This year, students at Drexel University will no longer have to pull all-nighters while they frantically type up research papers. They'll still have to write their papers, and maybe even well after midnight. But instead of enduring sore fingers, they can spend the wee hours dictating their carefully crafted sentences into a microphone. The school handed out copies of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 4.0 at freshman orientation Wednesday, and plans to distribute 20,000 copies to all its faculty, staff and students when they start fall classes next week.
Voice recognition is certainly the next big wave in terms of applications.
Every year, students are given a free CD of several different software programs that are relevant to their schoolwork. This year, in addition to Dragon, the students received Norton Anti-Virus software as well as Microsoft Office and various shareware and freeware. Both school officials and Dragon representatives said that the software will save time and increase productivity. Foley said that the average typist, who bangs out 30-40 words per minute, could improve to 100 words per minute by dictating to Dragon instead. Randi Roth, who works in the office of information resources and technology, watched a demo of the software last week with other university staff.