IBM© Corporations last tool, Conversational Agent, provides us with an example of how using computer-synthesized speech can make the learning experience within many different applications feel more natural. As natural language systems are developed and computer generated voices become more realistic a whole new field of research is opening up for Instructional Technologists. We could, for example, tie a program into a database capable of generating logical responses to typed requests by humans and then respond utilizing synthesized speech. As well, computer systems capable of speech recognition could also resond to specific verbal requests from humans and provide responses accordingly. The idea of carrying on an intelligent conversation with a computer system may seem a little far fetched today but there are components of these systems being built which are bringing us much closer to just such a reality.

• I have included a rather rudimentary sample here for demonstration purposes. Follow the directions below and you may be pleasantly surprised:

  (Click here to download the Netscape Plug-in called Talker. Copy it toyour netscape plug-ins folder and restart Netscape. Sorry, Macintosh Only.) (Then click here to listen to an interesting rendition of Angels We Have Heard On High. When the song is over click on the back button in the Netscape tool bar to return to this page.)

Primary efforts in the field of speech synthesis and speech recognition have been applied to the physically disabled and the visually impaired and their benefits have clearly allowed these individuals to take a more active and fulfilling role in society. Where research seems to be breaking new ground is in the area of integration, not within a specific program running on a specific computer,but within computing environments (http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/) and especially over the World Wide Web (http://www.commandcorp.com/incube_welcome.html). The commercial potential of such technologies seems to be self-evident but more research is needed in the field of Metacognitive Cybernetics and how speech technologies canbe integrated into such systems.

We can again turn to Carnegie Melon University to investigate their research initiatives.

(http://werner.ira.uka.de/). The Janus Project provides a fascinating example of this type of research:

• At the Interactive Systems Laboratories we are developing Spoken Language Translation Systems that translate spontaneously spoken utterance from one language into utterances (spoken or displayed) in another. Such systems are aiming to make human-to-human communication across language barriers easier. The JANUS system is at present specific to discourse domains of common interest. and supports spontaneously uttered human-to-human speech. In doing so, the system has to handle fragmentary, errorful and disfluent language and heavily coarticulated and noisy speech. Instead of literal translation it has to provide useful interpretation of a user's intent. (http://werner.ira.uka.de/ISL.speech.janus.html)

The challenge for instructional technologists is to discover the methods and techniques utilized in this research and see if it can be applied more universally to the models they are building. The ultimate goal is find the tools (or build them ourselves) so that such innovations can be applied in regular classrooms for the benefit of all our students.

The following are some web sites that deserve further investigation into this field of study:

Netscape Plugin for Macintosh -	http://www.mvpsolutions.com/PlugInSite/Talker.html
AppleÕs Plaintalk Technology -	http://www.speech.apple.com/ptk/
Research Tools for Macintosh -	http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/mac/speech/research.html
AppleÕs White Paper on speech Technologies -	http://www.speech.apple.com/dev/wpaper.html
Speech Research Web Pages -	http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/speech.html
Microsoft Corporation -	http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/
Speech Typer -	http://www.leonardo.net/kamprath/claireware/speech_typer.html

Abstract Introduction Artificial Intelligence IBM© Corporation Speech Synthesis and Speech Recognition Modern Design Tools for Instructional Technologists The Internet Conclusions References Pick a different paper Download a copy of the entire paper