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. I sampled the podcasting workshop.

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.

Categories: Digital Literacy, Languages, Music, Podcasting, Social Media, Technology