Three Steps to Creating an Audio Library of Your Favourite Books

Listening to books read with fluency, expression and intonation is beneficial for children. It is also crucial for children who are learning a new language.

If you would like to make audio recordings of books in your classroom, for school use (not for sale or sharing outside of school), then these tips can help. The goal is to have a QR code made for each story so that the code can be placed on the back of the book and children can use a QR code scanner on a tablet or iPod to quickly and easily access the story.

These three tips will explain how to go from recording the story, to saving the recording online (which is essential to create a QR code), to creating the QR code of the online link so that children can access the story with the click of a button.

Step 1. Use a recording application such as Audacity or QuickVoice Record to record the reading of the story.

Want to make the recording extra special? Have a few volunteers narrate the various characters. Get the grade 5 or 6 class involved and make it a cross grade level project. Add sound effects or music, if desired. See more tips below.

This link will take you to the technology tip page for using Audacity. Audacity is available for Windows or Mac.

This link will take you to the technology tip page for using QuickVoice Record. This is an iOS application. You may choose to use your own application for Android. Just ensure that it includes the ability to email audio recordings so that you can save the recording to your files.

Step 2. Save your audio file online. This is an essential step as you need an internet address (URL) to create a QR code. To do this, use a web site that allows audio storage, such as SoundCloud.

This link will take you to the technology tip page for using SoundCloud.

Step 3. Create a QR code of the internet address (URL) of the audio file that you recorded. QR codes are easy to create and make accessing sites from the internet as simple as waving a smart device in front of the square barcode.

This link will take you to the technology tip page for creating QR Codes.

This three-step process takes time but once the work is done, it is ready to use over and over again. Remember, a couple of audio files created per term will soon add up.

Be creative:

Get other teachers in Kindergarten and Cycle One to help out.
Create a Language Arts/Technology project for the Cycle three students where they can work on recording stories, adding music or sound effects, and saving the files.
Create an afterschool club for students to help with recordings.
Have parents or grandparents volunteer to read and record stories at school or at home.
Ask members of a local 50 plus club to volunteer as readers and record the stories.
Consider applying for a grant to provide release days for teachers to create and compile all the work.

Some teachers allow children to borrow books from the classroom, and some schools have book bags or Storysacks that the children take home so they can share classroom books with their families. Adding QR codes to the books, with the audio recording of the story, can help families whose first language is not that of the classroom instruction.

If you do not want to use QR codes, you can skip steps 2 and 3 and simply have a listening centre with stories recorded and saved on your computer. Click here to learn more.

This content has been tagged with:

technology

This content was updated on 2018-04-27.