Robert Barr, an Australian teacher, has been fascinated for over 30 years by the potential of student voice recordings to enhance diverse learnings.

Robert's first computer in 1986, an "Amiga 500", alerted him to the dawning new age of digital voice. As it turned out, the intense demands of audio were so great that it was not until 1998 that home computers started to have enough power to handle voice recording seriously.

The explosive improvements in chip and disk power that followed were not matched with software however. Robert commenced "human interface" research to find out what software needed to be like for people to talk with their computers by choice.

In 2000, grade 4 students were successfully using a basic Macintosh version of the software Robert named "Audiotouch Lite". A windows version followed in 2002. In November 2007, a polished, stable and powerful version, "Audiotouch 2.2" was released for school use.

Also, a custom version of the world's most popular audio editor "Audacity" was designed to enhance Audiotouch 2.2's usefulness.

Now, Robert hopes these products will help students talk with their computers.