Accelerated Listening
As the working week ends at MGS, I found myself present at the Teach-Meet Roadshow featuring digital video, online publishing, digital photography, animation & podcasting (which I attended). As the presenter, David Gilmour pointed out at the beginning, the word podcasting summons up many interpretations and approaches. We were going to limit this session to learning:
- how to record and edit audio files using Audacity
- how to export them as mp3 files
- how to upload the resulting mp3 file to a blog
As I’ve used software of this kind for years Ollie, who provided a whole school introduction to the session, asked if I would like to be on hand to help out. In the end, the session was so well explained, the program so intuitive and the audience so adept, that there was little to do and I was able to indulge in a little more experimentation. An interesting site which David flagged up was find sounds from where little snippets of music and sound can be downloaded to spice up your podcast. Although many of these are very short, Audacity features a Repeat function (in the Effects menu) where you can loop any highlighted sections simply by specifying the desired number of repetitions.
While experimenting with the change tempo* function, it occurred to me that this could be a great way to digest a recorded radio program in less than the required time. It may be that I am simply more hyper than I appear, but I often find the pace of much documentary broadcasting to be a little on the slow side. Pondering this, it struck me that reversing the effect, could be a great asset to Learning Support departments. Alternatively, could a single recording be quickly edited for three different levels in a foreign language class? The following audio files should illustrate the possibilities - the percentage change is a little extreme but is, at least, unmistakable:
Original tempo: Original tempo
20% faster 20% faster
20% slower 20% slower
* The important point here is that the apparently correct option to change speed also changes the pitch - resulting in, at best, distracting comedy.
Thanks for your help today Alan. Have a good weekend. Ollie
Comment by OllieBray — November 30, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
No problem, Ollie - it was fun. Enjoy your weekend too.
Comment by Alan Coady — November 30, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
Thanks for your help today (yesterday) Alan
Tess
Comment by Tess Watson — December 1, 2007 @ 3:33 am
Don’t mention it, Tess. As I hinted in the text, I didn’t really do much at all. Did your session go well?
Comment by Alan Coady — December 1, 2007 @ 10:54 am