I would like to explore producing audio books in a classroom setting.
In an ideal world, I would set it up so that each student would get ta separate chapter that they would have to record.
I do an assignment similar to this in Voice and Diction, but I use long poems, that I divide into sections and assign. Then, each student has to find photos that match what’s going on in the poem, record their part of the poem and turn it into a short video.
Then, I take the individual videos and edit them together and we watch the video in class.
I’d like to do something like that, though not for Voice and Diction… in my mind, this project would be the big end of term project for, like, Oral Interpretation of Written Texts. I’d like yo present the idea and the research to the people at my college who teach that class, but, honestly, when I’ve brought up projects like this before, they haven’t been interested.
This is partially because they fall into the “I’ve been teaching this way since the Pleistocene, I don’t need to anything different” camp of Academics (everyone who works in the Academy knows people like this) and partially because they have all the creativity of a turnip.
I could maybe pitch it to the person who teaches Oral Communication for Non-Native Speakers.
Anyway, before I do this with anyone, I’d need to have my ducks in a row, in terms of theory and examples. For an example, I was thinking of using the Manifold project I did for In Our Time and move on from there.
Obviously, I’m still refining this idea, so comments and critiques are welcome.
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Splendid idea, and I would think that you’d find a receptive audience at one of the CTLs at CUNY: you might contact Luke at the TLC and see whether he’s interested, or whether he knows of anyone in CTL-land who might be into this.
Going forward, let’s think about what form this should take for final project purposes. I would think it should include:
a brief rationale, introducing the project and explaining its aims, methods, and audience (maybe 1000 words?)
a portfolio of materials: a student-facing assignment sheet, guiding them through the various steps of the project
something about assessment: a rubric or more holistic statement of what you expect from students and how you plan to assess it
a list of relevant projects and secondary reading that will shape your thinking about the assignment. Our course materials (Rubery, English, Weber) + anything else you can find about teaching and audiobooks (I’ve got a somewhat old piece that might be useful: see below)
Sound good? LMK if you want to brainstorm further.
Allred, Jeff. “Novel Hacks: New Approaches to Teaching the Novel Genre.” Transformations, vol. 24, no. 1 & 2, pp. 115–31.
All of this sounds about right.
I was planning on doing the rationale, the scaffolding and the directions and examples I’d give to students.
Assessment is something I hadn’t really considered, but it is necessary.
I have to admit, that the research is going to be the biggest issue for me. When I’ve built long term projects before, I’ve just kind of gone about it with a “this is a hole I’ve seen that I can fill this way” without consulting outside materials much.
Thank you for the feedback!