So what voice-to-text do you use polarbear? My tester suggested Dragon but I have read it doesn't work that well for kids. I have read glowing reviews of the new Ipad's Siri voice recognition but have no idea if it works for academics.

I have made DS keyboard because it works for him, somewhat, although he is slow. However I had him work on the Typing Instructor for Kids program (only about $15-20) to improve his keyboarding. It is classic keyboarding method in the context of various pretty entertaining games and it helped him a lot. He can type 20 WPM now but he has to correct the spelling of about 25% afterwards!