Pedagogical applications of Audacity

The following audio short story is produced by using a free, user-friendly, sound recording online software called Audacity and here is the script of it:

The Sick Lion

A Lion had come to the end of his days and lay sick unto death at the mouth of his cave, gasping for breath. The animals, his subjects, came round him and drew nearer as he grew more and more helpless. When they saw him on the point of death they thought to themselves: “Now is the time to pay off old grudges.” So the Boar came up and drove at him with his tusks; then a Bull gored him with his horns; still the Lion lay helpless before them: so the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger, came up, and turning his tail to the Lion kicked up his heels into his face. “This is a double death,” growled the Lion.

Only cowards insult dying majesty.

Click below for my audio story.

http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~s0803018/sally.wav

Reflections–Audacity for the Speech Festival!

Besides making audio stories, I’ve found that Audacity can be used effectively to facilitate the training of my students for the Speech Festival.  Here are some of my ideas:

1.  I can simply record the poem (or invite the NET to do so) using Audacity and ask my students to listen to the audio file anytime they want at home. 

  Advantage:  Help save much time in the training for better use; 

2.  Students can also record their poem through this software as practice. 

  Advantage 1:   Reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of their own recordings and thus raise their own awareness in different areas like fluency, accuracy, intonation, tone of voice, etc in presentaing a poem. 

  Advantage 2:  Learn from peer’s different ways of presenting the same poem and make comments to one another and   improvement. 

3.  Teachers can invite all the students who receive awards or prizes to record their poems and make a collection of   kind of “champion work” each year in the English Department website at the end of the Festival. 

  Advantage:  As the promotion of poetry appreciation and thus Language Arts in school. 

That’s all I can think of.  How about you?  Do you have any better ideas that you can share with me?  Don’t hesitate to leave me some words!  Thank you:)