Students’ Experiencing with Recording Tools

Students’ Experiencing with Recording Tools

            After a teacher becomes efficient in the use of electronic tools to provide students with better learning experiences, the student will also have possibilities to learn from the teacher how to use technology as a tool to produce language.   These new experiences if guided with expertise may make students develop a keen interest in learning English by assessing their own performance while using these electronic tools.  Thus, among the most useful tools for acquiring and learning the language, there are some available on the Internet; e.g.: Sound Cloud, where students might upload their own recordings to create interesting language products, always subject to further improvement.  Besides, other useful resources are audio editing tools, such as: Audacity or WavePad.

            Soundcloud is easy to use either for teachers or students, simple to set up and associated with pictures in specially self-recorded materials that might be used as a tool for sharing podcasts with other teachers or students.  I highlight the social networking capabilities of Soundcloud, and the ability for students to listen to each other’s recordings and provide feedback to their peers.  I think this is a fantastic tool for audio sharing, and for creating higher order thinking activities.  In this platform, students may record and upload pictures to give identification to the podcast created, other students might comment on their classmates’ audio recordings.  Moreover, students could record their own speaking assignments, and the teacher could add their own comments for students’ improvement.  They might also prepare a project or presentation in powerpoint and record themselves to deliver their explanations.
            

            These tools might also be used in more complex projects that involve all kinds of tools.  For example: if used to tell a story, two students might record themselves taking different roles, then edit the audio tracks, and change the order of the story, asking their classmates to find the logical order.  Students can use it for book reports.  They can record audio book reports highlighting the meaningful parts of the books they read and invite others to interact with the audio by leaving comments.  Likewise, teachers could use Soundcloud, Audacity, Soundwave, Blogger, Scoop it, Google forms, and others to implement more interesting activities.  For example, teachers could assign students to read a short story, and ask them to speak, record and upload their written reports, and instead of handing a written paper, the student might continue updating his blog with different entries.

            To conclude, Soundwave and other audio editing tools later used to embed resources will enhance students’ possibilities of learning.  Also, teachers’ opportunities will expand to provide activities and instructions that will become part of an entirely new type of class.  I think that both, teachers and students, will take advantage of these resources becoming more efficient in their use and more proficient in the language studied.