I’m excited to share how our French teacher is using technology to conduct Authentic Assessment in her classes!  She has had the kids use the super-simple Voice Recorder that comes with Windows operating systems to record themselves speaking in French.  The end result is a file that they can name and save according to her directions.

We have a network where each student logs in and has file storage available to them once logged in.  The teacher directed her students to create a folder on their directories labeled for her to find and then to save all the recording files into that folder.  As a teacher, she can easily access each students directory to open and listen to their recorded files outside of class. The end result is that she can take one class period to have all students take part in a performance assessment, without having to give her attention to them one at a time while the rest of the class waits.

My job is to make the process easy for the teacher to accomplish and seemless to complete.  I had positive feedback from the teacher, and we are ready to move forward with bigger and better ideas!  The biggest limit to the Sound Recorder (which you access from Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Sound Recorder in Windows) is that it doesn’t have unlimited recording time.  Its 60 second limit is fine for simple projects, but to streamline this assessment, we hope to move to a more complex and less-limited free tool, Audacity.

Audacity can be downloaded here. It is is a free audio editing software that is simple to use.  Lots of people are using to create podcasts.  It does require an additional plug-in if you wish to export finished products as mp3 files.  The set up of the plug in is a little tricky, but once you set it up, you’re good to go.  Here are instructions for downloading and setting up the plug-in, called LAME.

By being able to export as an mp3, you have the option of burning cds that can be played in audio players, or put onto mp3 players of all types.  I used this process to make a birthday present for my nephew this summer.  I bought a couple of books on his favorite character, Thomas the Train Engine.  I recorded myself reading the stories to him in Audacity and then exported the file as mp3 format.  I burned a cd for him so that he could put into his cd player and listen to “Aunt Yeesa” read the stories over and over.  I did a few more books for my him and his sister before his family took a big road trip and heard from my sister-in-law that the kids loved being able to have books read aloud whenever they wanted.

Classroom applications could be to make audio recordings of any book that you would use in your room,  Centers could be set up as listening stations for younger students.  Once students know how to use Audacity or Voice Recorder you could have them practice recording themselves and listening to it play back (maybe even without having the files saved) to practice Reading Fluency as well.