Windows 7 voice dictation

I am playing around with voice dictation in windows seven. I am very happy that voice dictation is built into windows. It is one of the few features that I miss when using Linux. So far, I am finding that the accuracy and usability of voice dictation in windows seven is not as good as I have experienced with Microsoft office voice dictation, IBM, or dragon dictate in XP. I am spending a lot more time correcting mistakes than I ever have with previous voice dictation programs. It does however seem to be learning from my corrections. Windows voice dictation does not work with Open Office writer, it does work with Wordpad.

I have used voice dictation with students in the past but only with limited success. Voice dictation does not work as well with immature voices and can be a frustrating experience for students.

Here is a link to an article about getting started with speech recognition in Windows 7.

Frist Class and Linux

I find the First Class email client for Linux to not work as well as I would like. The better solution is to install the Windows client using wine. The best solution is to switch to Google Apps for Education (working on that). The only drawback I find is that web links don't work seamlessly, I have to copy/paste the URL.