THE Nr ONE NOTE: To save the audacity files as mp3s you have to add the llame codecs to it. A bit tricky to set up, but works like a charm.
Easy to use asynchronous threaded discussion recording your voice
Not free but absolutely excellent.
Some of the French keyboards had difficulties writing the @ sign, so they had problems adding their voice
AudioBoo.fm, Pros:, Easy integration with iPhone or iPod touch, Of the three iPhone/iPod micropodcasting Apps I've talked about, AudioBoo offers the best quality audio, IMHO, web-based recording or file upload (though Heike had problems here), useful tagging system, rss subscription through based on tags (have all students use a similar tag and you'll have a feed of all of their work), Nicely integrated social networking angle through friends and followers model, upload image and provide location info with each post, Cons:, unable to add descriptive text or links to auidio post, 5 minute recording limit, unable to use a cell phone with AudioBoo
Cinchcast, Pros:, An actual link to a downloadable mp3 is created for each post, This means you can use CincCast as a hosting service for a podcast used on another site, such as (MSS), iPhone/iPod touch application, sub-par audio quality for me when using iPod Touch and CinchCast, web based recorder or file upload, Cons:, Cell phone calls from outside USA incur long distance fee
iPadio, Pros:, Methods of producing and uploading audio, iPhone/iPod, file upload, Cell phone, This is iPadio advantage in the field, they provide cell phone numbers in many countries which means you and students can "broadcast live" on the net for the cost of local cell call (free in Japan), Used by many educators, There are many positive examples of teachers using iPadio that can be discovered with a bit of browsing through the site, Cons:, Slow and kludgy web interface, no web-based recording, must use postal-code to enter location information, unable to drop a microphone on a google map as with AudioBoo
An old iPod can be filled up with MP3s from textbook CDs, authentic listening materials from the net, videos from YouTube, or even PowerPoint Slide shows (saved as jpeg images - no animations, sorry) and played in class through a television set or overhead projection system with an AV cable (yellow, red and white RCA connectors).
One caveat on the AV cable, Apple has switched the connections for some reason (perhaps to force people to buy the more expensive product from Apple). With a bit of trial and error, non-Apple AV cables can be used. To do so, the red and yellow connectors have to be transposed (or maybe it's the yellow and white ones).
I've not used a ZOOM, but it does have one feature that I'm very interested in, As far as I know, the ZOOM is the only inexpensive digital recorder that can actually be used as a live USB connected microphone., This means that it is recognized as an audio input source in a program like Audacity. This is a great solution for those who are unhappy with poor noise quality from built-in laptop microphones.
I had retired from podcasting until I discovered micropodcasting through my iPod touch.
It is incredibly fun and easy to record and share my random audio journals and occasional experimental bits of audio.
Now if only I could come up with something interesting and worthwhile to talk about...
Not really a hardware question, but: can some of the activities and principles of the audio/lingual method be repurposed mashed up to make use of the lighweight and mobile recording and playback technologies we have today???
Free local/regional phone numbers
iPadio also offers a speech to text service from your recorded audio, The software doing this is not perfect, the mistakes that are made in transcription might provide useful/fun classroom or homework activities
Would someone please try to file audio dispatches from the conferences in April. Those of us unable to or restricted from attending would appreciate hearing your experiences and impressions as things are happening on the ground.
Bob Sprankle's podcast: Bit by Bit (a podcast by teachers for teachers).
Any digital recorder will do for self-reflection
Record yourself teaching
listen back to a short segment of the recording at your leisure and attempt to transcribe what you said during the lesson, It might take a bit of time to catch everything
Are there any surprises while listening to or reading over your teaching?, Perhaps such surprising moments might prompt small adjustments to future practice
Record 15minutes of teacher classroom speech and make available as an mp3 on one of the micropodasting sites,
Assign students 1 minute chunks to listen to and transcribe as homework
Have students compare transcriptions and attempt to reassemble the chunks and compare to instructor's own transcription, Examine and enjoy the varied language features