Steve Kinney

Jott is a text dictation services that works via your mobile phone. You call up the speed dial and name who you want to Jott. The next step is to start speaking. Shortly after, Jott transcribes your voice into text and leaves you a note. You can send Jotts to your friends, family, calendar, or blog.

If I had to guess — especially given the picture I included with this post — I’d say that Jott was intended for a professional audience. But let’s take a moment to think about Jott in the classroom. I’m a special education teacher by trade and when I first heard of Jott, a light bulb went off in my head. At the time, I was tutoring a student with a learning disability who struggled with writing. His writing problems made him completely adverse to even attempt to put pen to paper. Jott freed him from that fear and allowed him to pre-write his narrative by dictating it over the phone.

Could I have taken dictation? Yes, but that’s not the point. Jott is a tool; I am a person. The idea is that we want to empower our students to take control over their own learning. We want to introduce them to resources that allow them to access life independently. I may not always be there in the room to take dictation, but tools like Jott will become increasing popular and advanced.

Some people are naturally organized. Others (e.g. me) struggle with organization, so they use tools like PDAs, GTD (David Allen’s Getting Things Done, or iwantsandy.com to organize themselves organized. Most of us don’t have the luxury of hiring someone else to organize us. When working with students with special needs, some skills can be mastered; for others, we need to help them develop strategies to work around their problems — Jott is one such strategy.

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