David Winet presents: How To Insert and Listen to Inserted Audio Comments in Audacity, quick and easy way

http://screencast.com/t/kTKwLoT6QFlz

David Winet presents a tutorial on How To Insert and Listen to Inserted Audio Comments in Audacity, quick and easy way 

More about Dave Winet: http://community.eflclassroom.com/profile/DaveWinet

About this presentation:

(See accompanying video at swfcabin.com (search on InsertAudioComments)

  1. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1327442533
  2. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1327443204
  3. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1327443253
  4. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1327443291

 

Preamble: With a large class it is impractical to insert comments by the UCDavis method – much too time consuming. Therefore do it the following way:

TECHNIQUE:

  1. Recording (inserting) comments:
    1. load file to be commented upon (which students may have made using vocaroo.com for example, and sent to you as a link) into Audacity
    2. set preferences/Recording/Playthrough to “Overdub”
    3. when you want to make a comment, make it.
    4. don’t use ‘save’ but rather use ‘export multiple’. This will create several files that can later be gathered together to recreate the original. Choose the .ogg or .mp3 format to get smallish files easy to send.
  2. Listening to inserted comments:
    1. get Audacity
    2. load file with comments (see method below under “Drawbacks 3.)
    3. listen while watching the comment track.
    4. when you see a comment is coming up, MUTE the student’s voicetrack, then unmute it after you’ve heard the comment. e. alternatively, just play the comment track, muting the students’ track altogether.
  3. Student can use the same method to ask questions of the teacher by inserting them.

You can caption your files using labels:

Here are two ways to get the commented audio file back to the student, one with labels, the other without.

  1. (swf file with labels) Use Jing to screencast the Audacity file; save it,  then upload it to http://megaswf.com– Example: http://megaswf.com/serve/2146805
  2. (mp3 without labels) Export the Audacity file to mp3 (for the first time you’ll need the free LAME download) then either
    1. attach the mp3, as in the example here: Vocaroo_ShawshankWTComments.mp3
    2. upload it to online storage (for example, to Google Docs usiing their upload feature – a red button on the left side), make it available to anyone with the URL, and then send the link to the student

See example here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8hfG7VKnvfJNDRiMGZkYzktNDBjOS00YTBkLThlMDAtNmI3YzAzMmY0YWMx)

Note that Google docs is not the only free place to upload files. There are many. See http://www.audiohostings.com/for a long list.

DRAWBACKS:

  1. Students must be trained – and it’s not easy.
  2. Teacher must save using ‘export multiple’, then the student must use ‘import’ to get the second (teacher) file into the same instance of audacity as the student file.
  3. If two errors are close together, the second one is likely to be skipped.
  4. The volume level of one or the other track must be adjusted.

ADDITIONAL TRICK:

Change tempo (reduce by 25-30%) to give time for teacher to insert comments into the brief pauses the student naturally makes when speaking, and for the student on listening to click ‘mute’ and after listening to make a third track with his attempt to correct his error or ask a question.

Elluminate Recording

Announcements

Also on this day:

You could start off at 10:00 GMT with this monthly IATEFL LT SIG webinar :
Implementing ICT in an Institution
with Lauren Brumfield

http://ltsig.org.uk/online-events/46-future-online-events/230-192-implementing-i

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