Class Blog #3

I was excited to see the sections about Audacity and Garage Band in RSS For Educators. I can’t say I read everything word for word, but it’s good to know that I have a source to be able to turn to for information. I have used Audacity quite a bit at school, though I know I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of what this application can do. I’ve used it to record my students as they sing in class and then have played it back for them to hear. I’ve also recorded myself playing and singing, often for the benefit of a sub or classroom helper. This program is really cool because you can pretty much just click “record,” do your thing, and then export the recording as a .wav file and drag it into I-tunes or even email it (so cool!).

There’s a transliterator at my school that cues speech for kids that are hard of hearing. In the past I’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time and energy setting up my mixer and microphones to record all the songs that these students will learn in my class so that the transliterator will be able to learn the songs ahead of time. With audacity I found a great time-saving application, in that it requires no set-up and I can simply email my recording to the transliterator (instead of having to burn a CD every few weeks). The recordings aren’t terribly high quality, but I also have only used the computer’s internal microphone, and I haven’t messed with the program’s settings much either. I’m hoping, now that I’m headed back to school full time, to spend some more time with Audacity to figure out what other capabilities this program has. I haven’t attempted recording duplicate tracks, nor have I tried a USB microphone like the one described in the book. It’ll be interesting to see what I can do to improve the sound quality of recordings just by trying some of the tricks in the book. Again I just have to say that I think this class is awesome – it is encouraging me to learn about technologies that are unfamiliar to me, but it is also pushing me to delve more deeply into technologies I’ve already been using.

Speaking of unfamiliar applications, Garage Band is another program I’m interested in learning more about. I have seen a little of what can be done on it as far as recording music, though the book goes more in depth as to its capabilities in recording podcasts. I think my students would love working with the program, though I’m concerned that I don’t know enough about it myself. Would I just be wasting time having the students fiddle around with technology for technology’s sake instead of having specific learning objectives in mind? Hmmm...

I’m still excited about what we learned about powerpoint during class last week. I like the approach Joe took in giving us cool examples other people had created and then showing us how to pick it apart and figure out what they did for ourselves. It’s so empowering to know that it can be as simple as that. Again, I’m looking forward to being back on my school computer this week and trying to add sound (and maybe even video?) to some powerpoints that I have already created. If I can add sound – maybe even whole songs? – to specific slides rather than having to shuffle between powerpoint and I-tunes during class… wow, that would be incredible! Talk about increasing my productivity and efficiency as an educator.