen because he has to train it by reading some quite turgid text first, and his reading isn't great, so we haven't got very far yet. He's only in Year 5 so I've left it for a while, but am planning to try again and hopefully it will be clear during Year 6 whether it's going to prove useful or not.

Thank you everyone, Looks like it isn't clear cut. We have tried the free iPad version, and if there is any background speech, the results are hilarious.

I think I need to look more deeply into this.

I want to use it at work when I go back (on long-term sick). I have found it very irritating so far but I need to keep trying. I don't know how it would work in an open plan office and I would guess that the background noise in a classroom might affect it the same.