Using Voice Recognition For Writing

January 31, 2009 by Jack · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Education and Training 

I made a comment a couple of days ago about using Dragon Naturally Speaking to help me with my writing. At first I had tried using the voice-recognition feature built into Windows Vista. Unfortunately, it was not very effective. I spent several hours trying to train it but it couldn’t quite recognize my speech correctly.

I didn’t know if Dragon NaturallySpeaking would be effective or not and I asked for opinions in the comments. I decided to spend the money and actually get the cheapest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that I could find.

I spent about 20 minutes training it and then I attempted to write my first article with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I was impressed with how quickly and easily it worked and how it helped improve my productivity. In fact I am writing this post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Can you guess how many times I’ve had to make a correction? Exactly four times. Not too bad right?

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Positive Changes: Getting More Education

January 8, 2009 by Jack · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Education and Training 

It’s the New Year and many people are thinking about ways to positively change their lives for the better, I know I am. I made that decision back in New Year’s 2000 and changing my life for the positive was the best decision I could make. I had been struggling without a 4 year degree for several years and felt like I was hitting a brick wall. I knew that the only way to get ahead was to get my four year degree.

Online degree programs were still in their infancy at the time. There weren’t as many options then, but there was one. It was Excelsior College. They had just changed their name from Regent’s College and were positioning themselves for the boom in online education and distance education.

My situation was rather simple. I knew I needed to have a 4 year degree to progress. I had 84 credits from prior university study so I needed a way to get a 4 year degree. I chose Excelsior because of its reputation. It’s part of the University of the State of New York system and it’s fully accredited by the regional accrediting body ( https://www.excelsior.edu/Excelsior_College/About/Accreditation ). It was actually founded by the NY Board of Regents.

I was in Mexico when I made the decision to go for it and get my distance education 4 year degree. I scheduled 10 tests in just 1 week at the University of Oregon testing office. Each test was like $60 or $70 dollars. I got study guides off the net and did my best to study for all the exams. The Jefferson Library in Mexico City was a great resource in finding material to study.

When I was ready, I flew into Oregon and the next day, I took the CLEP Spanish test(got 12 credits for it) and a Business Math Test. Over the next several days, I finished all of the exams.

After submitting all of the enrollment papers, it took about 8 weeks to get back the news that I had completed all of the requirements for a BS in Liberal Studies. It was real sense of accomplishment to finally have a degree after so long.

Just an FYI out there to people who need to complete a 4 year degree, Excelsior College offers the fastest way for a person to earn a fully accredited 4 year degree. It’s possible to take 2 or 3 exams per day. If you are starting from 0 credits, it’s possible to complete a degree in just a few weeks.

How so? You can take the CLEP Freshman Comp test for 6 credits, take the CLEP General Humanities and General College Mathematics tests for 6 credit each. That’s 18 in total. If you can speak French, German or Spanish, then you can take one of them and if you score high enough, you’ll get 12 credits.
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