Using Technology to Boost Children's Speaking and Listening Skills

Clayton, Ellie. "Using technology to boost children's speaking and listening skills." Children & Young People Now 2/5.85866514 (2013): 35. Print.


This article focused on a primary school in London which utilized Audioboo to work on student speaking and listening skills. Teachers created a listening/speaking program and found that students were very capable of analyzing and improving their own speech, particularly when they knew their speech was going to be recorded. They noted that students could be adept at identifying and correcting their speech errors when recording their voices.

Students first made unrehearsed recordings about themselves, then identified any errors such as stuttering and hesitation, and then made a second recording. The second recordings were always smoother because students felt more confident as well as motivated to make a better recording. Teachers felt the experience was good for building student self esteem.

Student recordings were uploaded to the Audioboo website, thus being shared with families and the community at large. Teachers also noted that this was an aid to building a better home-school connection. The project culminated with an exhibition of the project attended by parents, students, and members of the community including the mayor.

I can relate to the positive comments made by the teachers in this article. I, too, have found that students are extremely motivated to produce a fluent reading when they are being recorded, and they need no urging to improve a recording if there are errors. This is such a wonderful example of real world learning. Students are not just reading aloud to their teachers, they are sharing their thoughts about something with a much larger community. When students record their thinking, suddenly there is a more practical need for fluency because being understood is an important life skill.

During Library Tech Week, I recently helped students make Audio Boo recordings of a book review they wrote. We used QR codes generated from these codes to stick on the books themselves. The Librarian and I were thrilled with the excitement level students had over this project.  But this article reminded me of the importance of sharing work like this with family members at home! I now plan to share these Audioboo links with teachers who can post them on classroom websites or in weekly emailed newsletters with parents. I also bookmarked this site on some classroom laptops so students could listen to each others recordings as well.

Podcasting in Education

Audio boo is a wonderful podcasting tool and one that many teachers are embracing. Its free, and quite easy to make and post a recording. Podcasts, or radio shows, as Wes Fryer prefers them to be called (easy to understand and not too technical sounding), are a great way to showcase student thinking.

Students can do research and then explain what they have learned about a topic in a podcast. The fact that many people can listen to a podcast makes it exciting and relevant for students. Its only natural to be interested in the feedback from others, and posting a recording like this provides a much broader audience. Students can take a photo of their work and explain the process they went through to create it, or they can record themselves reading a story, etc.,  and then share this with others. Kristen Ziemke, in a webinar about Comprehension and Technology, showed her first grade book clubs making recordings of their conversations. This way she can spend time with one group yet still find out at a later time what students are thinking and saying about their book.

Podcasts are also a great way to explain something new to colleagues. I created the podcast below in an effort to document the process we are going through to teach students how to read images. The next step will truly be to have students do such a podcast to show what they are thinking!


Reading Images Podcast

Tall Tale Radio Comes to 4th Grade

4th grade students studied Tall Tales this year. Each group created a script for a radio broadcast of a tall tale of their choice. Students had a couple of practice rounds before recording. They were enthusiastic and focused during this project. Not only did they learn about this genre, they genuinely seemed to enjoy the process. The act of recording their voices for a potentially broader audience motivated them to do their best work. Links for each podcast were posted to the teacher's website. Below is one sample that I uploaded to Audio Boo.

Tall Tale Radio