By Alix E. Peshette

In last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure to spend time working with 5^thand 6^th grade teachers and students in their school computer lab. This school is in the first year of an EETT grant (Enhancing Education Through Technology), which funds additional computer lab time, hardware and staff development. The goal is to raise student technology proficiency levels and teacher proficiency and instructional technology levels. The effectiveness of this infusion of time, equipment and staff development will be measured by the EdTech Profile Technology Assessment.

Two 6^th grade classes are working on their BookShare projects; audio book reviews which will be part of a PowerPoint project and then posted to the school website. The two 5^th grade classes are working on a project called Tall Tales. Students write an engaging tall tale, illustrate the story and scan the pictures to insert into PowerPoint. Students narrate and record the story then edit and add sound effects and music. The final product is a PowerPoint with sound track and animated characters. These are wonderful language arts projects with a generous infusion of technology skills!

My role has been as the Audacity guest presenter, ad hoc tech support, and additional live adult body in the computer lab, along with the teacher and computer lab specialist. It’s a staff development model that is very powerful. It is also a wonderful learning experience for me. How many Audacity skills can one teach in a 40-minute lab period? How much can students and teachers learn in that time frame?

Lesson One: Introduction

Plug mic and headphones into correct ports

Open Audacity - learn the basics of the menu and toolbar buttons

Record narration. Listen, delete and re-record if needed

Save file as an Audacity project file into the correct folder on the lab server

Lesson Two: Mashup

Open Audacity – get narration file

Check track for signs of clipping (waveform distortion)

Discuss ways to avoid clipping – change recording volume, move mic farther away

Normalize the file – watch waveform change

Add sound effects and music

Listen to all tracks at once, mute tracks, lower volume on individual tracks

Time shift tracks

Save file as Audacity project file

Lesson Three: Refinement

Review key skills in Lesson Two

Cut, copy, paste – create longer sound effects, shorten music tracks

Fade-in, Fade-out – transitions between tracks

Envelope tool to change volume with finesse

Exporting file as WAV or MP3

Lessons Learned

I was surprised by how enthusiastic students are about audio recording and editing. The ownership of their own voice recordings compels them to critically analyze the recordings, try out numerous sound effects and even create their own.

The computer lab specialist had done a marvelous job of collecting copyright free sound effects and music in advance of the lessons. Having these resources on the lab server eliminated any waste of computer lab time searching online.

The students were so immersed in the creative experience that it was somewhat hard to get them to finalize a product. The lesson learned is to limit the number of sound effects and music and sort them into subfolders with genre names like western, sci-fi, spooky, etc. The kids wanted to sample everything!

The students worked on the projects in both the computer lab and the classroom using the mobile laptop cart. For some of the teachers, this was their first experience having the laptop cart in their room. The computer lab specialist and I directed the steps of the technology skills, while the teacher reinforced the curriculum goals. The students became the modelers of technology use for the teacher – they already knew how to take the laptops out of the cart, plug in the peripherals and log on from their increased computer lab time. The experience that was modeled will hopefully encourage the teachers to try it on their own knowing that the students are really capable users of technology.

The last big lesson has been power of reflection. It is the critical evaluation of the entire process: triumphs and pitfalls. Before the experience fades from memory, think about how to do it better next time. Save this debriefing information where one will find it and read it again!

As the old saying goes, “The proof is in the pudding.” I can’t wait to see the data from the EdTech Profile student and teacher assessments!