Audio in Learning (in OneNote)

Last week was crazy busy (3 conferences, report cards and my Dad's memorial service) so I'm catching up on my November committment.

As Richard Byrne laid out today in his post, "Voice Recording Tools", audio can be very effective for both students as content, as product or as feedback from teachers.

OneNote doesn't require any additional plug-ins, programs, apps or logins -- you just click INSERT

The instant you click on the AUDIO button, it creates an audio file next to your cursor, titles it with the name of the page it's on, and starts recording. It starts recording the instant you click the button, so be ready! The instant. (Ask me how many times I've deleted the audio recording and started again cuz I wasn't ready!)

Having Audio incorporated into OneNote makes it really easy to tie audio content to documents. So easy to give feedback to a student exactly in their work where they need it. And students can show you they know how to pronounce a phrase in Languages, play a stanza in Music, reply to your feedback in any course precisely the same way. I admit, in Mathematics, I tend to use DigitalInk, Text or Video but in many courses I've seen them use Audio effectively.

And OneNote Audio is SMART -- if you interact with the content on the Page in any way -- say, highlighting text or typing additional comments, it creates an Audio link to that content. As you play the audio recording, it will move the page to show you that content... and adds a small play button so that you can jump right to that part of the recording.

Most importantly, it's easy and always there. Students don't have to log in or use another app or try to bring it over from their phone (Audio is integrated into the iPhone/Android OneNote apps, too! And since everything syncs between OneNotes, it's there on your desktop!)

And don't forget --- OneNote indexes everything, so it translates your voice to text and indexes the content of your audio, in case you were looking for something you said. (Just be sure to turn indexing audio ON in the Settings of OneNote 2016).

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