Gcast, a podcast service used by quite a few teachers for having their students record by phone, has announced they’re starting to charge for that feature (thanks to Ann Shelley, an ESL Community College teacher here in California for the tip). The cost will be $99 per year.
Gcast won’t charge for uploading audio files from your computer. However, if you’re going to have students record with a computer mike, I think there are a lot better and easier options on my The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English list.
There used to be several web tools that let you record by phone for free but, as far as I can tell, they all charge for that feature now. Does anybody know of a site that still lets you do it without charging?
Hi Larry,
Tumblr has an option that allows you to call a number and record audio that is then posted to your Tumblr blog. I imagine you could embed the feed from a tumblr blog into another blog. Also Posterous has an audio upload option too. http://posterous.com/faq . Just email an mp3 to your posterous account and it is added to your posterous blog, and can easily be auto posted to other blogs…
Also, wanted to note how informative I find your site. A great resource…
Thanks,
Tim Lauer
I believe Gabcast is still free…and it has some nice features for educators, too.
http://www.gabcast.com/
Donna,
Thanks for your suggestion. However, when I checked it out last week and when I went back there today it appeared that you got a few minutes free, but then had to pay for it. Am I missing something?
Larry
RATS! You’re right. Hope someone finds something free…using gcast was one of my (teacher ed) students’ favorite assignments. I had planned to use gabcast…but….
Bummed.
Two sites that we are going to try out are phonecasting.com and drop.io. Both of these sites offer the option of calling and recording a voicemail type podcast.
Hi Larry,
I wanted to let you know what we found out about the two sites I mentioned above. Here is a link to the blog I posted about them http://ellclassroom.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/alternatives-to-gcast/.
Thanks for all the great resources you share with the rest of us.
-Michelle