Week 5 – Activity 3: Edit an audio file

Hi All,

I went into the link that Keith provided us to access free online audio content and found a great variety to choose from.  I decided to keep it simple and went with a classic Jack Johnson “Better When We’re Together” piece that was recorded during one of his 2013 concerts.  My intent is to use the music at some point in a video with my students who are learning social skills.  I’ve been taking video of my students while they work and interact to try and capture “prosocial” behaviour and then have been editing it to make a movie highlighting the “expected” behaviours and then replay it back to my students starring them as the main characters.  They love it!  My challenge has been knowing how to import music and then attach it to the video so last week’s video featured background music from the “samples” on my computer!  Let me tell you, it was slim pickin!  Learning how to search for the right kind of file (MP3) and then edit and play with it in Audacity has been incredibly useful!  

A funny aside – I phoned my tech support with the school district this week to have someone with “admin” privileges come and install Audacity on my computer.  It wasn’t until I was talking to someone that I thought to look in my programs to see if we already had it installed… to my delight and embarrassment – there it was!  At least I saved them a trip over to my school!  Another example of the way people process things – I needed to talk about needing Audacity with someone to actually think to look for it on my computer (this was after trying unsuccessfully to download it from the internet).  

So – I’ve spent all of this morning playing with Audacity at the Vernon arena while intermittently dealing with being the hostess for my son’s speed skating tournament.  Gotta love the accessibility of online learning.  The tutorials have been helpful and I’ve learned the very basics.  My hope is to use this short audio piece at the beginning of a video starring my students.  Very basic – enjoy.