We met each other for the first time on Zoom a few years ago. Eric asked if I would be willing to have him interview me for a magazine article. He was interested in exploring how technology could support high school and college students who have a wide range of challenges and disabilities. I was thrilled to be able to share my knowledge to reach even more people!

Eric asked if he could record the interview so that he could be sure to not miss any information or misquote me. Of course, I consented. Then he asked if I knew of a way that the content could be automatically transcribed to make the process more efficient. I didn’t.

I had tried to use the dictation tools in my Microsoft Word software on my computer as well as the Voice Typing tool in Google Docs. The process was much too clunky for this purpose. The speech recognition tools that I used to help students with writing weren’t appropriate for this type of task. I knew of many note-taking solutions. Special recording pens and online software solutions are available to record audio and sync the spoken words captured as audio clips to  typed or handwritten words and drawing. Those tools didn’t convert spoken words into text.  

Then Julie called. She asked me for advice about the best way to add captions to video recordings so that they could be more accessible. I had heard of a few companies but didn’t have experience using them. I was well acquainted with solutions for providing captioning while presenting from Google Slides or PowerPoint so that the text would be visible in the recordings. However, that accessibility features was not appropriate in this scenario. In this case, the video recordings were already completed. 

Since my conversations with Eric and Julie, technology has continued to improve. New worthwhile options for transcribing audio recordings and conversations have arrived!

I was thrilled when I learned that there is now a way to have an entire transcript of a Google Meet session  automatically appear in a Google Doc. Wow! 

I started digging into other possible options. There’s a bit of a learning curve figuring out the pros and cons of using a variety of solutions. 

Interested in learning more about this topic?

I’ve looked into products such as Rev.com, Otter.ai, Web for Word, and more and organized it into a presentation that will save you loads of time and frustration trying to figure it out on your own.

Click here (https://innovativespeech.com/spotlight-sessions/) to learn more about how to join the next Spotlight Session on January 19, 2022 from 1:00-2:00 PM. It will be recorded. Pre-registration is required by January 15th.

P.S.

• Thanks to Dr. Eric Endlich, the founder of Top College Consultants (https://www.topcollegeconsultants.com/) for writing the article  Jump- Start Student Learning with Technology for the Independent Educational Consultants Association’s publication, IECA Insights, October/ November 2020. Read Now

• Thanks to Julie Skolnick, the founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, for inviting me to present at the 2021 Let’s Talk 2e! Educators’ Conference as well as the 2020 Let’s talk 2e! Conference for Parents. The Title of Presentation was Technology to the Rescue: 10 Tech Treasures to Help 2E Students Thrive!