Working with sound

1. Find at least two sites which offer free listening material for teaching English (ESL or EFL). Focus on those which enable legal download. Insert the URLs into the comments to this blog entry.

2. What does the word "podcast" mean? Go to Podomatic, create an account and browse the site. How can we use it in teaching English?

Good examples - Teacher Luke at Podomatic, Splendid Speaking for advances learners

3. Download some text and some music (separate files, max. 3' each). Open Audacity - sound editing freeware - and try to combine the two files into one :)

Audacity Basics - you should be able to
- install Audacity and the lame library which enables export to mp3
- open a file in Audacity
- edit the file: cut and paste, fade in/out, change speed, delete, add silence
- create a new file
- combine two files (e.g. speech + background music)
- inserting silence (e.g. as a space for an answer)
- changing the speed or pitch (carefully!)

TASK
1. Record comments to the 12 images in your gallery (1 minute max., save in wav file)
2. Edit the recording in Audacity, add background music, cut out noises etc.
3. Export the wav to mp3
4. Upload the mp3 to your website

REMEMBER - before editing, create a backup copy of the original!

Examples of galleries with audio comments created by your colleagues:

http://www.dzblecht.wz.cz/My%20home%20town.html
http://skipit.wz.cz/galerie.html
http://vvalova.wz.cz/gallery.html
http://romankalecky.wz.cz/gallery.html
http://www.springday.euweb.cz/fotogalerie.html
http://personalpage.unas.cz/Personalgallery.html