AudioPal – Welcome 

I first played around with Vocaroo.  Volcaroo was super easy to use and let me record and then save a recording by copying a QR code to post for easy sharing. My first sound byte I recorded features my cat Neko!  Neko was hoping for his dinner a few hours early and felt the need to communicate that message. 🙂  I like QR codes because they are easy to use for my middle school students.  

https://tinyurl.com/2axw2xg2

I tried Voki but I’m not sure I got very far with it.  I created an avatar for my dog and named him Mateo.  I wrote him a script and chose a new voice and accent for him.     

I played around with AudioPal.  This was also easy to use but I thought the voices in English were robot-sounding.  I experimented with the Spanish accents and message in Spanish and I thought it sounded less robotic and more natural.  I ended up choosing Fiona from Scotland for my welcome audio.   

Chrome Music Lab was fun to play around with.  The different visuals and sound was really cool.  I could not figure out if recording was a part of it.  I really liked the Spectrogram with the bird songs.  I played around more with music and singing on the Spectrogram feature.  I also thought the Soundwave was cool and played a little chopsticks on the keyboard from memory.    

I downloaded Audacity to my computer and played around and recorded something in Audacity.  I wasn’t sure the best audio file to save it as but decided on an mp3. Now it is in my iTunes, I think, but I am not sure where to go from here. It wasn’t anything exciting, but I wanted to play around with Audacity. It is more complex as I think you can edit audio recordings. This would be helpful for more polished audio pieces, like podcasts.

I could see audio being used in the classroom in many ways.  Students could talk about their work, like a project, and reflect on it in an audio file.  This could be submitted with a written self-evaluation and a peer evaluation. Often I like to incorporate self and peer evaluations in projects as it helps students to look critically at their work and the work of their peers, but it also teaches them how to give constructive feedback.  Middle schoolers need a lot of coaching in this but I think with practice they can learn a lot.  An audio element would be a nice addition to this.  

I also think for learning a new language (as I taught Spanish) audio is a necessary means for comprehension and showing understanding.  Students could record a mini dialog of themselves practicing elements of conversation being practiced in class.  In the past, I used video for this, but audio would work just the same.  They could also practice the pronunciation of their vocabulary in an audio file.

Podcast Review – I started to listen to a podcast called DrunkLibrarians because I thought it sounded funny.  It is two anonymous librarians that enjoy their liquor and review books they read.  The book review I started listening to was Midnight Sun, a vampire book based on the Twilight Series from the perspective of Edward.  It was mildly entertaining but I felt I lost thirty minutes of my life on that choice.  I am not referencing that one, and instead switched gears and listened to Organizing Chaos in On The Media.  This was more interesting but I think I need to continue finding more interesting ones that I will enjoy.  I do really like podcasts, but need some recommendations!        

References 

Miller, L.  (Host).  (2021, September 3).  Organizing Chaos.  [Audio podcast episode].  In On The Media.  WNYC. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?i=1000534268848