Vocaroo is a great web2.0 tool for recording and sending voice messages. Users will be provided with a link when they finish recording, which they can share via e-mail, facebook, twitter, and so on.
How to use Vocaroo
How can we use it for Language Learning?
Using this tool as a part of a task can be very beneficial to students. For example, lets assume the students have received a homework to do a voice recording of them describing their favourite restaurant, and the recordings are to be sent to the teacher via e-mail. Not only does the students get the initial speaking practice, but after their first recording they may feel unsatisfied with it. What often happens is that students retry multiple times before sending their work to the teacher.
Another benefit to this is that shy students normally dislike doing presentations in front of the class, and this gives them an opportunity to practise their speaking just like everyone else, whereas inside the classroom they tend to be quite reluctant.
Also, when this tool is used autonomously, I think it can boost a learner's confidence in speaking and listening. The learner could say a sentence, and listen to it for corrections on intonation, pronunciation and so on, improving his/her speaking and listening. This hopefully will result in positive participation in the classroom for the learner.
Benefits and Limitations
- Bypasses the conventional recording procedures(voice recorders, extracting data from the recorders then putting them onto a CD, etc)
- Extremely simple to use
- Great for speaking tasks and practice
- Easy to share with whoever the user wants
- Students are able to listen to their recordings multiple times and improve it until they are satisfied
- Without a microphone, this tool is completely useless
- Vocaroo currently is only accessible through internet - it is unavailable offline
- Technical problems can arise - if the Vocaroo server unexpectedly shuts down in the middle of a recording there is no way to recover it
- The sound quality is not ideal
Simon, you might need to write a bit more and provide more detail about how you use in class and benefits/limitations.
ReplyDeleteWahahaha...... Bear CC is coming here to do some violation and eat all the words you wrote!!!! haha...
ReplyDeletePS: what do you mean by "Easy to share with whoever the user wants"
Basically, once you are done with the recording you can send it to anyone via e-mail or embed it somewhere :)
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