Audio Tools & Podcasts

Audio Tools

This week, I experimented with audio tools. My favorite of the tools was Voki.com because it was the one I could see myself using in my reading classroom with my students. I could also see using it in the librarian role (once I move into one). I created a sample Voki video: Click here to see my "It's Corn!" video. I really liked that the site will take your words and turn them into audio with different voice options. I also liked the option of having a character in the background. Both of those features would make the audio/video more appealing to a student. In my sample video, I used the corn cob character to give instructions for a poetry writing assignment. The corn cob character offered from Voki was perfect to tie into the assignment that I already wanted to do with my students based off of the popular "It's Corn!" video. The assignment is for students to write their own ode to their favorite food modeled after Tariq's ode in the corn video. I really enjoyed making and watching the finished product. I always dislike the way my own voice sounds when recorded, so I really liked that Voki would turn my words into a realistic audio rendering. These audio recordings would be great for video instructions for digital assignments. They could also be great as communication tools. It could be used to announce important information to parents or even to create audio directions for library programs.

I also used Vocaroo.com. It was very simple and easy to use! Again, it could be great for audio directions for assignments or announcements (as long as my dog isn't barking in the background when I try to record, that is.)

I was interested to learn about royalty free music being available through Youtube as well. I feel this could be helpful in making audio clips more interesting for students. For example, if I recorded audio directions for an assignment, I could have relaxing music playing in the background.

Chrome Music lab was also an interesting resource. I could see myself having students create their own music for projects using the song maker. For example, there's an assignment where I have students create a music playlist based on characters from a novel we've read together. They'd use character traits to indicate how they decided on the playlist. Using this site, students could create their own character based songs. This could be an interesting project for the ELA classroom or for the library!

Podcasts

I enjoyed exploring the librarian themed podcasts. One of my particular favorites was the one called Book Club for Masochists. I felt the premise of the podcast was really relevant to my current career as a teacher, my future career as a librarian, and my passion for reading. The authors of the podcast discuss randomly selected books each month despite the fact that many of the books are outside of their preferred genres or topics. This is something I struggle with as a reader. When I read for fun, I often stick to the same genres. Nonfiction, for example, is something I hardly ever read. Plus, even if I did read all genres, there's simply not enough time to read enough to know a lot of books well. As an English teacher, sometimes it's hard for me to recommend good books to others if they don't like the same genres that I do. I can imagine this would be even more prevalent of an issue as a librarian. This podcast might help with that because I can listen to the descriptions of tons of books and learn about them without having to read them all. I've been meaning to try out podcasts because I know that they're very popular. I think I'd enjoy listening to them while I'm driving because I get bored easily. I think I might begin my exploration into podcasts with some of the ones from this list, starting with the Book Club for Masochists podcast.