Maggie Brennan Juana
Assistive Technology Project
2/09/07
“Audacity” is a audio recording software for all operating systems. It is a wonderful addition to many schools for two main reasons. First of all, it can be used by both disabled students to remediate their needs as well as the general education student to record either their voices, their music etc. The second reason it is a wonderful tool for a school is because it’s free!
Audacity is a program you can download from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ There are different versions for Mac, OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. It has very few system requirements. It will run with Windows 98, ME, XP and 2000. It runs best with 64 MB of Ram, which is normally not a problem with todays computers. Therefore, you can easily download it to networks, such as a school as we have in Rye Brook, or you could use it at home on an individual computer as I have at home.
Audacity can be used anytime you want to record to an audio file. For example, in a language class, we use Audacity to record our voices and submit them to the teacher electronically. In music class, the students record their instrument or voice samples for a grade as well. Students can also use this as a way to practice for a drama production or for a oral presentation in any type of class. All you need is a computer and a microphone.
This program operates very simply. Here is the screen view of the program:
Assistive Technology Project
2/09/07
“Audacity” is a audio recording software for all operating systems. It is a wonderful addition to many schools for two main reasons. First of all, it can be used by both disabled students to remediate their needs as well as the general education student to record either their voices, their music etc. The second reason it is a wonderful tool for a school is because it’s free!
Audacity is a program you can download from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ There are different versions for Mac, OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. It has very few system requirements. It will run with Windows 98, ME, XP and 2000. It runs best with 64 MB of Ram, which is normally not a problem with todays computers. Therefore, you can easily download it to networks, such as a school as we have in Rye Brook, or you could use it at home on an individual computer as I have at home.
Audacity can be used anytime you want to record to an audio file. For example, in a language class, we use Audacity to record our voices and submit them to the teacher electronically. In music class, the students record their instrument or voice samples for a grade as well. Students can also use this as a way to practice for a drama production or for a oral presentation in any type of class. All you need is a computer and a microphone.
This program operates very simply. Here is the screen view of the program:
As you can see, the buttons for stop, play and record are clearly marked. The volume is easily controlled with the microphone slide bar and the tracks are clearly delineated. It is a very “user-friendly” software. The sound waves you see above are from one track, but multiple track recording is also very easy. The program also offers a counter which is very helpful to students in order to know how long they have spoken, or how much longer they have to speak. Editing the sounds is also just a click away! You just click, drag and cut where you want to eliminate the sounds. There are further, more sophisticated features like raising or lowering your pitch, increasing or slowing your speed or editing out background noises. You can even play your sounds backwards!
The audio files can be saved as an Audacity file, but they can also be saved in other formats, such as WAV or MP3 files. That way, when listening to the files, you can either listen to them within Audacity or you could download them to itunes and put them on your ipod.
As discussed here, this program has a multitude of uses in the regular classroom, but can also be used for students of special needs. If a student wants to record the audio of a class, they can do so simply by having the teacher wear a microphone that is connected to a laptop computer. If a student has difficulty writing for any reason, they may record their answers instead of typing or writing by hand. Auditory learners would find this software very helpful since they could either listen to the information, or record their answers. Speech and language students have used this type of software as a learning tool. For example, they listen to a sound then record their own voices imitating the sound on Audacity. They can then listen to the sound and compare their sound to the “correct” pronunciation of the words.
Audacity is a simple, very inexpensive option for schools and individuals to be able to record sounds. It has a multitude of uses and is very easy to use. I have used it now for 3 months in my class and would recommend it highly.
4 comments:
I can see many uses for Audacity. I think it would be a great benefit for ELL, special ed, and regular ed students to aid them in grammar use. They can analyze their own and compare their work to properly spoken models set by the teacher or other proficient students.
Another use that I might try is in writing workshop. We do a lot of work with "writing in the air" or telling stories aloud before we put them down on paper. Audacity would be a fabulous way for the students to try this important pre-writing step.
Ilove the price!
What a great find, Maggie! Audacity sounds like a wonderful assistive tool to use in the classroom. Personally, I could see myself using it for struggling readers and writers. Instead of books on tape, books on Audacity could be recorded and children who are struggling in the area of writing could hear themselves "think out loud" before publishing a writing piece.
I wonder how many other assistive technology software out there is free?
I can use this to record key terms in my science class and give it to the ELL teachers to help me get a science concept across to an ELL student. I am not sure but I don't think endoplasmic reticulum translates very well in any language. This way an ELL student gets to hear my voice and pronunciation of science terms. Possibly deriving some level of comfort with the terms.
I agree that it seems that broad a use for this tool is for ELL students which is great. Recordings for dyslexia and blind would also be a huge application. Can the files be fairly big like a chapter of a book? Uses can be very creative too as type of podcasting software. Maybe you can share more about how you are using it.
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