Make Ear Contact

A few weeks ago I went on vacation in New York City. Naturally, I used the subway as my major mode of transportation. There’s an unwritten rule on the subway- no eye contact. I’m not saying New Yorkers are unfriendly but people keep to themselves while in transit by staring off into space or keep their head down in an exhausted stance.

New since my last NYC visit is the increased use of headphones. It looks like the new rule is don’t make ear contact. I suppose it’s good practice if you want a peaceful, uninterrupted commute to your next destination but it’s not a behavior you should employ when interacting with other.

Yet I see more and more students doing this. They’ll come to me before school and try to talk to me with headphones still in their ears. I’ve seen students walking home from school with plugged ears while carrying out a conversation. It’s like telling your friend, “I’m listening to you until my iPod serves up something better.”

We’ll no more. The new Gadget School rule is Make Ear Contact.

Explain to students that it is rude to talk to others with headphones on. When in conversation, they must give others their full attention. Eyes AND ears.

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Links to the sites mentioned in the screencast are available below.

• GCast- create podcasts from your phone [Learn More | Get Started]
• Audacity- a free audio recording and editing program [Download Audacity | See Tutorial]
• Tumblr- an easy to use miniblog; you can also post audio [Get Started | Example]

Going Further: you can also post your audio at archive.org. Here you can post all sorts of files and it’s all free! Many people host their audio podcasts at archive.org. You can too!

The collection showcases the personal beliefs of citizens. Some essays are from the 1950′s and the others began in 2005 when the show was resurrected.

I highly recommend the book in audio format since you can hear the essays read by their authors. Most of the recent essays can also be heard (and read) at the NPR website.

NPR also describes how people can submit their own essays. They discuss how this idea has been used in classrooms across the world. The obvious assignment is to have your students write their own creed. Here are some additional ideas that I think might work too:

1. Don’t write it- say it! Have students create an audio version of their essay. Students can record their work with Audacity. The essays could be shared as podcasts allowing students to receive feedback from their peers via comments.
2. Students could pick a character from a novel and write the character’s ‘I believe’ statement.
3. Write an essay for a prominent person in history. For example, what do you think Lincoln would have written?
4. Come up with a class creed- a ”This We Believe” essay. If students used a wiki, they could compose this essay collaboratively throughout the semester.

There are several great sites that offer free books online. Here are a few that I’ve come to love:

• Project Gutenberg has been digitizing books since 1971. They started with the Declaration of Independence and now have over 20,000 free books for you to download. Take a look at their list of the 100 most downloaded books. Project Gutenberg also makes free audio-books available. (here’s Beowulf)
• LibriVox is all about audio. They have a 1000 free audio-books available for download. Literature is not all you’ll find here. I downloaded Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Einstein’s Relativity. (here’s Beowulf)
• Public Literature really caught my eye. They take the audio from LibriVox and synchronize it with the text so you can listen and read along. (here’s Beowulf)

SlideShare, a site that allows you to upload and easily share your presentations, has created Slidecasts. Take any mp3 file from the web and synchronize it with your SlideShare presentation. They have an easy-to-use synchronization tool that makes the process a snap. (Watch their screencast for instructions on how to use the tool.)

Here is my first Slidecast:

It should be noted that SlideShare doesn’t support presentations with animations, so this isn’t the best tool if you are looking to demonstrate software. Another shortcoming is that SlideShare doesn’t let you upload your audio to their site. You’ll need to post the mp3 file somewhere else.

All in all, Slideshare is a free and simple tool that just got better.

If only she could get an initial introduction out to explain the stutter, maybe the call would be completed. I think Audacity could help here.  With this free and easy audio editing program, callers could record a brief introductory message that would ask the listener for their patience. Using Audacity, the caller can snip out the pauses and then play the message that would start the call.