ghcostafamily Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 My Daughter is 9 and is going through Barton, weve had her tested through our charter school and she is Dyslexic...well she has a "SLD" and qualifies for an IEP. She is being tutored 3/4 times a week with a private Barton tutor and is making progress. My question is would Dragon be a good choice for us to use? Is it simple to use? I came across Reading Assistant on Homeschool buyers coop and it looks good too, but is really pricey. Anyone use Dragon and like it? It would be to help her get her thoughts out on paper, im not going to require anything specific of her, but I think if she has this fancy tool maybe it would seem fun to her and shed use it. That said which headphones should I get? Ive looked on amazon, but there are soo many! Any thoughts on Learning ally? I want to get this too, and maybe get her an MP3 player so she can use it to listen to audio books! She loves this. Sorry if my questions sound lame, im not tec savvy and hav a really old computer. windows 7. haha Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pen Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 I definitely would recommend getting her onto Learning Ally and other sources for audio books. Dragon may or may not help at her stage. I don't have a current Dragon, and it may be much easier now, but as of the version we had, it was not able to understand my son's speech when he was 9. A friend of mine who has muscular dystrophy like illness used Dragon from away back and found it wonderful since he does not have the physical ability to write. But he did know how to read and write before he used Dragon. I know it has been improving in voice recognition, ease of use, etc., over the years, so maybe the current version would work for your dd. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghcostafamily Posted March 22, 2018 Author Share Posted March 22, 2018 Thank you for that review! I will look into it, as far as I know it is supposed to be better. We have tried google docs translate and it has worked ok. I am going to get learning ally! Its on sale now so I thinks it time to finally do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heathermomster Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 Apply to bookshare.org for books too. The service is free. Prior to purchasing Dragon, you could practice using Siri or Android TTS. Also, LearningAlly works great using the iPod app. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
City Mouse Posted March 24, 2018 Share Posted March 24, 2018 Dragon is not easy to get started using. It was so cumbersome that my DS gave up on it and prefers to write/type. I make sure to tell parents (I teach 4th grade) not to expect their child to be able to use Dragon independently for a couple of years at least; however, it does not hurt to start using it now so that the student can be more independent at some point in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exercise_guru Posted April 10, 2018 Share Posted April 10, 2018 I have found the speach that is built into the IPAD to be superior for my son. I bought dragon naturally but can't seem to get it installed. I had tried google text and a few other speach to test programs but they just discourage my son. The ipad seems to do well when combined with myscript stylus and one note or notes plus. It allows him to switch between speach to text, stylus to text and with a bluetooth keyboard typing to text all in one document. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghcostafamily Posted April 10, 2018 Author Share Posted April 10, 2018 Did you download an app for use with the speech to text on the iPad? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghcostafamily Posted April 10, 2018 Author Share Posted April 10, 2018 One note or notes plus are the apps, right! Hahaha sorry, read too fast! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted April 10, 2018 Share Posted April 10, 2018 All tablets, phones, etc. can do dictation (speech to text) these days. Even my ds' $100 kindle can do dictation. On apple products there will be a microphone on the screen keyboard and you're good to go. There are several book services aimed at dyslexics, and they're all a little different. BARD (National Library Service) is totally free and has professional recordings, no tts (text to speech). No one service has everything, but it's a really good one to get qualified for. It's just paperwork that you get signed by your ped. If you take your ps eval documentation, should be easy peasy. Then from there any others you want open up. But really, we LOVE BARD. They send us quarterly catalogs and we download the books to a thumb drive and play them with the player they provided. There's also a BARD app, but I've never gotten around to using it. It's all good. I like redundancy, so he also has tech to let him read. We mislaid his kindle, so we pulled out the BARD reader device. It has enough sound to fill a room nicely and it was free. I forgot to ask him today if he liked the book we got last night. It was something outrageous called Hamstersaurus Rex... The catalogs that come give us new things to try, so it has been fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghcostafamily Posted April 10, 2018 Author Share Posted April 10, 2018 Thank you for mentioning this! I’ve never heard of BARD before. I’m looking into it now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exercise_guru Posted April 11, 2018 Share Posted April 11, 2018 Another parent turned me on to the built in IPAD speach to text and I really like it . My son has pronounciation challenges and the IPAD is about 90% accurate and doesn't frusterate him. We are also working on handwriting so he uses speach to text for awhile and then uses a HAHAKEE sylus ( there are a lot of different fine point stylus that work on the IPAD still haven't found one I love) and it works because I installed the MYSCRIPT STYLUS keyboard app ( allows the stylus to write well and integrate into text) The apps I like best so far that use both speach to text and stylus to text are notes plus and for organizing mindmaps I like inspiration. Notes plus is nice because my son has notebooks in there for each subject. good organization. and can sketych if needed. Its not perfect but the best I have found. I will ask my college daughter I think she uses evernote and she takes a picture of the board at college when the professor is done and also of all her finished assignments so she can review them and make sure she gets credit if they are lost. She also has some program where she takes a picture and turns a worksheet into a pdf and writes on it in class but she has an ipad pro so I am not sure I could do that with my basic IPAD I will post if I get dragon naturally to work 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted April 11, 2018 Share Posted April 11, 2018 Guru, there's a trade-in deal on ipads right now, and even the ipad3 is bringing in $80 for trade-in. The new, lowest model ipad now does multi-tasking and can use the stylus pencil thing from apple, meaning it might cost you less than you think to upgrade and get the stylus of your dreams. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trabug Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Another vote for iPads over Dragon. It's much easier to use. We started using apps to create documents, but what worked best for DS was to dictate a document, then email it to a PC for editing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktgrok Posted April 16, 2018 Share Posted April 16, 2018 Yeah, I use Dragon for my novels sometimes, and it has a steep learning curve and can be frustrating. I find I write much more quickly with it but spend way more time editing, so it's not really worth it for me. For a kid, maybe. But the weird hiccups it has may be a pain in the butt for a kid and frustrate them. (sticking random letters at the end of text etc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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