TESOL report! Highlight - FREE AUDIO DROP BOXES

The great new website that I learned about at TESOL 2009 in Denver that I've already started to use (I created a practice speaking exercise for my students to use starting Monday.) is the "Rich Internet Applications for Language Learning" website created and developed by the Center for Language Education And Research at Michigan State University. Dennie Hoopingarner presented the free tools that (among other things) give anyone with a website the ability to add an audio recording tool to the website. It works for websites, blogs, wikis, and any other type of web page that you can edit. The first one that I've tried out is called an "audio drop box." Patterned after an assignment "drop box" that a professor might place outside an office (the students leave papers and assignments there when the professor isn't in), the audio drop box allows a student to click on a "record" button in order to record themselves responding to a question. The completed recording is automatically sent to the correct file at the instructor's account page. The next time the instructor logs in, he or she can click on the list of files submitted to hear each student's recording. It's fast, easy to figure out, and it's free. The audio drop box feature is only one of the tools available.

You can see a sample drop box at the bottom of this post! Click to type your name, and then click on "allow" when the website asks for permission to access your microphone and speakers. Click on the record button to start recording and then on the stop button to stop! There's also a play button if you want to hear what you recorded. If you click on the record button again, you will record over any previous recording. When you're satisfied with your recording, click on the green check mark to submit your recording. The next time I log into my account, I'll see your recording. For your test recording, tell me how you think you could use an "audio drop box" with your students.





You can see my first exercise (recording three types of sentences about some photos from the TESOL conference) at the new "Speaking Practice Page" at my class wiki. The top half of the page has screen shots of the steps necessary to record your voice. Scroll down the page for the actual assignment. You can submit the assignment if you want! Just include your affiliation when you type your name in the Audio Drop Box so I get an idea of who is trying it out...

Check out the audio drop box and the other internet-based language practice tools at the Rich Internet Applications for Language Learning web site. You'll be glad you did!

CUE 2009

I just returned from the CUE (Computer Using Educators) conference this past weekend, and as usual, picked up several good ideas that I can start using right away in the classroom. My hands-on workshop didn't go as well as I would have liked because of the difference between the version of Microsoft Office that I use in the classroom (2003) and the version of Microsoft Office that was loaded on the computers at the conference (2007). Frankly, I was caught by surprise. It hadn't even occurred to me to ask this year, since last year the computers had 2003. I guess the equipment provider upgraded all of the software in the meantime. I stumbled around and had to ask participants how to do some things. It was not as professional as I would have liked. Fortunately, most understood the problem and appreciated the projects I showed them anyway. Part of the paradox of the situation is, of course, that even if I had demonstrated the projects using the latest version of PowerPoint or Excel or whatever, most of the teachers present would still have to go back to classrooms where they would have to do the projects in 2003 anyway! From now on, I will have to see what version of Office will be on the "lab" computers, and prepare dual handouts. One handout for the version of Office in the lab, and one handout for what the teachers will see when the get back to their classroom.

I should also note, that it is fairly obvious (when done side by side in both versions of Office) that some procedures are NOT easier to do in 2007 and many of the icons and arrangement of the menu items are NOT transparent to the user...

Easily transfering and/or making large files accessible to yourself or others

On occasion, I've been blocked from sending Powerpoint presentations via email because they've been too large (file size) for either my email system or the recipient's email system to accommodate. I've had to chop them up into smaller pieces. I've just experimented with a free website that allows anyone to easily upload a file as large as 100MB for a specified period of time and receive a URL that can be distributed/emailed to others so that they can visit the site and download the file within the specified period of time (1 to 90 days). Files so uploaded can also be password protected. To check it out, click on the link below to download a 2.9 MB file of a book that I uploaded. The password is "test" and the file will be there for 15 days from today!

http://wikisend.com/download/470158/MerchantsOfDeception.pdf

To try uploading something, click on the "upload" tab at the screen you reached when you clicked on the above link.

This could also come in handy when you're at a conference and just realized you left your flash drive/cdrom/computer/handout with all of your presentation files back in the hotel or in your office or in my case at the most recent CATESOL, brought along the working files of some video presentations and not the final correctly formatted versions. If you upload anything related to the conference to the wikisend website before you go and email all of the URLs to yourself, you'll be able to retrieve them from any computer at the conference.

Finally, instead of passing out multi-page paper handouts (expensive to produce and heavy to carry through airports), you could pass out a one page version at the session that includes the URL and direct participants to download the full version when they return to their school sites.