Reflection Using Audio Recorders: Vocaroo

Today we are going to add some audio to our blog. I want you to record a reflection about what you have learned in one of your classes today. The audio should be at least 1 minute long. Click here to go to the Vocaroo site to record. After you paste the audio into your blog, write a quick review and include how you could use this in your classes.

Remember, if you sign up the site will save your Vocaroo's!

Using Vocaroo for Blogging

Today we are going to add some audio to our blog. Blogger is notorious for being difficult to add audio to it. I ran into this website last year and found it works really well for adding audio to my blog. Here is a link to the page. I would give directions, but it is so simple I don't think I need to.

Reflections on Typing

Below is the audio to my fifth hour keyboarding classes first attempt at reflection. As you can tell from the audio, they obviously are not used to reflecting (at least in a classroom setting.)

Because I know reflection is an incredibley powerful part of the learning experience, I know that I need to continue to help them develop this skill. Even in keyboarding I can help my students become better, more reflective learners.

Journey to the Center of the Earth: Redux 2009

My students just finished reading an excerpt from Jules Verne's classic story Journey to the Center of the Earth. Last year my students wrote stories describing what happened when they went to the center of the Earth. This year, I created a short story starter for my students to use for inspiration. Zac, Rosa, and Saul lend their voices to begin our stories.



The stories will be posted on the A Novel Approach to Reading blog when they are finished.

Here is a link where I explain how you can get the novel on audio for free.

A Titanic Undertaking: Creating and Recording Radio Broadcasts

If you have been following the blog this week, you have been reading about our experimental reading assignments. Here is a visual representation of what we did this week.
Here is Rosa and Natalia reading the story from the reading text on Tuesday. We had already read the story once in class, but the students had to read the story and take notes over the information. Rosa is listening to the story on the ipod.
Here you can see Parker watching a video downloaded from Discovery Streaming. The video shows Robert Ballard's discovery of the wreck of the Titanic.Here is Rosa again recording the audio of her radio story. Notice the microphone placed next to the aquarium.
I placed the microphone next to the aquarium so that it would record the sound of water running. I hoped this would lend some authenticity to the recordings.

Here is Rosa's broadcast live from the Titanic:

Here is Nathan's story live with Bob Ballard:

The rest of the recordings will be posted on the Novel Approach to Reading Blog next week when we have finished them.

The Three Century Woman: A Classroom Discussion

Here is the class discussion we had about the story The Three Century Woman. This does not include specific skill and comprehension questions. Instead the goal was to help the students make connections between the story and what they already know.