Ipadio and audioboo for students to record themselves with

I posted this yesterday to the audioboo publisher community on Edmodo, but thought it might be of interest to a wider audience.

I teach English as a Foreign Language in Barcelona. I no longer have access to the Edmodo audioboo app, probably because I live outside the USA and Canada. I used the audioboo apps for Android phones and iPhones a lot last year: I got my students to record all their pronunciation work using audioboo apps on their phones. https://audioboom.com/about/apps

This year I decided to stop using the audioboo apps for phones partly because there wasn't an up-to-date Android app, but mainly because I decided to use only one recording app instead of the two I used last year.

My favourite recording app for Android phones and iphones is http://www.ipadio.com/ and last year I got my students to use this app when really communicating in English and to use the audioboo app for the mechanics of pronunciation, reading sentences and texts aloud and repeating things.

Now my student record everything with the same app (ipadio) and they can cross-post their best communicative recordings to their e-portfolios fairly easily. Here are links to the best two examples of my current students' e-portfolios:
http://lidiagalvezbarcelona.wordpress.com/
http://mdterres001.wordpress.com/

Students can also embed their recordings in Edmodo. Every week they choose their best recording and turn it in as an assignment on Edmodo. I listen to one minute of their recordings and in five minutes have enough time to listen twice and give feedback on grammar/vocabulary and pronunciation and record myself saying the phrases and words I have drawn their attention to. I use http://www.freesoundrecorder.net/ to do this.

Here is an example recording by the best student in my pre-intermediate class, my comments and my recording:




1216
Listen once to the first minute of your recording and pause when you get to each of these grammar mistakes and take some notes:

He takes photos
he's working for a newspaper
one of his cameras is particularly important for him
His grandfather was from Germany
Today he's taking photographs of a model for
a famous fashion magazine

Here are some pronunciation problems. Listen to my recording and repeat the grammar mistakes and the pronunciation mistakes. There should be time to repeat them. Use your mobile to record my version and yours and then listen and compare them:

phoTOgrapher
loves
job
cameras

 

Listen again to the first minute of your recording and stop at each of these grammar and pronunciation errors above and say each word correctly.

Very fluent, but with some grammar and pronunciation problems to solve.

I've just spent 5 minutes on this. Please make sure that you spend at least as much time as me trying to learn from your mistakes. If you like you can make a new recording and post it here.

How best can technology help students speak? [I always write about the same thing!]

Speaking as much as possible is the best way for students to speak better. Any materials which encourage students to speak to each other will help. I prefer students to work in pairs as that creates the most opportunities to speak. I adapt materials to maximise opportunities for students to speak in pairs.

Where does technology come in? I am lucky as I have a projector attached to a computer so it is easy to project a series of questions that half the students in the class can see but the others can't as they are sitting with their backs to the screen. If possible, when they swap roles, I have another set of questions for the second interview. The projected questions are rather like the auto-cue used on TV. This can be done without technology, by preparing posters and sticking them to the whiteboard.

In this kind of activity there is a lot of simultaneous speaking and it is sometimes hard to monitor, help or assess students. However, if students record themselves answering the questions using their mobile phones it is easier for teachers to monitor errors and or assess students' speaking. Teachers can still help during the activity

Using apps like audioboo or ipadio smartphone owners can build up a portfolio of their speaking which their teacher can follow using feedly. Students can follow each other, too. Even simple mobile phones can be used with an ipadio account for free in many countries of the world.

This is just one example of how speaking in pairs can be set up and recorded. There are many advantages in getting students to record themselves:

- Students are more likely to speak in English when they are recording themselves.

- Being able to listen to themselves makes students more aware of how well (or badly) they speak

- Building up a portfolio of their speaking showing their progress is motivating

- Teacher feedback on one minute of every recording takes about the same amount of time it takes to give feedback on written work and generates a manageable number of errors to work on

- Providing students with small amounts of regular individual feedback on their strengths, weaknesses and errors in grammar and pronunciation is more effective than brief general classroom feedback

- It is much easier for teachers to get to know their students' speaking level by listening to them regularly. Assessment is much easier as a result.

