This post is the fourth in a lengthy series where I will be sharing the Web 2.0 tools that I’m using with my Beginning English Language Learners, along with explaining how we’re using and sharing student examples of each one.
Previous posts in this series have been:
Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Phrase.It”
Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Padlet”
Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Szoter”
Clyp.it is the focus of today’s post. It’s an extremely simple free tool that lets you easily record audio online without a need to register. You’re then given a link and embed code to your recording. I’m not sure what the length limit is to it, but I haven’t found one yet.
The ability to use it without registration is, like the other tools in this series, is a big selling point. There are other similar Web 2.0 sites that provide a similar service (check out The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English), particularly Vocaroo. However, Vocaroo will only keep the recordings available for six months (I don’t know what, if any, similar restrictions Clyp.it has).
The real advantage that Clyp.it has over all the other similar sites is the best one of all — it’s not blocked by our School District’s content filters. Most of the other recording tools are blocked, so it doesn’t matter if they offer better features than Clyp.it or not. And if it’s not blocked by our district’s filters, it’s probably not blocked by yours, either.
One simple way my students use Clyp.it is making a short recording and pasting the link to it in the comments section of our class blog where they and their classmates can hear it. For example, after using the tool I blogged about yesterday, Szoter to annotate images of homes, students recorded very short sentences describing the images. They were about to use the “reply” feature on the comments to put the link directly below the link of the image.
For example, here’s a recording made by a Beginning ELL student saying “This house has a garage”:
Simple, easy, and effective — and that’s the criteria for every Web 2.0 I’ll be blogging about in this series….
i thank you for sharing your favorite tools. I agree that “no registration required” is a huge plus. I often create an account that my students can all use, although some sites will only allow a few consecutive logins. Have you tried “utellstory”? It looks promising. It is a site which allows the creation of narrated slide shows. Their tutorials are a little rough, BUT one login seems to allow numerous students to access the same account simultaneously. I encourage you to take a look, it might be something you can use.
Yes, I’ve used and posted it about a few times. Unfortunately, it’s blocked in our district, so I don’t use it regularly.
Dear Larry,I love your posts.They are very interesting and useful.Thank you very much again for sharing them.
Regards,
Catalina
Glad you find them helpful!