Project 221 . Cyber Rado
Scope
People are setting up Internet radio stations very cheaply, this is an angle
for BASIC. I don't know what it takes. Few Thais have a short-wave radio but my
students are online frequently.
Here some sites for starting your own CyberRadio station:
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/radio.html -- good
http://radio.about.com/cs/latestradionews/a/aa011804a.htm
http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa052403a.htm
Interesting angles. Here is a site I am talking with a bit about method and lexis
level, out of LA: www.eslpod.com Their stuff is generally fairly intermediate,
too many idioms, but they have opted for slow delivery as stage 1.
Most Thai teachers of English don't listen to VoA or recommend to students. I get
it remarkably clear shortwave reception of VoA many hours of the day. None of my
students has a decent shortwave receiver and few are available here in the market
(say from China), but they go online cheaply enough at Internet hangouts, even
here in the village (55 cents an hour) and could listen there. We have big free access center at the University, a wired jungle.
Bill
Status
Idea stage.
Needs a tech oriented person to start it.
Needs an outline of modules.
Needs scripts, cast, and production.
The Institute would provide for web hosting.
Techy Stuff
Requirements to Record MP3 Files
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/recordmp3.html
1 . You'll need a microphone for speech, something like a Shure SM58, but lesser microphones can sometimes produce acceptable results for low-fi "podcasting". The better the input, the better the output.
2 . A computer with a suitable audio input device. For better quality, or if you just don't have an audio card in your desktop PC, you can use a USB audio input device. These are inexpensive and they place the audio input circuitry further away from your noisy CPU. I've had excellent results with a very inexpensive gadget called the Griffin iMic (marketed mostly for Macintoshes, but it works fine with my Windows laptop). Fancy USB mixers are also available.
3 . Audacity, an excellent piece of free, open-source audio recording and editing software for Windows, MacOS X and Linux.
4 . The LAME MP3 Encoder, a necessary add-on to allow Audacity to export MP3 files. For legal reasons, Audacity does not support MP3 "out of the box." But it's easy to install LAME.
http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/lame.html
Do you have Audacity and its MP3 encoder installed at this point? Great! You're ready to move on to "recording" and converting your audio files.
Once an MP3 file is created, it can be played in an HTML program just
like any other link.
<a href="class001.mp3">Listen to Lesson One.</a>
Discussion
The example, eslpod, shows a graduated sequence of recordings for online learning. Content could follow several paths :
(1) About Basic English and (2) Learning, come to mind.
Two kinds of About Basic -- (a) "Original discussions such as Bill's writing. Same as web pages (pull), except spoken (push). (b) The classic discussions by Ogden, Richards, etc., as a guide, but heavily paraphrased.
Two kinds of learning -- (a) "Hello, I am Jim", in all Basic. And (b) Readings in all
Basic, of various levels. Same idea adds push version of web pages.
ReadPlease is a form of Pull, requires reader to bring in content.
PofCast causes activity without the reader's doing anthing, PUSH from wesbsite to reader, rather than Reader PULL data from web.
Each module would be retained for a step in the education of each new listener.
Other Media.
Pictures, images, icons associated with the audio lesson.
Audio to go with the exitings and planned Basic Word images.
Back to Project Catalog or to
Basic English
Institute home page.
About this Page: 221.html - Project 221
.Last updated December 15, 2006.
Contact us
URL: http://www.basic-english.org/projects/221.html