I’ve heard/read about Nancy Duarte’s perspective on telling good stories before, and generally thought it was a bit convoluted and not helpful. However, either because I was feeling a little more patient (maybe I was also more willing to hear it) or because she did a better job explaining it, I got far more out of this recent TEDx presentation she made.

I’m adding it to The Best Sources Of Advice For Making Good Presentations.

SpeakPipe provides you with a widget to install on your blog or website that lets readers send you an audio message of up to five minutes in length. The message goes to your Speakpipe inbox, and you receive an email notification that you’ve received one. More importantly, at least for teachers of English Language Learners, you also get a url address for the message that you can post so that students can use it to hear themselves.

Ronnie Burt at Edublogs told me that it would work with Edublogs, and that set-up was easy, though I didn’t initially believe him. However, the site has clear instructions on how to install it into various blogging platforms. It took me less than a minute to install it on my ESL class blog (you’ll find it on the right side saying “Send Voicemail”) so, if I can do it, you know it’s easy

Unfortunately, the only way others can hear the audio comments that are left is if you manually post them, so it’s not ideal. But it’s a nice tool that free — at least, for now.

I’ve been doing a lot of video recording using my iPhone this year with my Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s been great, though the audio is picked-up pretty poorly. So, last week I invested $50 in an IK Multimedia iRig Mic Handheld Mic for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and tried it out today.

It made an incredible difference, and all you have to do is plug it into the iPhone.

My students made book trailers (you can read more about book trailers here). You can see them all on our class blog.

Stress Test supposedly analyzes your voice after you repeat a number of words and sentences shown on the screen, and then tells you how “stressed” you’re supposed to be feeling.

They say is uses a process similar to lie detectors. I’m skeptical about its accuracy, but it could be a fun short exercise for English practice if you have a few minutes left in a computer lab sometime.

QWiPS easily lets you make a thirty second audio recording that you can share — you can also connect it to a photo or video.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

Unfortunately, for now, none of the students in our district can use any site that requires audio-recording, including the best site on the web for ELL’s — English Central. Apparently, a new “tweak” this year in the content filters prohibits that activity (it hasn’t been a problem in previous years). However, to their credit, the district has responded to the concern my colleagues and I shared and sent staff to my classroom today to learn exactly which sites we needed to record on and what problems we had been having. Since our District Tech Department has always been exemplary in providing us support, I’m confident they’ll fix this issue promptly, too. I suspect that this prohibition might have been unintended consequence of some other change that was made.

I’m curious, though — have others had district filters prohibit student audio recording?

I’ve previously posted about the iPhone app called Sock Puppets, and how it’s a great way for English Language Learners to practice speaking.

Here’s a sample of yesterday’s class, and you can see a bunch more on our class blog. By the way, I offered extra credit for students say I was a “bad” teacher in the dialogue, but nobody wanted to :

I’m just starting to use iPhone apps with my English Language Learners, and they’re loving it. These puppet/avatar apps reduce student fear because the “puppets” are on the screen with their voices, but their faces are not visible.

I’ve previously posted about Sock Puppets. It’s a neat app, and, in many ways, one of my favorites — it’s easy and provides opportunities for multiple characters to record. The free version allows audio recording for thirty seconds, while the paid version has a ninety-second length. Unfortunately, I found the paid version to be very buggy, and had lots of problems uploading it to the Web. I asked Lisa Johnson for advice (I first heard about the app from her) and learned that she only used the free version. She suggested that the ninety second length might be the problem, and she was right (thanks, Lisa!). So we’ll still be using it, but, unfortunately, it will only be in thirty second clips.

We’re also going to be trying out another app called Talking Wee Mee. It just allows one character, though it appears to provide a one minute recording time.

Lisa also suggested Photo Puppet Go. It’s a little more complicated than the other two I’ve mentioned, but it does have potential.

I’ll be including all these apps in The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

“How To Kick Butt On A Panel” is a great piece Guy Kawasaki shared at Google+.

I’m adding it to The Best Sources Of Advice For Making Good Presentations.

He’s also written tips on how to be a good moderator of a panel discussion.

Shoutomatic is a new site that lets you quickly and easily (after a very fast registration) record a thirty-second “shout” — an audio message — that you can embed or link to…

In addition, you have the option of uploading a photo to attach to your audio message, but you can’t just grab one for the Web with a url address.

It could be a nice and easy way for students to practice speaking.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

Sock Puppets is a simple iPhone app that lets you easily record a student and upload it to YouTube. It can be used to briefly record a student speaking or reading in class, or even to have two or three students record a simple play (the free app allows thirty seconds of recording while for 99 cents you can upgrade to 90 seconds). One major advantage of using this for speaking practice is that it’s the sock puppet that’s actually speaking on the display, not the student. It looks like it could have potential. Thanks to techchef4u for the tip.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Beginning iPhone Users Like Me and to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.