The Sound of Drafting
April 30th, 2010 | joanna
I am interested in seeing how audio is being used in classroom technology–whether it be website browsers like Browse-Aloud, or with video/podcasts of classes or student papers, or word-processing programs like Dragonwriter. As always, I want to be able to integrate such programs into the standard computer lab in order to normalize their use and make it possible for all students to benefit from them.
May 19th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’m curious, is your idea to use things like Browse-Aloud as an accessibility compliance tester (i.e. you’ve built a website and you want to make sure it’s text-to-speech friendly), or would a text-speech thing be part of the actual composition process?
Either way, computer-lab infrastructure would have a lot to do with any implementation. The lab I usually teach in, for example, only has speakers attached to the instructor’s machine.
May 20th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Zach,
I teach in a lab which has microphones and headsets and has one copy of Kurzweil for the whole lab. I’m not certain that we’ll be getting any more copies soon, which makes my urge to normalize problematic. What I envision is that every student has access to the program during the composing process–why shouldn’t they? We talk about learning styles, so why shouldn’t students have the opportunity to listen to their texts as they compose? I’d also like to see Dragon implemented in all computers, too. It doesn’t make sense to me that we,again,talk about multiple ways of learning but don’t provide the means for all students to access methods thatwould make this possible.
In terms of lab configuration, that’s what I wonder about often–ten years from now, will there be computer stations in labs? What will they look like? Or, will everyone use a cell phone to activate screens and so forth?
I’m very curious to learn what you all are doing–in reading the other campers’ ideas and research, I’ve been fascinated with the possibilities that exist for digital scholarship.