I Want To Use Dragon Voice Recognition In My School/Uni – What Licence Do I Need?

The Dragon voice recognition products from Nuance – NaturallySpeaking for Windows & Dragon Dictate for Mac – are not just a useful aid for teachers and educators but are also fast becoming essential tools for learning in our schools and universities for students too. Allowing children to speak their thoughts and not be held back by the speed of their typing which lets creativity flow. Helping children with their spoken diction and instantly showing the correct spelling of words as they are spoken are a huge benefit. That coupled with the fact that students are comfortable using computers it makes sense for schools and universities to be looking at this speech recognition technology. In summary benefits of speech recognition technology for students and educators include:

• Improves core reading and writing skills for students of all abilities
• Helps students with language-based learning disabilities more easily express themselves in writing
• Provides accessibility for teachers and students with physical disabilities that hamper typing
• Bridges English Language Learners’ oral and  written communication skills
• Prepares students to use emerging interfaces in the 21st century workforce
• Enables teachers to prepare more detailed assessments of student work through dictation

This is where we, Dictate Australia, can help as certified Gold Nuance Australia resellers. We can supply site education licences for learning facilities across Australia. This not only opens you up to larger discounts on Nuance pricing but also makes your software asset management more manageable compared to buying odd licences ad hoc. The licensing of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Windows computers) and Dragon Dictate (for Macs) is slightly different for educational purposes than it is for commercial or government bulk licensing the differences being:

Commercial / Government – Dragon Site Licensing

• Dragon is licensed per VOICE profile, which allows a licensed user to install it on multiple machines, ie their work machine, a laptop, as well as their home machine. The EULA (End User LIcence Agreement) also allows a third party (ie secretary or personal assistant) to have it installed on their machine PURELY for use in transcription (relevant only for Premium & Pro Dragon NaturallySpeaking).

Educational – Dragon Site Licensing

• For Education users the site licence model is simpler, Dragon is licensed per machine. Each machine is free to have multiple users on that computer. If a teacher or educator requires Dragon for work and home use, they would therefore require TWO licenses.

For the purposes of this post we are focusing on the Nuance education site volume licence. Essentially there are five price points for each software licence depending on the number or licences you own, obviously the more licences purchases the cheaper the product becomes. An educational VLA (volume licence agreement) can be started with as little as five licences. The five price point levels kick in based on these number of licences:

• Level A 5-49
• Level B 50-199
• Level C 200-499
• Level D 500-1999
• Level E 2000+

Buying Dragon under a Volume Licence Agreement will give you a single Valsonic Analogue Headset/Mic with each licence purchased. These headsets are fine for basic use, we can work with you to provide higher quality Plantronics USB noise cancelling headsets/mics for Mac or Windows if required.

As an optional but highly recommended extra is a Maintenance & Support agreement. There is a one to one relationship, one licence requires one maintenance agreement, and will give you Nuance technical support and all updates, upgrades and service packs released during the term of the active one year maintenance agreement. Maintenance and support can be renewed yearly and costs 15% of the original licence cost and is the only ongoing costs associated with Nuance Dragon site licenses.

If you are considering voice recognition technology for your school, university or TAFE please give me a call to discuss (Dave Holmes 0403 968 672) or send me an email (dave@dictate.com.au). I can run through the associated costs and look at an initial pilot for you to evaluate the software.

More details on Dragon for Education including some sample applications using Dragon, testimonials and white papers on the Nuance Australia website – click here.