Blog 10 -B- Audacity

One of the funniest projects we were assigned this year to complete was recording our voices using the recording program Audacity. We were first assigned to find our favorite poem, dr. Seuss book, and a picture book that we wanted to use for the readings. After we found the particular ones we wanted to use, we were to recored them using Audacity.

From this activity i now know of a program that allows us to record our voices and use them in any other program. Many recording equipment can be expensive, but Audacity is free and all you need is a microphone. While i was doing this project and a couple of the other projects in this class, i was starting to get visions of great assignments or presentations for my future classroom. Audacity can open so many new doors in my curriculum by just applying it to the other programs already being used. For example, i have this idea to record question and the answers to those questions, also get video footage of the area(s) that i am talking about, and make a review game for a quiz/test. So when the student clicks on question one, a short video will appear and at the end a question will begin to talk. I will ask the students to raise their hands if they know the answer and then play the sound clip with the answer. I know it is just a start, but it seems like i am heading in the right direction with the use of technology in my classrooms. Audacity is another great addition/tool that i can use to enhance my curriculum that is heavily based on traditional methods.

Audacity is a very interesting program and it has a lot of detailed and advanced setting condensed for easy use. However, for a beginner like myself, i did not know how to tweak any of the settings to get the outcome i desired, so i basically kept the settings on default/normal thinking my project will be alright. When the time came for my grade i got penalized because i had sound problems, too much pauses in between paragraphs, and interference with the sound quality. I heard them while i was doing my project, but had no clue how to fix them. The only other challenge i encountered in this project was having to endure hearing my own voice. I have found then when you hear a recording of yourself you always sound different then what you hear in your own hear. I guess that is how it goes.

I learned through this assignment that there are some fun ways to enhance your classroom, that the students will enjoy it tremendously. No many teachers use recordings of music, narrations, or any sort of thing like that in their classroom, and i think it will be a new wave of teaching tools in the future. I think the possibilities are endless and the students ability to learn material will be greatly increased. Audacity is a fun and easy program to use, it also is not very time consuming so a teacher can make a new practice video/audio quiz for every test without cutting into his leisure time. I am definitely going to use Audacity in the future, because i believe it is a tool worth using to enhance my students learning ability.