Somebody bought a set of 5 new Easi-speak recording gadgets for the teachers at PRACE. How exciting!
Early in the term we showed them around the staff meeting, and soon after that i’m in the classroom with Chris and her beginning English as a second language (ESL) group. They’re on the computers working with the AMES “That’s Life” reading and listening software.. so only a few people are open to taking a break to try something new.
But Chris is getting a good feel for how they work, and coming up with some great ideas for using them in her next session. This group is practising descriptions at the moment..
Update: later down the track: someone at PRACE has had the brilliant idea to run a series of morning tea events. The idea is that students come from all classes and mix together, socialising and “educationally networking” across the whole school. Apparently the idea came from students in the first place. So we thought, let’s bring these easy microphones along, and get students using them with a series of vox-pop interview questions.
One guy in the adult literacy class turned out to be really good at interviewing people. Unfortunately he had the mic too close to his mouth a fair bit of the time, but the interaction between him and his colleagues is really good. Currently i’m editing the raw files to put them on a school wiki. That way students will be able to listen, and hopefully add their own comments.
I’d be interested to read a follow-up post on your views re their accessibility, particularly for our students (older ESL).
My initial impression of the Easi-speak was that it was less user-friendly than expected. Consequently ours is gathering dust in the filing cabinet since the start of the school year as I haven’t used it or promoted it amongst the staff at CNLC. (Meanwhile, by contrast, I’ve had some early success with the Flip camera in the classroom.)