How to Record Audio for Students with Learning Disabilities on a Chromebook

How to Record Audio for Students with Learning Disabilities on a Chromebook

by | Mar 19, 2021

I was wrong!

The first time I took a look at Mic Note for recording audio clips to assist our students who struggle with reading or have written language or other disabilities, I thought that it was clunky and awkward.

After much searching for a perceived better option, and coming up blank, I returned to Mic Note, only to realize that I was wholesale wrong about it.  It offers more than just audio recording, which is amazing!

Among my first misconceptions was my assertion that it was difficult to record in .mp3 format, and awkward to direct to Google Drive. Wrong.  If you are wanting to learn how to record your voice on a Chromebook, this app is what you’ve been seeking!

The key advantages it offers over other audio utilities are important details for educators.

Firstly, it allows for up to four hours of recording time. None of us require that much for school uses, but we definitely need more than 5 or 10 minutes as the outer limit, which is where most other applications cut the recording off.  Some sources for exams take longer than 10 minutes to read aloud.

Secondly, it can be set to store the recordings directly into your Google Drive, making them yours forever. This is another advantage over the “competition”. There are some decent applications out there – Talk & Comment and Vocaroo come to mind right away – but they store your audio on their server and delete it after an amount of time has passed. This means that for all the time it takes to record the audio, a year down the road when you wish to reuse the resource with your students, you no longer have access to your recordings from last year, or even last semester. That’s no good!

Thirdly, Mic Note allows you to edit your audio as you are in the process of recording. So, if you get your tongue in a knot reading aloud, and you need to try again, Mic Note facilitates this easily.

So, I hereby retract my earlier position about Mic Note, and I highly recommend it.

Here’s a video outlining how I recorded an English 30 exam for students requiring the accommodation, and the templates for the two exam booklets can be copied to your Google Drive through the freebies section of this website!

Google Classroom Changes Coming for Fall

Google Classroom Changes Coming for Fall

by | Mar 16, 2021

Google is rolling out some fantastic changes to Google Classroom with the expectation that they will be up and running for fall 2021.  Keep providing your suggestions to Google via the question mark icon in the bottom left corner of Google Classrom; we have more proof that the Engineers at Google are listening to us!

Student Data

Perhaps the most exciting of the new features is the improvement to the student metrics. In the updated Google Classroom, teachers will be able to see when a student was last active in Google Classroom, what and when their last submitted assignment was, as well as the most recent comment (which are often questions from students) from students.

This feature is a class-by-class feature that will provide teachers with some excellent data for both in-person learning as well as online!

Improved Photo Tools in the Google Classroom app

Thanks, in large part, to feedback from teachers around the world using Google Classroom, they are adding camera access inside the Google Classroom app. So, students who operate their Google Classroom through their phone will be better equipped to photograph (it will be built more as a scanning type app that utilizes the phone’s camera) completed work and easily submit it to the teacher for grading.  At first, this will only be on Android devices, but will come to Apple devices once the Android app is running smoothly with this new feature.

Offline Mode

Many of our rural students who live in areas with limited wifi access already use offline mode with their Google Drive. Now this feature is going to include Google Classroom. Students will be able to access classroom while at school, and then when they get home, their device will have retained the data to allow them to have access to this important data while at home, or away from wifi.

Originality Reports

Teachers and students will both have access to enhanced originality reports. Students can run a report prior to submitting a written assignment so as to have clarity as to the success of their personal writing.

Rubrics

The creation of rubrics in Google Classroom has also improved – teachers can now export their rubric to sheets, or import a rubric from sheets.

Full Webinar

Below is the full 30-minute webinar that Google offered this morning to bring us all up-to-date with respect to the changes to Google Classroom!

Google Classroom Information for parents

Google Classroom Information for parents

by | Mar 11, 2021

As we have weathered the past year of quarantine, the primary learning management system to communicate school work to students at home has rapidly become Google Classroom. Here are a few things you should know about being a parent of a “Google Classroom Kid”…

Parents do not have a login for Google Classroom. Only students can be added to Google Classroom.

This does not mean that you are to remain uninformed. Classroom keeps parents informed via email. To receive the emails, parents can provide an email address to their child’s teacher, and the teacher will add the parent into the student roster through the child’s identity in Classroom. At this point, Google will deploy an email to the address provided to the teacher, and parents must accept the invitation.

Once parents have accepted this invitation, Google Classroom will send regular email summaries to the email address provided. Parents then have the choice to have Classroom send daily summaries, weekly summaries, or no summaries. You will get ONE email per child, regardless of how many teachers each child has. 

What you can expect to see in your summary email is

  1. Missing work—Work not turned in when the summary was sent.
  2. Upcoming work—Work that’s due today and tomorrow (for daily emails) or that’s due in the upcoming week (for weekly emails).
  3. Class activities—Announcements, assignments, and questions recently posted by teachers.

What you cannot expect to see are your child’s grades. To see your child’s grades, parents will log in to Powerschool or the SIS database your jurisdiction offers..

Additionally, we have also recorded a video suited to teachers and parents regarding how to add parents to Google Classroom without violating privacy laws. The video shows the entire process, including what both parties will see on their individual screens.

Need more Details?

We recommend that parents wanting to access the details of their child’s Google Classroom should sit with the child and ask for a “tour” of Google Classroom. This accomplishes a few things.

  1. It lets you, the parent, know how comfortable and confident your child is in the Google Classroom environment.
  2. It lets you, the parent, view the formative assessment comments that your child’s teacher may have made with respect to the child’s work.
  3. It facilitates a conversation with your child about their schoolwork and their online experience.

As educators, we would say that the third point above is the most important point, and often, this is a topic that parents struggle to get their child to open up about. (“How was school today?” “Fine.”) Sitting beside your child and talking about the content, work, assignments and grades in each course will facilitate this discussion without forcing you, the parent, to feel like you are prying and getting no actual information.

If you have questions about what you read in the email summaries, or what your child shows you in Google Classroom, please reach out to your child’s teacher/teachers for clarification.

Pin It on Pinterest