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)

iPadio

iPadio (http://ipadio.com/)

You and your students can use your mobile phones (cell phones) to phone a free number and record messages and post them on the internet at no cost. I have tried this in Spain using my Movistar mobile and I was not charged for the calls.

So far I have used it to send a couple of short comments to my students and have experimented with embedding, attaching a link and using an RSS feed in Edmodo. Embedding works best. See examples

I want to experiment in class with my students recording themselves as they retell stories or interview each other, but I'm not sure yet how to do it.

Students could all sign up for their own accounts, which would mean their phones would be able to use the free phone number (here) and their own secret number and their recordings would go to their individual pages. If they used my secret number, their recordings would go to my page.

Or they could take it in turns to use my phone, but this would be slower by far.

I have discarded the other possibility which is for them to use their own phones without signing up for an account, type in my phone number when required and then type in the secret number to my page.

The work of adding the embed codes could be done by the students (or maybe by me initially)

Has anyone tried any of these methods?