(1) from Derek Roff <[log in to unmask]> --- > > Is anyone using Audacity in either their classrooms or language labs? > If so, what has been your experience (positive/negative)? For how > long have you been using it? Any technical challenges? We have used Audacity with a number of short courses and media workshops. It seems to perform fine from a technical standpoint. On the other hand, students seem to find it counter-intuitive. During the first several days of use, they close things that they wanted to keep open, lose recordings that they want to save, and ask how to do something multiple times. Eventually, they get the hang of it. We switched to Amadeus II, and most of those learning pains diminished or disappeared. It's cheap, but not free. It has a fairly long free trial, and runs on Mac only. Our teachers felt like the change made our media classes more effective, smoother, and more productive. Derek Derek Roff Language Learning Center Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885 Internet: [log in to unmask] (2) from "Shoaf,Judith P" <[log in to unmask]> I'll be interested to see answers. One group of professors swears by it because the students can use it at home for free. Students are taught to use it early onm and they get quite competent with it. But in the lab we have a different recorder which is a little easier to use--you can just save as mp3, whereas for Audacity you save as .wav and then convert it. If students are going to record in the lab, we would rather they use our recorder and not fuss with Audacity. Judy Shoaf (3) from Jonathan Perkins <[log in to unmask]> We've been using Audacity for a few years. While our experiences have been generally positive, we have had a few problems with students not exporting the files into the proper format (mp3) ... and thus causing their teachers headaches. We are trying to move classes to Wimba and/or VoiceBoard as there is less room for user error. We will continue to use Audacity for our own work as it is extremely easy to use and is free. Jon (4) from [log in to unmask] It's the simplest, free program to use. Most of the time it's really good, however sometimes there is a problem while transferring to the PC recordings created on the MAC- the sound might not be clear... (5) from "Carly J. Born" <[log in to unmask]> We've had Audacity installed on both faculty desktops and lab computers (across campus) for a few years now. It's always been a useful tool for basic recording needs and not a bit challenge technically. ~~ Academic Technologies http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/at/ Foreign Language Technology http://go.carleton.edu/f My Calendar: https:[log in to unmask] Carly J. Born Academic Technologies Carleton College | 507-222-7010 | [log in to unmask] (6) from "Breeyear, Susan" <[log in to unmask]> We use Audacity for both our language lab and our faculty at large--it's an easy to learn, easy to use program and it's FREE! How often does that happen?! We've had very positive responses to it, and teach it in our faculty workshops. Students also pick up on it very quickly. Even our high end users are thinking about dropping their Adobe software in favor of Audacity for sound recording. Regards, Sue Breeyear, Asst. Director Information Technology Saint Michaels College Colchester, VT 05439 (7) from ( [log in to unmask]) Hi, we have been using it for about 4 years without any problems, and it is part of the standard installs on all faculty/ta pcs and all 90 lab pcs. Teachers use it to quickly record oral excercises to put on BlackBoard or on our AV server. Students in our phonetics classes use it to record exercises for submission. Pro: Basic features are easy to use, and the export to mp3 is great. Con: Many more features than needed for most of our uses, and users need to be aware of how to use the export to mp3 feature. (We had some problems with people just sending the *.aud file). We use audacity in conjunction with DL recorder which has the advantage of the teacher/student tracks. Wolfgang (8) from [log in to unmask] Hi Tiffany, We use (install, maintain) Audacity exclusively for students in our language programs to take care of their recording needs. We do this primarily because of the price (free!) and the fact that it's cross-platform. That way, the LRC staff can put together mini-manuals or how-to's for a single product, with minimal differentiation and training required. We have found it to work well for almost all our tasks. However, I have also purchased some of the commercial audio editors, hoping to get slightly better filtering options, but I have found even these options in Audacity to be pretty good. Best, Norval Bard (8) from [log in to unmask] *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives at http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A0=LLTI Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) ***********************************************