The other type of speaking activity in pairs we do in class involves creating an information gap which students have to explain. Typically it is a story or article which only half of the students listen to and/or read. They listen to it a number of times and often see the script for a moment the last time they listen. They then practise retelling it to each other before retelling it to one of the students who hasn’t listened to it. I offer help with problems I overhear when they are practising retelling and students usually only record themselves when they are retelling it for real.

These extended monologues are a real test of and opportunity for speaking and involves real communication and are ideal for assessment.

Depending on your definition of speaking you may or may not consider the following activities to be speaking as they don’t involve communication, but do involve saying words and sentences in English. My students also record themselves doing these activities:

-          repeating new vocabulary after a model (and recording both the model and their own version

-          repeating new grammatical structures in the same way to reinforce them and to work on their pronunciation

-          repeating pronunciation exercises

-          reading aloud paragraphs from the course where there is a model to compare with

These recording are also added to their portfolio of spoken English, which I listen to on my way to work and give them the words they need to look up later on howjsay.

Here is a list of the websites mentioned above:

audioboo https://audioboo.fm  which my students use to record their pronunciation

ipadio http://www.ipadio.com/  which my students use to record their real speaking

feedly http://feedly.com/  which I use to follow my students recordings

howjsay http://www.howjsay.com/  where students can check the pronunciation of words

Edmodo https://www.edmodo.com/ where I give formal assessment in private 

eportfolios - posts I have made on Edmodo

https://plus.google.com/u/0/106967795011827696866/posts/9MVt14NgWbd 3 tools for eportfolios of mainly spoken English reworking of post below:

http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/101920742 My reply to Mrs. Monteiro Silva, who had posted about http://lingtlanguage.com/


http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/31690038 3 replies from me to Sue Hellman who was asking for ideas about portfolios

http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/22673899 (You must be one of my connections) me talking about how posterous can solve the problem of Edmodo only having a native player for .mp3 and .wav audio files

http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/100291332 my reply to Nira Dale, who wants to use Edmodo public pages for student eportfolios


http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/62958106 me about ipadio, posterous and chirbit all embedding or linking to produce audio players in Edmodo

http://electronicportfolios.org/ Dr. Helen Barrett's site

http://britishcouncilamigo.edmodo.com/post/25261181 (You must be one of my connections) me talking about retelling videos and recording this (site gone)

Recording an anecdote while telling it in class to put on the internet later

I had wanted to do this for a long time but only managed to get round to doing it this week. It should be easy enough to record yourself as you tell an anecdote to your students in class and then use the 'raw' recording to post on the internet for them to listen to again, or for students who were away to do so, or even for other (intermediate, in this case) students to listen to.

I had bought a Phillips Voice Tracker years ago, but it didn't record in .mp3 format and the hassle of converting it with Audacity put me off. The school where I work bought a number of voice recorders recently which record directly in mp3 format so I signed out one of these and with the USB cable provided it was simple to move the file from the recorder to my USB stick.

I looked for a picture to accompany the recording, but couldn't find a Creative Commons version, unfortunately. But here is the public feed item from my Intermediate group on Edmodo including the recording and the picture :

http://www.edmodo.com/public/post?id=11023739

If I find time, I might add some vocabulary help in a reply - probably linking to the Cambridge Learner's Online Dictionary's definition.

I've no idea whether anyone in my class will want to listen to it.

First Day

On our in-house day (INSET) we had a session on what to do on the first day of class as there had been problems in the past with students complaining that the first day was rather a waste of time as there was so much about admin. The rumour was also that students who had studied with us for a few years skipped the first day as they had heard it all before.

It was quite interesting to discuss in small groups what we did ourselves and to hear what people in other groups do. The clear conclusions are:

1. Make sure students get to know each other (making sure they speak to new people)
2. Split admin over the first two or three classes (toilets, breaks and fire exits only on Day 1)
3. Make sure students go away having learnt something new

I, personally, would add that it is a good idea to introduce the students to some of the techniques you are going to use from the very first day and to set up whatever out-of-class channels of communication you are going to use, too.

We discussed loads of ways to make sure students get to know each other, but I think I shall use again what I have used so many times before.

I introduce myself and give them my home email address. I show them a name 'toblerone' with my name on and give them the materials to make their own with their name on both sides. Later on I take photographs of each table of students with their labels in front of them, which get uploaded to Edmodo. (Picture with permission from students)

But first, students work in pairs sitting around a table (4 or 6 students on each) and have three minutes to ask their neighbour as many questions as possible without taking notes of their answers. My mobile controls the time and I go around with a clipboard taking notes of problems to give feedback about. Then there are another 3 minutes for the activity to be done with the answerer asking questions.

