There are so many ways these tools could be used to have children give a voice to their writing. In second grade, students work with their teacher and the librarian to research an animal of their choice. We use PebbleGo as one of the tools for research because, along with being well organized and easy to use, PebbleGo has an audio feature. Children can push the speaker button to have the information read to them. Students take notes and write their report. They then have a choice of a way to present their report to the class. Almost all of my students this year chose a Google Slides presentation. Students used the Google Extension Mote to record their voices reading the text on the slides. We then had a day to share when students walked around the room and hooked their earphones into their classmates’ computers to watch and listen to each other’s presentations. Vocaroo could be used for this as well, even with young students, due to its clear function and simple steps to use. Students could add another page to the report with the animal talking itself using Voki, or students could do a simpler version of the report to have a Voki animal read it. Students could also use Voki to create a character and write a story for the character to read or use one of the historical characters to tell an autobiography. 

I enjoyed using Voki to create a tiger character named Trevor. I was able to choose his background and voice, and I chose to type the words for him to say. I wish I had known about Voki last year when I was teaching virtually. It is so easy to use, and my students would have loved getting directions or information from  the different characters! Here is Trevor .    .https://tinyurl.com/2dp44wa6  

AudioPal seemed pretty easy to use as well. It has a simple format with large icons and not too many choices. Students could use it easily. The only drawback for younger students would be the extra step of checking their email to get the link, but older students would have no trouble accessing their audiofile through their email. AudioPal seems to have another feature called SitePal that has a variety of realistic characters to talk, but it needs a “free trial”, so I didn’t pursue it any further.  

Online Voice Recorder was fun to play with, and it seemed as if it was going to be simple because it downloaded as an MP3. I was able to use the pause button while speaking to give myself time to think through what I was going to say. Then, I could crop just the part I wanted to use with the editing tool. I played with the pitch and saved it as an MP3 again. Unfortunately, when I tried to embed it onto my blog it told me that the type of file was not allowed for security reasons. Then, when I  tried again, it didn’t react at all. 

I spent more time playing in Chrome Music Lab than I would want to admit, just trying to figure out what each different area did. My favorites were the Song Writer and Rhythm. I like the way Song Writer gives the chance to change beats per measure, instruments, speed, and it even has a microphone feature in case you know what note you want but can’t find it. I like the colors and how they are consistent across octaves. In one of the Twitter posts, it shows kids with BoomWhackers, which makes me think that the colors are consistent with BoomWhackers. How very cool! The Rhythm section just cracked me up, watching the creatures play the rhythms that I clicked with the mouse. I imagine that a classroom teacher or librarian could work with the music teacher to have the kids write their own compositions to add to a research project or demonstration of knowledge project. 

Audacity seems like an amazing tool. I have heard about it in passing from different sources in the past but haven’t read about it or played with it. After reading a bit, it seems as if it is powerful and allows great versatility with music and sound. I could not play because my school computer will not allow downloads. 

For the Podcast, I chose to listen to an interview with Jacqueline Davies about the Lemonade War because we read it for One School One Book a few years ago. She said she wrote it as an exercise to try to reset her brain so that she could finish writing another novel that she worked on for years and was stuck. She wrote it while her kids were at summer camp for 19 days. The previous podcast had been a discussion about the book with the podcast facilitator, so it was a good follow through to have the author on the podcast to discuss the book as well. Podcasts could be used in the classroom to have children listen to authors or others reading books aloud or listen to discussions with the author. It would be fun to have a weekly podcast done by the class to journal what we did for the year and for parent to be able to hear what has been going on in the classroom from the kids point of view with a teacher’s guidance. 

Overall, there were plenty of cool tools to play with this week. Since adding audio is becoming more and more important and interesting, I’m sure this is just the beginning of exploring these tools!

Reference
Felde, K. (Host). (2022, April 20). A Conversation with Jacqueline Davies. [Audio Podcast Episode]. In Book Club for Kids. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-conversation-with-jacqueline-davies/id1016037208?i=1000558135806