Audioboo --Free onine recording service!

Website of the day:   http://audioboo.fm/

What is this?

It is a great website for both teachers and students to record themselves up up to 5 minutes and share the sound file to one another. Audioboo is also a application which can be downloaded free on smartphohes so that users can record themselves or the sound they hear anytime and anywhere.

Why use it in learning language?

•  Audioboo makes recording voice a lot simplier. Recording can be done in anywhere and anytime.  Learning and teaching is not restricted in the classroom only.

          The following pictures mentioned some basic steps to make recording.
        
                Step 1


Click on record on the website

            Step 2

Start recording

     Step 3

Preview and add a title to it!

• It can help students practice speaking English. Besides, since users can always easily restart  recording or previre their recording, they will feel less anxious to do the assignment.
• Users can syndicate the podcast made by others and follow them to keep updated. There are a variety of sound clips on the website. 

         

• Once having a account, users can check and access to the recordings they have made so far.  It can be regarded as part of  students' portofolio, by which students can examine their process of learning.

        

• The sound file can be searched via search engine as long as the file have tags.
• The recorded sound file can be distributed easily. After recording, users can publish the link to the website so that everyone can listen to it. The file can also be embedded in one's own blog/website as the following picture shows:

              It is an example I did  embed the sound file to one's website.

Classroom use

• Teachers ask students to do speaking practice both in groups and as an individual and record their own voice by audioboo. Teacher can listen to their recording and correct the most common mistakes in the next class.  Here are some speaking activities students can do: inerviewing with each other, reading a paragrah or a dialogue, practice answering the short questions provided by the teachers, telling a story, talking about what had happened today and so on. 
•  Teachers can record their own lectures on difficult grammar rules, sentence patterns, guildlines on students' assignments or project. 

Limitations

• The service is free. Therefore, students can only record up to 5 minutes.  
• Not all the students are equipped with smart phones or speakers at home.
• Once finishing the recording, it has to be published to the website. Students might find it embarrassing.
• Teachers cannot give immediate feedbacks on students' work.

How to use it?

To learn more about how to use audioboo, click here to watch the video made by Russell Stannard from teachertrainingvideos.com.