Joe Comm

Audacity in the Classroom

Overview

• A free download tool to record audio files (voice, music, or both).

• Teacher laptops, power cords, internet access, headphones/earbuds and computer microphones

Materials

Features & Benefits

• It’s free.

• It’s available for both Mac and PC.

• It’s fairly intuitive and doesn’t require a large investment of time to learn.

• It will do 90% of what most people need.

• Most of what you learn in Audacity can be applied to other audio editing programs.

• Popular, updated frequently, and has good documentation and discussion boards online.

Teacher Ideas

• Record make-up work for absentees

• Record mini-lessons for students who need remediation

• Record songs that emphasize skills or rules that need to be remembered

• Record stories for struggling readers

• Record book talks

Student Ideas

• Record book or movie reviews

• Practice reading and listening to oneself for improvement

• Tell personal or fictional stories written in class

• “Teach” mini-lessons on topics they have mastered

• Conduct interviews for assignments

Create Your Own Audio Books

The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal

A GOAL Thematic Unit Presentation

Record Slide Show Narration

Record Book TalksEdit Music

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Create Audio Biographies

Can You See the Music?

Create Audio Games Set the Scene with Sound Effects

OUTTAKES

Celebrate Mistakes

Use Music with Reading

The Stock Market Game

Introduce a Lesson

This Week In GOAL

Audio Lesson Preview

Use to Show Progress Podcasting

Record Fluency TestsSkill Songs

Tutorial

• Basic buttons

• Microphone

• Recording

• Saving as mp3 file

• Adding audio (sounds, music)

• Editing and fine tuning

• Whole group project

• Individual projects

Download

• Download at http://audacity.sourceforge.net−You will also need the LAME Encoder

for MP3 at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/lame.html

Features

• The following is a list of features in Audacity, the free audio editor. For more information on how to use these features, go to the help pages.

Recording

Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or minidiscs. With some sound cards, it can also capture streaming audio.

• Record from microphone, line input, or other sources.

• Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.

• Record up to 16 channels at once (requires multi-channel hardware).

• Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during, and after recording.

Import Export

Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file formats.

• Import and export WAV, AIFF, and AU, files.

• Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files).

• Export MP3s with the optional LAME encoder library.

• Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to CD.

• Import and export all file formats supported by libsndfile.

Editing

• Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.

• Use unlimited Undo (and Redo) to go back any number of steps.

• Very fast editing of large files.

• Edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks.

• Use the Drawing tool to alter individual sample points.

• Fade the volume up or down smoothly with the Envelope tool.

Effects• Change the pitch without altering the

tempo, or vice-versa.

• Remove static, hiss, hum, or other constant background noises.

• Alter frequencies with Equalization, FFT Filter, and Bass Boost effects.

• Adjust volumes with Compressor, Amplify, and Normalize effects.

• Other built-in effects include:

Echo

Phaser

Wahwah

Reverse