At the end of the second 3-minute period of students speaking and me taking notes, I scan the A4 page of notes and put it up on the IWB to go through. In my notes I usually only write correct sentences and hope that I will remember what the student said wrong. I encourage students to take notes selectively about things that they think they can learn from and tell them that I will be sending them the complete list later.

The next stage is each student telling the student on the other side everything they can remember about the person they interviewed before. I remind them if necessary about third person -s and tell them that no one can remember everything and suggest that when they finish they can say something like "and that's all I can remember". I monitor errors with my clipboard again and then go through the corrected version on the IWB.

Admin is the next priority and I like the idea of getting 'old hands' to tell the new students about a list of points projected on the IWB.

Before the break in the middle of our two-and-a-half-hour classes, I like to tell the students what book they should go and buy in the break and also try to 'sell' the book to them. This is pretty easy for me as I really like the book, but I think it is important to be positive about the course book however you feel about it: or don't use it, which is not an option where I work!

I have got a powerpoint prepared to help me sell the course books (which reminds me that I must find out if the price has changed again this year.)

After the break I like to actually start using the course book. Many of the students manage to buy it in the break on the first day, but I tell them they must bring it to the second class without fail.

We have iPacks, which are the IWB software for the two books I use:

1. New English File Pre-Intermediate
2. New English File Intermediate

This makes it very easy to use the book on the first day even if the students haven't all managed to buy it. It is also great to show them a third way in which we will be using the IWB.

I also like to do something that I really felt worked well last year. It's something I had used a lot some years ago, but had stopped using because of lack of space. The idea is that half the class goes out of the class and does something while the other half watch a video. They rehearse retelling the story of the video to each other and then the students outside come in and hear all about the video. Ideally, this should be done vice versa with a second video, but I never seem to have time to do that on the same day so I have do it on Day 2. During the rehearsals I and circulating to help them. Error monitoring can be done during the second retelling.

Finally, I introduce my students to Edmodo, by showing them what it looks like - it reminds them of Facebook and this year I will also show them their Facebook page. There is a handout for them to make it easy to join the group and there will be a message waiting for them welcoming them to the group and providing a link to the Facebook page.

For homework, they will have a test and the answers to the test and instructions to tell me what their score was in the test and as it is a diagnostic test to let me know which questions they got wrong.

If there is a weekend before the next class I will also give them a writing task to do. The typical composition introducing yourself to the teacher with a model to base it on.

Online add-on to face-to-face course

I decided last year that this year I would try to keep a log of my teaching and my thoughts about my teaching and here it is.

I will actually start teaching tomorrow, but I've been thinking about my teaching for the last two weeks or so. That's OK as I have had an extremely long summer holiday and have had plenty of time to forget about my job.

One of the things that I've been debating on and off for the last six months is what to do about the online add-on I chose to use to supplement my face2face course. Last year I used www.edmodo.com and the year before www.Ning.com . I decided a long time back that I preferred Edmodo because it is designed for education so it has assignment setting and tracking, but last year I also started experimenting with using Facebook pages as well.

My Facebook pages started off as a way to try to re-use the materials I was providing for my own students through Edmodo and originally I simply fed through the RSS feeds from Edmodo into the Facebook pages. I also had RSS feeds coming into my Edmodo groups. As the year progressed I found that it was really better to feed the latter RSS feeds directly into Facebook using RSS Graffiti and that it was also better to post material twice: once to the Edmodo group and once to Facebook. In both applications the material looked better when posted directly.

So this year I have decided to have no RSS feeds coming into my Edmodo groups, but I will ask all my student to register for their Edmodo group and 'like' the corresponding Facebook page, where RSS feeds will provide most of the content. There will still be some duplication for them as I shall continue to post things myself to both.

Here are the three Facebook pages for the two levels I teach and Advanced, which I taught until very recently:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-learners-of-English-as-a-Foreign-Language-EFLESL/314378923180
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Intermediate-English-as-a-Foreign-Language-EFL-ESL/252548584279
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Learn-Pre-Intermediate-English-as-a-Foreign-Language-EFL-ESL/283018929873