Felicia, Sarah and Makayla here.

We did our reports on two different things. Felicia and I, Sarah, did the speech recognition and Makayla did hers on handwriting recognition in PDA's.

Sarah - I learned that speech recognition can actually be used in different classroom situations. I had no idea that there were ESL classrooms (English as a Second Language) that were using this. Once I read it though, it made sense. I think that is an awesome way for people to learn English. One other way I think that it could be used, although I didn't find an article on it, is people with speech impediments. They could use speech recognition software to teach themselves to speak properly.

Felicia – I learned that teachers can use the speech recognition software to help the deaf, blind and heard of hearing and seeing learn the things that wouldn't be able to. The blind and hard of seeing can't see so they can't take notes. So this program as the teacher is talking, will take notes and they can use these to study from with the help of a parent. With the deaf or hard of hearing students, teachers will be able to help them understand more than just having them read their lips and they will also be learning more English with the words they would normally miss when they read lips.

Makayla- I learned that PDA Handwriting recognition could be helpful but I think that it also might slow things down. I believe that eventually someone will come up with an improved version. Then I think that people will definitely use it more in the classroom. One way to make beaming as quickly as possible right now is to use the binary tree concept which is explained in my report. It can be used in English as well as math with spreadsheet applications. It's kind of interesting and I would like to see more of it used perhaps if it is developed more.