Audio Project

I wanted to record each of my students reading the same paragraph so that they could hear themselves and perhaps form a judgment as to their pronunciation and speech habits.  I used Audacity to record them, but haven't figured out how to put it on this blog.  If someone reads this and can help, I would appreciate the advice.

Before making the students' recordings, I read the paragraph aloud to them, showing them where to pause, where to emphasize a word, what rhythm to use.  The students were eager to record themselves and did a good job of it, but they don't seem to have the ability to recognize where they need improvement.  Perhaps that will come from more practice.  I would need to know how to set up separate accounts for them so that they could make different recordings over time and compare them.

As a final note (3-16-2012) to this post, I asked the students whom I had recorded on video whether I had their permission to post the video.  They did not want me to post it because (and if you know and understand ELL students as well as I do, you will understand, too), they did not want anyone to comment on their accent, remark on where they came from, or laugh at them.  They often do not ask questions in their content classes because they do not want the other students to know they are from other countries because they fear backlash.  So, I'm sorry I can't post the video, but please know that it was a valuable exercise for them and we will repeat it.

I plan on having my students use Audacity to record which strategy they prefer to use on  certain math problems.  

Audio Project Idea Nahlik

I was planning on having some of my struggling readers record themselves while reading with Audacity. They will then be able to replay their recording over to hear how they sound. They will be able to check for fluency and fluctuations.

Audio Johnston

My 2nd grade LEAPers in my Growing Up Wolf elective class will study wolf howls as a form of animal communication. They will listen to and view spectrographs of different wolf howls and be able to recognize changes in pitch as well as the length of a howl. They will then work with their pack (small group) to invent their own communication howls and record them using Audacity. They will then analyze the audacity spectrographs looking for changes in the pitch and in the length of their howls.