Audacity and Online Audio

Hello all! Yesterday during the online session, Mike mentioned a tool called Audacity. He said he was starting to use authentic audio texts from the web with his students. I mentioned that that's where I started in terms of getting more curious about the tools the web could offer me as a teacher back in 2004. Everyone takes a different path in terms of developing his/her own technology repertoire, but the greatest thing is when we share the tools that work with us with other teachers so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel or to rediscover fire, in this case!

Audacity is a free program (it requires that you have the right to download software onto your computer) where you or your students can record your/their own voice(s) and/or where you can record any audio that you can hear when you are online and turn it into an MP3 file. The advantage of this is that there is a great deal of audio available online, but much is it is 'streamed' meaning that you cannot directly download the file, so in order to use this audio in an unwired classroom or in a classroom with an unpredictable or slow internet connection, you need to be able to make the audio portable. Once you have created an MP3 with Audacity, you can play it directly from your computer, burn it onto a cd if your computer has a cd burner, transfer it to a memory stick or disk, or put it on your MP3 player or iPod.

I have attached a tutorial to our wiki (here on the tutorials page) about how to get started with Audacity. Don't hesitate to contact Debby or me if you have any questions about using it (we created the tutorial together last autumn).

For those of you who do not have the rights to download software onto your machine, I know that it's possible to use podOmatic and OdeoStudio to record your voice and save it as an MP3 file. Does anyone have experience using these tools for capturing streaming audio? These two tools are great for creating podcasts (basically an audio blog) that might be interesting for some of you to explore in the future.

One more thing... Mike said yesterday that he had enjoyed using VOA (Voice of America) 'Special English' reports with students in the past. It seems that this service still exists here.

Recording of Week 2 Live Informal Group-Meetting & Thanks for Your Participation

Hi all,

This post is to thank, Anna, Toni, Janet, Moira, Jen, and our special guest, Michael Ivy for their participation in our second live group-meeting of week 2. The meeting went very well and the discussion was so fruitful with many new tips and ideas on blogs and blogging for ESP classes.

Michael Ivy shared a link to his ESL/EFL blog for EFL learners in Rome. He talked to us about some the techniques he uses through his blog to invite for more interaction from his students. He also talked about how easy and quickly it is now for anybody to add widgets to a blogger blog. He showed an example of how to install the widget of Tag-Board into your blog; indeed, doing that was a breeze! Finally, Michael invited us all to post comments to his ESL/EFL blog! Michael also talked about some different types of blogs, such as personal and just for hobbies and fun blogs, like the bicycle blog, Rural Rides in Central Lazio, which he's been maintaining!

Later, Jen did an interesting short presentation on blogger vs wordpress blogs! She highlighted important features available at both platforms, in addition to advantages an backwards of each. She then talked to us about tags and how they can be used to help in the assessment process in any online course that uses a blog as its main LMS. You could learn more about this technique and other relevant stories through Jen's latest post to this blog.

For those of you who couldn't make it to the second live informal group-meeting, please check out the link to the recording of the event provided on our Recordings wiki page.

Thanks, again for your participation, and we look forward to meeting you all live online next week!

All the best :)

Second Live Group-Meeting in Webheads vOffive at Learningtimes

Hi all,

This is a reminder to let you know that our second weekly live group-meeting
is going to be held in the Webheads vOffice at Learningtimes, later
today/tonight at 20:00-21:00 GMT. This time was voted for by the
majority of you, according to the results of the poll that was closed
on Jan 25 at 24:15 GMT, (20:00 - 21:00 GMT, 7 votes, 25.93%). Please
see complete poll results at the bottom of this post.

Please note, your participation is very important as we are going to
discuss our own experience with blogs and blogging for our current or
future ESP classes. Also, some guest bloggers may join our live
session to talk a bit about their blogging experience and answer some
of your questions.

The live online group-meetings are a good opportunity, especially for
those of you who are very busy and need to catch up with some
materials and weekly activities already covered and completed.

Please bring all your questions, ideas, thoughts and comments on Week
2 with you to the live session. Also, if you'd like to add other
relevant points or matters to the agenda of today's live discussion,
please sent them here to this list so that we can add them.

If it's your first time to join us at a live session, please check out the Tutorials wiki page to learn more about how to access the Webheads vOffice.

Looking forward to meeting you all live online, soon :)


PS Poll CHOICES AND RESULTS

- 13:00 - 14:00 GMT, 5 votes, 18.52%
- 14:00 - 15:00 GMT, 6 votes, 22.22%
- 15:00 - 16:00 GMT, 5 votes, 18.52%
- 19:00 - 20:00 GMT, 4 votes, 14.81%
- 20:00 - 21:00 GMT, 7 votes, 25.93%

Using Elluminate Live for Your Blended Classes!

This entry made particularly to answer a question, by Lori in New York, on using the vRoom by Elluminate live! Lori and everyone interested, I did use the virtual room by Elluminate for one of my ESP, Business English blended classes. I found it very helpful as it allows high quality of participation through audio, video, and text. It also has breakout rooms that made group-activities so easy to do online. Also, allowing power point files to be uploaded helped me prepare lessons on the fly. The Whiteboard tools are so useful and effective in terms of participation or adding information and questions quickly. So, my experience using Elluminate was very successful.

Hope this is helpful, Lori! Please let me know if you have other questions about the Elluminate vRoom.

All the best :)