Wimba Voice Tools

Horizon Wimba Voice Tools is a suite of applications that allow you to record and send voice over the Internet. With these online voice tools you can increase oral practice and interaction for your language students outside of the classroom. Think of email, written assignments, and written chat sessions. Now rethink those activities as oral exchanges. You will soon discover ways to extend what you do orally in the classroom to study outside of the classroom.

The Voice Tool Suite will be free for instructors to use this coming year (2006-2007). LSS will be providing online accounts for instructors who want to use in their classes or who simply want to experiment with voice tools.
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Download the handouts from the Wimba Voicetools brownbag:

Powerpoint presentation
Introduction to the Voice Tools Suite
Wimba Voice Tools Quick Tips
Voice Tools on your iPod

Instructions for Creating and Using a Wimba Voice Email Form

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The four Voice Tools are:

Voice Boards: Post and listen to voice messages within discussion boards.
Voice Direct (aka Voice Chat): Communicate with users in real-time in a virtual room, using voice and text.
Voice Recorder: Record and listen to voice on a web page.
Voice Email: Send and listen to voice through email messages.

Voice Board

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Examples of how this voice- and text-based threaded discussion board can be used include:

• Hold online discussions in world languages where students can both write and speak in the target language
• Create a "Community" Voice Board for students where they can post or reply to messages about topics outside of class discussion
• Ask students to copy/paste an excerpt and vocally record feedback/comments on the excerpt.
• Create an exercise, assignment, or assessment where you post an open-ended question and students answer these questions and then listen to each others response to provoke more in-depth thought on the topics presented
• Allow student groups to collaborate on projects or discuss topics, where each group creates a Voice Board

Voice Direct

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Examples of how this voice- and text-based synchronous chat room can be used include:

• Create an "Office Hours" Voice Direct conference between an instructor and one or more students
• Conduct a teaching session with students at remote locations, using the "Study Group" Voice Direct conference.
• Enable students to use the voice chat room to work on group assignments and study for upcoming exams
• Hold student interviews in groups or pairs. Such interviews can be archived for review by instructor
  

Voice Email

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Instructions for Creating and Using a Wimba Voice Email Form

You have likely composed thousands of email messages and they have all had one element in common – text. Voice Email adds the emotion and candor, mood, expression and inflection of human voice to electronic, asynchronous correspondence.

• Students can email each other in the target language
• "Pen" pals are no longer limited to text!
• Conduct asynchronous question-and-answer sessions with individual students, or have students do the same with each other

Voice Recorder

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A Voice Recorder message can be embedded directly into a web page. You can use it to

• Create a welcome message
• Ask students to record a reading of a text excerpt that you have posted.
• Give dictations
• Build listening comprehension exercises

Use this form to apply for a Voice Tools account:

You will receive an email with instructions when we've created your account.

For more information, contact Karen at LSS.
Karen Tusack
271 Van Hise
262-4471
karen@lss.wisc.edu