There are tons of simple tools that English Language Learners can use to practice speaking when they’re in the computer lab, and I’ve got the best ones listed at The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.
But what about when you’re not in the computer lab? What’s the easiest way to have students do an audio-recording so that they, and their classmates (and others), can listen to — and evaluate — their work?
One option is to consider the tools listed at The Best Sites For Students To Record Audio By Phone.
However, I just learned about a new way that might just be the easiest.
Audioboo is an excellent recording tool, and is on “The Best….” speaking list. And Posterous is a blogging tool that — though it has some disadvantages,too — is on several other “The Best…” lists.
Here’s a short video that shows how easy it is to connect Audiobook to a Posterous blog — and it’s VERY easy. I could see setting-up a class blog, perhaps only for audio recordings, and regularly going around with my iPhone and having students in the classroom record short snippets — of what they’re reading, writing, or some dialogue they’ve prepared. More importantly, at least in my case since we typically have generous access to a computer lab and can use other audio tools that I think are a bit better, it would be great to use this combination when we’re on field trips. I’ll be teaching Beginning English Language Learners next year, and we’ll be going on many short ones, so I could really see this combo working out well.
Thanks to Jeff Thomas for the video tip.
Thanks for sharing this Larry. I do almost the same thing, but I use the Voice Memo. There’s nothing to set up. Once you have your posterous site, then in voice memo, you just click share, and put the email for the posterous site. It’s INCREDIBLY easy!!!
I use it as an exit slip for my math students sometimes. It’s very humbling to see that what I THINK I’ve taught them is NOT what they’ve learned. Here’s the math one: http://66math.posterous.com
I think the Voice Memo to Posterous is even easier than the AudioBoo one (imho)