Nicholas Walker, an ESL teacher at Montmorency College (Canada), has used Google Chrome + HTML5 + Google Speech Recognition + HTML code embed into Moodle to create a Virtual Student. It is as part of a English Language Lab activity that Nicholas and his colleague, Melvin Shantz, are currently testing.
What’s really GREAT about the experimental Virtual Student is that it can be used by English language students to test their pronunciation skills. The Virtual Student concept can also be extended into adventure game genre where in the past gamers would type text or pick options from multiple choice lists. Well with what Nicholas has created, gamers can speak into the microphone and Google’s Automated Speech Recognition engine (using HTML5’s x-webkit-speech) takes over and converts the spoken words into text. If the generated text matches the expected sentence, then the user is hyperlinked to the next video or screen part of the activity.
Absolutely riveting stuff! Go ahead, give it a try and find out more about Virtual Student by surfing here.
