Blog Entry #4: Digital Audio Tools
Audio tools are great tools to use in a classroom. In my kindergarten classroom I tend to use more audio/visual tools and resources rather than just audio. I will often use Storyline Online for students to listen to a story during snack time. I will also sometimes use YouTube to students to listen to a story if I am feeling under the weather or do not have the book to read myself. The text mentioned apps such as Evernote, My Story-Book Maker, and Voice Recording. I have heard of Evernote before, but have not used it. Looking at it again it seems as though it would be a tough app for younger students to navigate. There have been a time or two where I have had students use voice recordings for things in class, but not as often now as I do not have classroom iPads as I did previously. Several years ago in my classroom I used an app very similar to the My Story-Book Maker app. We had been reading several books written by Laura Numeroff, the author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Students were working on writing and illustrating a piece with a similar format. Some of the advanced students who finished early were able to use the app to take pictures of their illustrated pages and could record themselves reading each page. That turned their book into a completely digital version of it. Thinking back on that inspires me to try to do this again! It was really an awesome thing.
During this weeks reading and lecture I was eager to research more audio tools that I could use in my classroom. As I was looking through the internet I came across a post talking about ChatterPix. She included a link to an example of one of her student's pieces. I have linked that above at the top of this post. I thought this was really a fantastic app. The first thing that came to my mind was to use this when we celebrate the 100th day of school. I have students draw a picture of what they will look like when they are 100 years old. I would love to use that drawing to have them then record themselves talking about what it would be like to be 100 years old. I know there are so many more ways in which you could use this app, but I thought it was a fun one to use and can't wait to research more audio tools to use in my kindergarten classroom.
Hi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI love using Storyline Online as well! It is great for when you want to use a book that you do not have available, or when you just want to let the students listen to stories for fun. I also use YouTube for this. You have to do some searching to find good read-alouds, but it is worth it when you do not have a physical copy of a book available.