Speech Recognition?

There is speech recognition on the macbook. Its pretty basic but if you set under its preferences to accept commands for the front window and for the file menu it can be pretty complex. You can also create your own commands by saying "Define a keyboard shortcut." This will allow you to make a command for any keyboard command you input. You can also create speech commands using Apple Script.

To turn it on go into System Preferences and click on Speech. From there go to Speech Recognition and set it to on. There are several settings you can play around with including when it will listen to your commands, calibration (which you will probably need to do), and how precise you need to be in order for it to recognize a command. Play around with it and you should start to get the hang of it. For a list of commands say "Open Speech Commands Window". Like I said, it can be as complex or as simplistic as you want it. If you want some help with any of the more complex actions with speech recognition (besides making Apple Script commands, I have not learned that but I can make commands using the Automator) I can certainly help you out.

And unfortunately dictation is not standard on the mac. There are several programs available that work well for dictation but they can be pricey.

Hope this helps,
Mark

http://www.nuancestore.com/v2.0-img/operations/scansoft/site/513201/513201_dns-t alk.html

This is one of the best out there. Pretty pricey.

A followup to this:

My mother teaches middle schoolers with learning disabilities and would like to have them dictate (I think the idea is that by eliminating the need to type they can build confidence then add typing skills later). But they have no budget. Is there anything cheap/free/from a company that will practically give things away to schools?

They run Tiger on lower end Intels.