EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CLEARINGHOUSE

The Educational Technology Clearinghouse is a website that provides free web resources for students and teachers. It is a resource for all kinds of sources, including: audio, clip art, fonts, photos, videos and presentation templates.

GFS: Audacity to Monitor!

Caitlin Walsh, 4th grade teacher at GFS, uses Audacity software to monitor her students progress in oral reading fluency.

Students first recorded their reading using a microphone and Audacity software. They saved their files in the R-Drive so that they could be easily accessed.

Students used the following three checklists to assess their growth over three repeated readings. The checklists were designed based upon the focus of the lesson (click on them to open up the checklists):

• Fluency Center Goals and Progress Reflection for Heeding Punctuation
• Fluency Center Goals and Progress Reflection for Reading with Expression (Poetry)
• Fluency Center Goals and Progress Reflection for Reading with Expression
  

Listen to an example of one of the student's audio files: SAMPLE

SHS: Spanish -- Podcasting and Blackboard

Victoria Mazzarelli, World Language Department Chair and Spanish teacher, recently combined podcasting with Blackboard's Discussion Boards. Two of her 12th grade Spanish Honors classes participated in this activity. A Blackboard class was set up combining all students from Periods 2 and 3. Both classes were given the assignment to read and create an alternate ending to the story "Nosotros, no" ("Not us") .

Working in pairs students used the language lab to record their endings in Spanish. With the help of lab assistant, Laura Schwartz, the audio files were then attached to each group's Blackboard Discussion Group.

Next students from Period 2 were asked to listen to the podcasts in the Discussion Board of Period 3 and comment in Spanish on all of them. Students were given time to start this in class, but some of the work was done at home.

The project involved reading, writing, listening and speaking in Spanish as well as collaborating with students in another class.

This image shows the Blackboard Discussion Board groups with the uploaded .mp3 file. Click on image to see a larger view. To hear one of the Spanish podcasts, click here.

GFS: Music

Suzanne Propp, Music teacher at GFS, has been using an iPod and a microphone to record kids' singing and playing various pieces of music on the instruments in the music room. The students then listen to the performance to do an assessment of their skills. Here is how she describes the activity:

"Laughing All The Way" is an activity I use with 5th graders to teach them to read a musical score. After several lessons where students read through the music, we rotate through the instruments so that everybody gets a chance to try all of the different parts. Then we work on finalizing the performance. Recording the performance on the iPod and playing it back immediately helps the students assess their performance; they listen to see if they are (a) keeping a steady beat and (b) playing the correct notes. Later we work together to add expressive elements (dynamics)."

This activity meets many curricular objectives from the ITL and music curricula, including:

• Create, perform and respond using: half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, dotted quarter notes, dotted half notes, whole notes, dotted eighth notes, sixteenth notes, syncopated rhythms, triplets, eighth rest, quarter rest, half rest, whole rest, fermati and ties.
• Perform and respond with understanding to metered signatures of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8 through singing, movement or accompaniments.
• Identify and understand the function of music symbols, such as repeat sign, single bar line, double bar line, first and second endings, and D.C. al fine, multi-measure rests and coda.
• Review treble clef and recorder notes C- D'.
• Demonstrate an understanding of rhythm patterns by performing orchestrated accompaniments on Orff instruments and in other ways.
• Perform pieces that use a variety of layered ostinati (speech, body percussion, instruments).
• Identify and perform pieces in AB, ABA, AABA, Rondo and other forms.
• Self-assess performance and final product using rubric established by self, class and/or teacher.
• Use a variety of production technologies for sharing information, e.g., word processing, photographing, audio recording, drawing materials, maps, models, multimedia presentations, scanning, videotaping, multimedia presentations and video editing
  

Listen to One Piece of Student Music

SHS: Podcasting in an Audio Production Class

Jim Honeycutt, Media Teacher at SHS, challenged the students in his audio production class to listen to and create a review for a favorite commercial CD recording. All students used GarageBand (on the Mac) to produce a podcast of the review. Working with GarageBand allows the insertion of images in the podcast. The sample below by Steve and Will is a review of the 1996 alternate rock album, Beck! Odelay. It is 17 minutes and 53 seconds long.

Jim said, "It was a terrific project for me since students who are not necessarily musicians are now able to create something using audio tools and derive a good deal of personal satisfaction in doing so." He also noted that many skills are used in the creation of these podcasts, including research (in this case, about the musical groups), capturing of images, organizing the information, synthesizing it into a logical presentation and using technology (in this case GarageBand) for production.

Podcasting has many relative advantages. Using tools like GarageBand and Audacity, students can practice their research, writing, synthesizing and presentation skills with a final product that can be posted to Blackboard, a wiki, or a teacher's FirstClass account.