Tuesday 11 March 2008

MP3 player

Just returned from time with two of my IT literate children and they both played around with the MP3 player. I had found how to record, but couldn't play it back. After some time fumbling around with it they asked the all important question - "Why do you need to record, play back and get it on to the computer"? When I explained - they looked at me in disbelief and said together - "Why don't you have an inexpensive simple dictaphone on the table, so learners can just press one button to record and one to stop."? Certainly the MP3 player we have is not easy - if you give a quick press you get one response and a long press gets another - if your short press is seen by the MP3 player as a long press you go all around the houses again! confused? well I think most people would be. Thinking about it - I think a good combination for learners to record progress, achievement and give feedback on their learning experience would be a combination of a digital camera and a simple compact dictaphone. Oh! the MP3 player did have a good use - on the way to London to see children I was able to listen to my beginners Spanish tape!
Also I had some great and much needed IT support today from a GL14 Community Project volunteer who is setting up our web site. I had been struggling to add photos to a CDRW using MS wizard. I thought you could add a few photos each week each week as a learner may wish to do to their personal disc. I think I have learnt that to add more photos it is necessary to use Nero (it is on AdEd laptop) but I had just been using MS wizard and it wouldn't work. It is not difficult - when you have learnt how to use Nero - but I needed to be shown this. I spent ages struggling to do what is not possible!

4 comments:

Gill said...

Sara, I quite agree that the MP3 player/recorder is challenging to use!

You might recall the post I wrote some while ago about using the camera as a voice recorder? It works beautifully and has the advantage of being able to do two jobs at once! Why not set it to video mode and give it a try

Good to know the Spanish is coming along nicely!

Anonymous said...

Hi Gill,
I've been using the camera as a video recorder and it works quite well, the disadvantage I find is that it records the voice of the person filming, but not so well the rest of the pople in the room.
Lizzie
p.s. I'm having real difficulties with Blog accepting my password which I know is right 'cause it's the same as my internet password. Does anyone else have the same problem?

Anonymous said...

Some points to consider: make sure the dictaphone you are using allows you to store and transfer the files electronically (so that they can be used for RARPA purposes, in PhotoStory projects etc)as there are still some models out there using tape and secondly, how big are the sound files from the dictaphone? MP3 files take up less storage space than some other formats. MP3 players can be cheaper to buy than dictaphones - I've just bought an ATMT MP3 player/USB storage device with 1GB storage and voice recorder for £7.49. In favour of the dictaphone, their size makes them easier for people with visual impairments or manual dexterity issues to use.

Tracey Morris
e-Learning Advisor ACL
JISC Regional Support Centre South West

Gill said...

Tracey, these are really useful points - thank you.

I think the main problem is actually getting to grips with how to use the MP3 sticks...they are not the clearest of instructions and the combination of long presses and short clicks only adds to the confusion!

We might say we "have an interface problem"!