Making simple audio recordings

Vocaroo is a very simple tool that allows students to record their voice for up to five minutes
and then send the resulting recording as an email. It is perhaps one of the easiest audio
recording tools on the internet and works literally at the click of just one button. The students
don’t even need to open an email client to send the recordings. They simply record, play back
the recording and then write in the email address of the person they want to send the recording
to. The receiver can then click on the link and listen to the recording. The recordings can also
be downloaded onto the students’ computer or embedded into a blog by copying the code that
is provided and then pasting it into a blog, virtual learning environment, or website.
This tool is great for portfolios and for getting the students to build up a collection of short
recordings over a period of a module that can show their development and progress. I have
been using the tool to get the students to do regular periodic recordings based on activities we
have done in class. So, we use the class time to practise certain speaking activities but the
students actually do the recordings at home and then send them to me. Students have to
evaluate their recordings and then at the end of the course, choose the recording they are most
pleased with and submit this for formal evaluation.
Here are some of the topics I have worked with:
1. Gave personal information.
2. Talked about how they had met.
3. Talked about the friend’s personality.
4. Talked about what we they had in common and their interests.
5. Talked about when they last met.
Feedback, peer evaluation and self-evaluation
As it was said earlier, feedback plays a key role in the assessment process. Good feedback can
help students to see their own shortfalls and direct their future learning; it can motivate
students and help them to reflect on their own learning. It is important to realise that not all
feedback has to come from the teacher. Peer feedback or self-reflection and feedback can also
achieve the same goal of making students aware of where they need to focus their own
learning. Lam and Lee (2010) experimented with an interesting combination of feedback
when they encouraged their students to create paper portfolios. Students were expected to
write part of their portfolios in the class and the teacher used this time to provide feedback.
Students also had one-to-one conferencing with students about their
written work and finally students were expected to peer review each other’s work.
The students were then expected to choose their best two written pieces and put them forward
for formal summative feedback. One powerful aspect of this study was that it really focused
the students when it came to the peer evaluations and self-evaluation of their work since the
students had to decide themselves which pieces of written work to put forward for formative
evaluation.
This approach could easily be applied to oral recordings. Students could build up a series of
oral recordings over a course, and self-evaluate their work or the teacher could even set up
activities so that peer evaluation takes place. Students then would have to choose their best
two recordings and submit these for formal summative assessment. My own experience with
getting students to create audio recordings as part of their formative assessments is that they
often take a long time to listen to, and provide feedback on, and this may be an innovative
way of dealing with the problem and also tightly aligning the formative and summative
assessments.
In the table below we can see an example of a form that students could use to help them self-
evaluate. After each recording the students should work through the sheet.
The idea is to encourage the students to develop their own awareness of their level, their
strategies and their shortfalls and in doing so help to make them more reflective and aware of
their level. The student then has to pass their self-reflection on to another student who reads
the reflection and provides comments. The teacher is then given the self-reflection sheet and
can add additional comments.
The students have just recorded themselves giving a presentation about their closest friend.
They had to include information about:

 How they first met.

 What they have in common with their friend.
 What types of things they like doing with their friend.
 What it is about their friend’s personality they like.
 When they last met and what they did together.
 They could include pictures in the PowerPoint presentation along with the slides.
(https://www.apowersoft.com/alternative-to-vocaroo.html date: 20.08.2019; hour: 09:10
p.m.)

Testing and assessment has changed enormously over the last 50 years and we believe
that most of the changes have been very positive. Technology has played a role in assessment
for a long time but with the introduction of the internet, of Web 2.0 technologies and now
mobile technologies, the role technology can play is greater than ever.
There will be many teachers out there who are using technology in their assessments,
but in general it is still not the case. The large majority of assessments are still paper-based
and the use of ICT for assessment, just like the use of ICT for teaching, is still at a very
experimental stage.
Technology can also create confusion because it changes so fast. It is ‘constantly
evolving’ (Beatty 2010: 8) and it is nearly impossible for teaching and learning to keep up
with these changes. Try not to worry about this. Teachers need to use technologies that fit
well with your assessment criteria and that will broaden your assessment base and don’t
worry whether they are the latest thing or not.
Technology can offer great affordances to assessment and we encourage you to make
use of it, and in doing so hopefully broaden your assessment base. Try it on informal
assessments with your class and gather plenty of feedback from your students. Remember,
most teachers tend to introduce it step by step. You will certainly change and adapt your
assessments as you learn more from using them. Most of the teachers we spoke to said their
students were very supportive. It will be a step-by-step process but in time it will be very
rewarding.