Audio Tools in the Classroom

This week we were tasked with playing with audio tools.  I thought this assignment was rather fun because I haven't ever thought about using audio tools in my classroom before.  I have had students record their voices on Power Point slides before, but never anything else.  This really opened a lot of cool ideas for me to think about for classes in the future. 

First I checked out Vocaroo. This was very easy to use!  As soon as you go to the site, the recorder is on the main screen and ready to go.  It was as simple as hitting the button and making a recording.  This is easily uploaded to a blog, social media, or email.  I would have my students use this to record themselves reading, or presenting an oral report to hear themselves back. This could also be a good tool to use if a teacher or an educator needed to share information with parents orally in an email rather than having to to word certain information/instructions in an email.  What I like about this site was that you did not have to create a login just to sample how it works. 


Next I looked at Blabberize.  This site is hilarious!  It opens with a llama demonstrating exactly what you can expect from the site.  I did have to make an account with Blabberize in order to play around.  On this site people are able to download an image from their computer and have it "speak".  This was a lot of fun to play around with.  I could see a teacher using this to get his/her students engaged.  I think this would also be a lot of fun for students to use if they were doing a book report, or an author study.  They could have a picture of the character, or the author and record their voice while the image "talks" to the audience.  This would also be something I would use in my classroom having the students using a picture of themselves and record their voice as either a beginning of the year introduction, or perhaps when we're studying biographies/autobiographies as a fun way to present their information.  This was fun and I cannot wait to use it and share with others. 

Blabberize was the site I choose to post.  I was having trouble embedding my video onto my blog, though the directions were very easy.  For some reason, it just wasn't working.  So, you'll have to click here to see my talking dog, Maggie!


I also looked at AudioPal.  Like Vacaroo, this site is really user-friendly and I think students would have a really easy time using this.  There are more premium updates for a fee, but I found the free AuidoPal was just fine.  What I liked about this was that you could not only record using a microphone, but also text-to-speech, phone or an audio file.  I thought this give a lot of different options to us!