Blog Post #4 - Digital Audio Tools for the Classroom

 

Resource: https://unsplash.com/s/photos/kids-headphones

I will be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about how I could incorporate ways to use digital audio tools within my intervention classroom until this module. It has opened an area for growth in my teaching. I really think that by using audio tools with my students, I can set up more authentic purposes for reading which is really important for my students who struggle with reading. The following techniques and ideas will also motivate, engage, and build confidence for my students in ways that I don’t think I’ve thought of before. I’m excited to begin trying these in my classroom this school year to promote my students having a voice!

One of my favorite ideas came from Bridging Technology and Literacy by Amy Hutchinson and Jamie Colwell. I want to begin incorporating digital audio recordings for my personal classroom library books. I love the idea of students recording themselves reading the book and putting QR codes on the cover so other students can listen to the stories later on using their iPads. This could be a great final assessment idea for intervention where I can assess each student’s accuracy and fluency. I could also challenge my students to generate comprehension questions to ask at the end to engage the listener in thinking about the story they just listened to. Here is an example of me reading a book to my students so that I could model and demonstrate the expectations I have for their final product.

Another idea from the same book that I want to incorporate is creating a podcast of my students’ Readers Theater performances. My students enjoy Readers Theater very much because they love feeling like actors and actresses. We typically go into classrooms to perform but I like the audio idea instead so classroom teachers could incorporate our podcast into their literacy centers. We could even do a video podcast so that students feel like they are performing in front of others. Either way, students will probably not even recognize they are reading because they are having so much fun.

A final idea of how to incorporate audio tools in my classroom is to record lessons for students. I think this could be very beneficial for my chronically absent students. They could access the lessons at home to make up for missing lessons or if they need a refresher. I also think that these could be great for when I’m absent from school and have a sub. Lastly, these could be used for tutoring sessions as well. This is definitely something I’m going to begin doing right away.

One of the audio apps I have used previously, and is probably familiar to most of us, is Flipgrid. This app is a tool I began using when the Covid pandemic hit. Flipgrid’s learning platform allows students to respond to a teacher through a video or voice recording. Written comments can also be incorporated. It’s very student-friendly and easy to use. I would often ask students to record themselves reading their favorite page in the book or answering a comprehension question.

One new audio app I tried this weekend was My Story-Book Maker. This app was extremely user-friendly for students. I don't think it would take a lot of time to model and explain how to use it. The only downfalls I saw, personally, are that it limits the number of books for the free edition and it also limits the number of pages you can have in a story. One of the highlights was you can export stories straight to YouTube. A class could have a YouTube channel dedicated to these stories. Another highlight was all the stickers included are geared towards children and they can create drawings and upload photos as well. I am going to try it with my students for an after-reading activity to gauge my interest further in this app.