For the next version of MathPractice we’re working on adding speech recognition as an optional input mode for answering questions. It’s so cool that I thought I’d post a short video here of a test we ran. The video is a little over a megabyte in size. You can get to it by clicking the image to the right or this link.
The video shows a preview version of MathPractice running on a UMPC. For those familiar with MathPractice you’ll notice a few things. There’s a new layout mode for problems; now problems can be shown horizontally and scale to fit the size of the window. The new format works well for simple problems and for the screen real-estate of a UMPC. The appearance of the app is also different, although what’s shown is not the final look.
The real point of the video is to show the speech recognition, however. In this brief sequence I walk through a variety of simple problems using speech throughout. It’s really fun on the UMPC.
In fact, I was surprized how natural speech and UMPCs are together. In this case I’m using a Samsung Q1 UMPC which nicely has two microphones–each located at the bottom front of the unit. I found that I needed to speak within about two feet of the Q1 to get good recognition. No headset was needed and I didn’t train the speech recognizer although I did calibrate the microphone’s volume using the wizard in the Control Panel.
This version of MathPractice isn’t quite ready for beta testing–you’ll notice some rough edges. For instance, you’ll see at one point in the video where MathPractice insists that the problem “8-1” is harder than “46-2”. Yep, there’s still more to do. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to pass around a beta.