Week 4: Project development

(January 31st-February 6th)

This week, we will learn more about podcasting in the language classroom, exploring more web-based podcast services, designing blogs for the podcasting fair.

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Podcasting in the language classroom

1. Go to our weekly reading blog.
2. Read the articles recommended for Week 4, make reflections on the readings and answer the quiz.
3. Participate in the forum and post your comments at the bottom of the page. 

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Becoming familiar with more Podcast web-based services
During week 2, you became familiar with Podomatic and Podbean. This week you will explore Audioboo, Vocaroo and Chirbit.

Audioboo: Who is this?

Audioboo is a mobile and web platform that allows you to upload or record audio. The recording limit is 5 minutes. If you´d like more,  you`d have to sign up for a pro-service. Watch the tutorial and learn how to use it.

Task 

1. Sign up to Audioboo 

2. Record an audio about a mystery person (similar to what is shown in the video). Don´t give away that much! Let your colleagues guess who you are talking about. 

3. Embed this Audioboo in your blog. 

4. Share the Audioboo link in our Yahoo group: 

a. Click on "Add a link"  

b. In Title type “My Audioboo mystery person” 

c. In Description, write your name  

d. In URL, paste your Audioboo URL.  

Guess your colleague´s mystery person 

5. Listen to one or two of your colleagues´description. 

6. In post, write yoour guess about this mystery person.

Vocaroo: Getting to know the moderators

Even though it looks like just a voice mail, it is more than that. You can not only send an audio to someone to his/her email, you can embed and download this audio. As in Audioboo, you only have 5 minutes for your recording. An interesting feature of Vocaroo is that you don´t have to sign up to send a message. For our session, you will do so, though. Watch this tutorial:

Task: 

1. Sign up to Vocaroo. 

2. Record a question you would like to ask to your moderators. 

3. Send it to their emails (Evelyn: evelyn.izquierdo@gmail.com; José: puentesalmundo@gmail.com; Miguel: mmendoza97@gmail.com) 

4. Embed this Vocaroo audio in your blog. 

5. Share the Vocaroo link in our Yahoo group: 

a. Click on "Add a link" 

b. In Title type “My Vocaroo recording” 

c. In Description, write your name 

d. In URL, paste your Vocaroo URL.

Chirtbit. Tongue-twister
Chirbit also allows you to record or upload an audio , but it has got some other interesting features like Text to Speech recordings that you may find useful for your class. Watch this tutorial:

Task 

1. Sign up to Chirbit.

2. Record a tongue twister. 

3. In title, type the tongue twister (as shown in the turorial). 

4. Save it.

5. Embed this Chirbirt in your blog.

6. Share the Chirbit link in our Yahoo group:

a. Click on "Add a link".

b. In Title  type “My Chirbit recording” 

c. In Description, write your name 

d. In URL, paste your Chirbit URL.

Here´s a summary of the podcast web-based services and free software we have used so far and more. Explore them and consider their teaching/learning potential in class.

  

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Adding information to your blog 

In week 2, you created a blog in Blogger and added three pages to this blog. Now you will add information to each one of them. Here´s what each page should have:

Page 1: About me

Write a brief description about what you do as a teacher, where you work and any other information you would like to share about this. Also, you will add some extra information about yourself and embed your glog to this page. (Follow the example in the tutorial)

Page 2: My podcasts

Embed all the podcasts you have recorded so far. These are:

1. Audio recorded in Audacity and uploaded to Podbean

2. Description of a picture recorded in Podomatic.

3. Interview recorded with MP3 Skype Recorder or Call recorder.

4. Description of a mystery person recorded in Audioboo.

5. Question asked to moderators recorded in Vocaroo. 

6. Tongue twister recorded in Chirbit.

Page 3: My Podcast Project

You can describe the project as shown in the picture below (click on the image to enlarge)

 You can download this podcast plan here.

Watch the tutorial showing you the suggested layout, organization and content. It also suggests how to add information to pages.

Optional: This tutorial will show you how to design and add a banner to your blog. To do so, you will need to login to Pixlr. Just click on Open Image Editor and start designing your banner.

Podcasts EFL samples recorded by José Rodríguez and his students

Listen to some podcasts recorded by José Rodríguez and his students. They can inspire you for the projects you are going to carry out. What do you think about these podcasts?

 

1. read the required articles for Week 4, taken quiz and participated in forum.
2. recorded audio with Audioboo, Vocaroo and Chirbits.
3. sent Vocaroo audio to moderators.
4. replied to colleagues´ recordings with Audioboo and Chirbits.
5. added content to blog.
6. written detailed description about podcast project.
7. attended or watched the live session.

Note: You can write questions or comments about this week below.

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Fourth Live Session - Week 4 meeting on WiZiQ

Podcasting for the ESL/EFL Classroom - Week 4 meeting by Evelyn Izquierdo

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