Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Experimenting with audio

Brian Rackham's session, Excelling with Audio, was one of my favorites during this week. I like audio storytelling, and it was fun to play with the few simple gadgets needed to begin adventures in audio. 

Here's a sample of what we accomplished with some instruction and a few spare minutes:



We captured our sounds with very simple microphones and digital audio recorders, and edited our work in the freeware, Audacity.

I used some simple assignments in my class before where students created soundscapes and interviewed each other to prepare for more substantial stories. Students then went out and created podcasts in much the same manner as we completed out video assignments.

My students seemed to really enjoy creating audio stories and sharing them via podcasts. Like many of the other multi-media techniques we have covered this week, it provides students with another way to tell stories. And for those who struggle with writing, this is another way to draw them into journalism.

-Travis Durfee
Watkins Glen Central School District
WG, NY

3 comments:

  1. This is really neat, Travis. I'm glad the session was valuable. It's the first time we've offered audio.

    Steve Elliott
    Arizona State University
    Phoenix

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  2. Travis,
    This is cool. I need to remember that audio is a great option to pull kids into journalism and there is so much that goes into arranging the audio and telling the story.

    Sometimes I listen to NPR stories with my students and we try to create rubrics for how to create audio based on the professional examples. I don't give them enough time to just sit down and experiment with audio, and I need to do that - just like you had time to play around with it. Dang, I wish that I did that session.
    Tracy Anderson

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  3. Oops.

    Tracy Anderson
    Community High School
    Ann Arbor, Mich.

    ReplyDelete