Posts Tagged: audio

#Success / Teaching — No Comments
22
Dec 10

Jamendo

jamendoIMHO Jamendo is the very best of what the online community and music has to offer. Simply, Jamendo is

a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.

The Jamendo platform gives artists the opportunity to showcase their music and music enthusiasts the opportunity to listen, download, review and share their favourite artists.

I have been listening to, using, recommending  and teaching with Jamendo for nearly two years and I thought it was about time I gave them some recognition. Primarily I use Jamendo to teach my students about Copyright issues and as an audio resource for pod and vodcasts. Jamendo themselves do a great job explaining how this is possible and in doing so help students understand the muddied waters of music copyright. Students who were previously left quite puzzled by the combination of terms such as ‘music, free, download and legal.’

Its Christmas and my wife loves all things ‘Christmassy.’ Every year she wants to purchase yet another ‘Now thats what I call Christmas songs’ type album. Personally, I think Jamendos Christmas playlist has more sparkle. Decided for yourself.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Curriculum / Digital Learning — No Comments
25
Sep 09

Interesting Audio Webware – Myna

Here at Hamble College we have extended the ICT provision to include additional units from the OCR Nationals. In reviewing Unit 22 Sound we have introduced our students to podcasts. I was quite surprised the number of students that were not aware of the wonderful resources available to them. FREE resources in many cases too, for example the BBC podcast directory is full of great content.

Second, I stumbled upon Myna, a free online audio tool that you record, arrange and mix audio tracks. Myna’s  horizontal track-over-track layout should be familiar to users of audio tools such as FruityLoops, and its not too far from multi-track Audacity, but a little simpler.  Hit the Snap to Grid button, set your beats per minute, and arranging audio clips from your own files, from a microphone, or Mynas sample libraries.

Look a little deeper and you will find tools for volume adjustment, gain control, reverb and flanger effects, and a few other neat effects. It’s not quite a multi-track Audacity, but for something you open free in your browser, you’ll probably be seriously impressed at how much Myna has to offer your students.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Digital Learning — No Comments
29
Mar 09

Vocaroo – Internet Voicemail

Look, it could be simplier. Send a voicemail, student feedback or any audio message in quick easy steps. As I was writing this review, it dawned on me… I shuold really be using the tools to explain what it can do.

In case you dont have audio, trust me, it is very simple. Record your message and then either email it or post it online.

How to Vocaroo

Popularity: 3% [?]

Digital Learning / ICT — 2 Comments
25
Mar 09

Fizy

If you could play almost any song at any moment would that present a teaching tool? Well there are some great audio tools out there. Today I used Fizy to settle an MFL cover class. Students choose a song to work to. Now, officially we are asked not to play music in class, I need to ask why, to challenge the reasoning for this decision, because the audio changed the tone and productivity of the lesson, dramatically. Cover lessons do seem to be a real learning opportunity. What did I learn today.

I got to learn a little more about my students through their music choices, I got to one student sing her heart out as she worked to her chosen song on fizy.com.

I got to see about 80% girls mime / sing along with her as they worked.

One of the students tested me with the most surreal song choice that exposed a rather unique classical music taste. Despite the student groans and moans, he stood his ground and backed his choice. (That made me proud of him).

So here it is Fizy, 75 billion mps3 at your finger tips, no playlists, downloads, or fancy looks. A very simple and a really fast search function with links you can email and bookmark, oh and 29 different languages.

So here I am in MFL and I thought to myself….. fizy.com

For other audio fixes see musicovery, jamendo or various audio players and streamers.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Digital Leaders — No Comments
23
Jan 09

Another RSS Moment

If you are not yet an RSS fan then please considered it. I regularly get ideas, information, CPD and personal enjoyment from my RSS reading and plenty of education gems.

We have been introducing a wide range of Digital Leader activities during our Wednesday sessions. The preparation has been a little lose, but certainly varied and very well received by the students. As an observation our ICT enthusiasts have fractures and have found their own neiches and have tended to want to stick with it. These groups are often age dependent but not always. We have our Digital artists, using GIMP, our corner of Year 7/8 programmers using Alice, our problem solvers who like Lightbot and our budding PSM animators (also lunchtime regulars….. its has been relatively unstructured and we know we need to design a curriculum for next year. In fact, this weekend I intend to create a new page to keep a track of ideas.

So there it was, another RSS moment. We spoke about introducing some sound work. We have looked at mics, talking tins and such like, using, creative and editing audio is a great hook but I still felt we needed lesson bait. For sure, you can dangle a hook, but sometimes we, as teachers, needs some more. Ding! – Ringtones. I just don’t know why I didnt think about it sooner, promoted by the link makeownringtone. I let you know how we get on. I fear we wont get the students away from the idea and onto other audio tasks.

Popularity: 2% [?]