Vocaroo: Record and share your voice

Vocaroo is an online voice recording tool with simple options for saving and sharing. It can certainly add a new dimension to your classroom teaching. There are a number of tasks you can accomplish using Vocaroo: you can provide oral feedback to your students, ask them to record their speech, give them simple home tasks for example, reflecting on a chapter they have covered in class and share their recorded thoughts via online platforms.These are just some instances.  We teachers can always  be creative in assigning purposeful tasks to our students and Vocaroo is here to support our teaching aims.

Features of Vocaroo

Vocaroo is giving you the chance to record your voice online for free. isn't it amazing? The layout you will see in the first place is not that eye-catching, neither for you nor your students. But once you start playing with its features, I am sure, you will realize how it can be an asset to your classroom. Some other interesting features of Vocaroo are discussed below:

• You and your students can share recordings via email, Google Plus, Facebook and other social platforms. Besides, you can embed the link in word documents or websites, if you want.
• The recordings can be accessed from any device, be it iOS or Android, no tension!
• There is no limit on the number of minutes you intend to record.
• It gives you a QR code which you can paste, print and give to your students for them to scan and directly listen to your feedback or comment. Isn't it wonderful? I absolutely love this option. I have created a sample for you to have a look. 

Sample feedback sharing with QR code of Vocaroo

• The recordings can be downloaded as MP3 files. Teachers can store the files in a separate folder in the PC or Google Drive to go back to them anytime. In fact, students can build a library of Vocaroo recordings and always listen back to them, maybe before exams? 
• Users do not need any email or password to use Vocaroo. Your recording is just two incredibly simple buttons away.
• Audio files can be uploaded to Vocaroo and ultimately, those links can be shared via available options
• Your PC's built-in microphone will work perfectly, but if you are scrupulous about it, you can always purchase a good quality microphone and use it while recording. We can't compromise with the quality of our oral feedback, can we?

Tutorial on Using Vocaroo

Check out this short tutorial I have just created using Screencast-o-matic. Here, I have  also covered how the QR code can be embedded in a document. Watch it! Explore it! Use it in your teaching! 

Pedagogical Basis

Listening and speaking skills are usually undermined in most EFL contexts. As a consequence, teachers rarely pay attention on how these skills can be taught or practiced in class. Unfortunately, sometimes even the curriculum delimits the scopes for practicing these two skills.  Well, build your students' listening comprehension skills using Vocaroo and extend learning opportunities for them. How? We know, students always pay sincere attention to teacher's input. And feedback or a short online lecture is an asynchronous form of input for them. It gives students enough time and chance to listen, evaluate and be self-critical and reflective at the same time. Hence, listening to your recorded talk can potentially increase their listening comprehension skills. They may take notes as they listen which could also hone their cognitive thinking skills. This could be a bottom-up listening task where students will essentially focus on certain linguistic elements of the audio text. And as for improving speaking, practicing impromptu speaking or improvising a short speech or dialogue from a play can give students the chance to listen to their own pronunciation and evaluate their overall speaking proficiency. Speaking and reflecting at the same time is a key technique to practice foreign language.

Interesting ways of using Vocaroo

• Students can review a book, an act from a play, a short story or even just a relevant news story and share their thoughts or views online with mates and the teacher using Vocaroo. They can be anywhere while they record their talk, hence there is a good chance that they will be relaxed while talking.
• Students can be instructed to record a short impromptu speech or dialogue and share with class. Teacher and students listen to the recording together and discuss strengths and ways of improvement.
• As mentioned above, teachers can provide oral feedback to students' work using Vocaroo.  This can be very quick and effective as opposed to traditional written feedback.
• Students can share comments or thoughts with their peers on any topic they studied in class.
• Can be a useful tool when students work colaboratively in a project. They can share short, instant audio messages with each and keep it safe in their repository for futher listening.
• Less proficient speakers can increase their fluency and word production 
• Student listen and recheck their written work before exams or other assignments.

Vocaroo in Bangladeshi Language Teaching Context

Affordances

• It is an absolutely free tool to use for assymetrical communication between teacher and students.
• Vocaroo does not require strong internet connection as it is only about audio recording. Therefore, both students and teachers can use it efficiently
• If teachers feel video recorded feedback can be too much time-consuming or may require multiple shots, providing audio-recorded feedback will be potentially less painstaking and even more instant and effective.
• Can be an effective tool for teachers to communicate with students and build relationships with them even in strict exam oriented cicumstances.
• Teachers can record an instant message for students for example, reminding them to read a chapter before coming to the class. Any short urgent announcement can also be recorded and shared with target audience.
• Shy and less confident learners get a control over their performance and opportunity to interact with their instructor.

Drawbacks of Vocaroo

• No options to edit recordings. This can be problematic sometimes for teachers if they intend to record a long lecture or speech and feel the need to edit the track at some point.
• Files that exceed 50MB can't be uploaded to Vocaroo.
• There is no auto save option in Vocaroo. If someone mistakenly hits 'Retry' button instead of 'Listen', the previous file will be deleted.
• Layout is pretty unattractive compared to latest audio recording apps. Young learners may not feel the need to explore it when they will see their phones offer relatively better and compelling recording options than Vocaroo. 

Nevertheless, the drawbacks are negligible compared to the features Vocaroo offers for any user. In contexts like Bangladesh, simple tools like this can inspire even senior, less tech-savvy teachers to embrace technology gracefully.

Courtesy: Tutorial was made using Screencast-o-matic, logo extracted from Vocaroo.com website.