The aduacity!
I had great inspiration. I had motivation. I had excitement. What I did not have was support.
This summer I attended a wonderful workshop on digital storytelling. I was inspired! I created a great assignment that would ask my students to create a story about their heroes. To go a step further, I decided to invite the parents of my students to hear/view their child's story at our annual open house. I was very excited and so were my students until...
We began the project. The students eagerly wrote their essays about their heroes. We viewed sample digital stories and talked about what made them good. Then it was time to create our own. My plan was to use Audacity (a free, open source audio editor). This is a free program that is VERY easy to use. I was thrilled that it was free and easy to use. All of my students would be able to use this program at home and at school.
When we got ready to record their story we realized that Audacity was blocked! For some reason (turns out because it is an open source file) my school system blocked this great resource! I immediately took action to get the site un-blocked. I emailed everyone I knew and finally discovered that I could download the program to my flash drive and manually install it on all the computers. I did this, but also followed up with my earlier inquiry. As a result I was able to get Audacity unblocked so that other schools would be able to use this great resource.
After this experience I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. We are supposed to be preparing our students for the 21st century, but when I tried to use a 21st century tool, I ran into a roadblock. I am not easily discouraged, but I know that many teachers, especially those who might be intimidated by technology would have probably given up and "chucked" the whole idea.
When will our school systems catch up with the times? I think the lesson I have learned in all of this is that it is up to the educators, those of us who interact daily with the students , to help our school systems catch up. If I did not have a little audacity myself who knows if this resource would have ever been available.
This summer I attended a wonderful workshop on digital storytelling. I was inspired! I created a great assignment that would ask my students to create a story about their heroes. To go a step further, I decided to invite the parents of my students to hear/view their child's story at our annual open house. I was very excited and so were my students until...
We began the project. The students eagerly wrote their essays about their heroes. We viewed sample digital stories and talked about what made them good. Then it was time to create our own. My plan was to use Audacity (a free, open source audio editor). This is a free program that is VERY easy to use. I was thrilled that it was free and easy to use. All of my students would be able to use this program at home and at school.
When we got ready to record their story we realized that Audacity was blocked! For some reason (turns out because it is an open source file) my school system blocked this great resource! I immediately took action to get the site un-blocked. I emailed everyone I knew and finally discovered that I could download the program to my flash drive and manually install it on all the computers. I did this, but also followed up with my earlier inquiry. As a result I was able to get Audacity unblocked so that other schools would be able to use this great resource.
After this experience I am left with a bad taste in my mouth. We are supposed to be preparing our students for the 21st century, but when I tried to use a 21st century tool, I ran into a roadblock. I am not easily discouraged, but I know that many teachers, especially those who might be intimidated by technology would have probably given up and "chucked" the whole idea.
When will our school systems catch up with the times? I think the lesson I have learned in all of this is that it is up to the educators, those of us who interact daily with the students , to help our school systems catch up. If I did not have a little audacity myself who knows if this resource would have ever been available.
posted by ehbeagle at
3:18 PM
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