WHITEBOARD CHALLENGE TASK 1

Well, classes are well and truely started so I decided it was time to meet the Whiteboard Challenge head-on, and tackle Task 1, which involved using sound on the IWB. This toned in well with recent posts on the forum I belong to, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mflresources/, about recording and the Modern Languages classroom.
I decided to target my new Lower 6 class, for a variety of reasons, not least because I have taught them for so many years now, that if it all went pear-shaped, at least we could have a good laugh about it! Also, it can be hard to use technology efficiently at this level. Here's what I did..

This was only my second lesson with Lower 6 this year, and we had just started with descriptions the previous day. I selected 12 celebrities, and I used the software to record a series of descriptions, both physical and otherwise, about 6 of the celebrities. The pupils had to listen to the descriptions, and select the appropriate person from the list of 12 each time. After we had checked the answers, the pupils then worked in small groups to write descriptions about the remaining 6 celebrities. For homework for next week, pupils have to prepare a presentation about someone they admire. They can either hand this in in written form, or record themselves using their mobiles and save it in LearningNI (virtual learning environment in Northern Ireland).
Now for the technical bit.. and as it is wont to do, the technology played me up a bit when I needed it, in that the internet was so slow, it took me about an hour to view Jess' video about the first task. Howver it was definitely worth it, as I then found it easy to follow her instructions about using Audacity with IWB software. We use Activstudio 3 in school, and it was very straightforward to record my own voice reading the descriptions, using only the inbuilt microphone on my laptop, and then export the mp3 files to the Resource Library in Activstudio.
I thoroughly enjoyed this first foray into the world of voice recording, and starting from these humble beginnings, I look forward to incorporating it much more widely in the future. No more complaints about a lack of vocabulary-specific listenings!