8 Tools or Platforms
Garageband is a great application for music creation and various types of audio compositions. It feels like the perfect recording studio for anyone especially students. It is relatively easy to navigate, it includes different project templates that gives students the right elements of the app they could utilize demanding on the audio project. Apple also provides an extremely thorough Starter Guide with video tutorials, image galleries and quick tips that would be very helpful for teachers or parents teaching their students how to navigate the app. Here is a great blog called The GarageBand Guide which has awesome step by step “How to’s” with lots of videos and screenshots. The biggest downside to this application is that it is only available on Apple products which are definitely more expensive and not as accessible as other audio tools reviewed.
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Easy Voice Recorder Pro is an application for voice recording. One of the immediate benefits of the app is how simple it is. The interface is quick to learn, and the recorder is very sensitive. It allows for easy editing and cutting of the audio to only keep sections that the students really want. There is also the option of changing the gain, or volume, of the recording. There are several guides on YouTube that give tips and hints for how to use this. While there is a paid version, there is also a version that is free. The paid version gives many more advanced options that younger students might not need. The one downside to the whole app is that the interface is very functional, but it is not flashy or interesting and may not capture students' attention like some other apps.
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Chirbit
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Soundcloud |
Chirbit describes itself a “social audio” website where anyone can easily record themselves or upload existing audio and share it anywhere. I believe Chirbit is true to it’s purpose and has the ability to share to 9+ social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Wordpress. On top of this, you can also generate a unique QR code for each audio clip. Chirbit is also very accessible, it’s services are free and gives great flexibility on how to use it whether recording directly through the site or uploading audio. It also has the ability to extract audio from YouTube videos and supports most audio formats which are pretty cool features. This could be a great tool for students as it is very simple in design to use and the social aspect could be an interesting feature to utilize in the classroom. Another aspect that makes it more accessible is that everything is done through the website so you can login to your account anywhere and utilize the tools unlike a lot of other audio tools where you have to download an application. The only really limited aspect I could see is that if you use the site to record, it is limited to 5 minutes on one recording. But you can upload up to 2 hours of audio per file and that can be recording on other free apps like Voice Recorder Pro.
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Soundcloud is a platform that has been around for over a decade. It is a company that distributes audio. Users can upload, record, and share their original material using this site. Soundcloud allows their users to upload files and attach URLs to them, which then can be embedded into websites or shared to different social media sites, such as Twitter. Soundcloud is a free service, however, they also offer premium service which allows for being able to upload more and lengthier files, and to disable comments (which may be a worthwhile benefit if using this app in the classroom). Soundcloud is used by many musicians. Students may have used this program before. There are a lot of songs on Soundcloud which are not appropriate for a school setting and I was unable to find a way to keep these from students. One of the more interesting applications I could see this program being used for in the classroom is for the ability to comment on the audio. Soundcloud also has a unique feature in which the audio appears as a wave and users can post comments on certain sections of the audio.
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Audacity is a free downloaded software that is open source, cross-platform program for multi-track audio recording and editing. Audacity is easily downloadable from their website. The software itself is relatively easy to figure out how to record yourself and do other basic functions like cut and copy the audio. Outside of the basic the format of the program is a bit overwhelming with a lot of unrecognizable buttons and options. This could definitely cause a large learning curve for younger students so if this were utilized in a classroom I would suggest middle school or higher. The Audacity website is a bit disappointing for tutorials or easily readable information regarding the features. To find tutorials I went to YouTube, which took some time to find the right one because the PC versions come up first as well as older versions so to find the most up to date version for Mac took some time. The software overall seems great but it is definitely for the more experienced user and would need some more in depth research before a teacher taught and presented on it.
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Podomatic is a website that stores, publishes, and promotes Podcasts. Much of the website focuses on the "finding fame" aspect of creating a Podcast and monetizing it. The free account comes with a couple of different benefits--you can store six hour of recording, have listeners stream for about 180 hours, and get basic stats. There are several plans, but none geared towards educators. To create a Podcast, you can enter in a Title/Description, then record an audio by using a very easy interface. There aren't many options that I could see that allow for editing other than just rerecording the entire thing. Once that is done, photos and tags can be added and then it can be uploaded (and promoted). Unfortunately, I didn't find this to be a great resource, and instead thought other programs could do the same thing, but with more functionality. The main benefit of this is that it allows the recording to be shared online quickly, which may be an exciting way to share projects with families or other classrooms.
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Beautiful Audio Editor is an online and offline audio editor that can be accessed through multiple apps mainly through Google applications. The application for Beautiful Audio Editor can be downloaded via the Chrome or Firefox web browsers as well as accessed via Google Drive. The accessibility is very prominent here with the various locations online the app can be utilized and the offline feature with Google Drive- the flexibility is great! Beautiful Audio Editor reminded me of Audacity but a much more user friendly version of Audacity. The layout is very familiar and easy to navigate. This app was also easy to learn by just exploring through it which can be super helpful when teaching kids about how to use the app- very intuitive. I can see this app being easily integrated in classrooms and schools in general especially those that already have a contract with Google and use Chromebooks.
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Voki Ed is a website that is geared towards educators and their classrooms. It allows children to record their voices behind different avatars that they choose, such as animals, cartoon characters, or historical figures. When they choose their characters, they can click record and go. The school license has lot of functionality, allowing teachers to set up their own classrooms and give students their own accounts. This functionality really gives students the freedom that they may want in an audio project. The educator function also gives the ability to have project websites with all the recordings in one spot, and the ability to share this with password protection. Although there are several educator tools, I envision the novelty of this website to quickly get old and for students to lose interest. Because it seems that this is a tool that only does one specific function, I'm not sure whether the paid accounts are actually worth it.
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