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Audio is not limited by time and space and can be transposed to settings that are out of context.

Audio allows for better understanding of concepts for students who suffer from dyslexia.

Audio helps students who are audially gifted/endowed to remember more, than reading text

Michael Wanji

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What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?

The use of audio materials in education, more intuitive, is conducive to stimulate students' interest in learning; The audio materials can make up for the deficiency of language description, make the content of textbooks concrete, visualize, stimulate and guide the development of students' thinking.
Students can have an intuitive understanding of book knowledge and emotional understanding, can effectively improve class efficiency, increase knowledge capacity. At the same time, the development of students' observation ability.Education is theoretically no longer bound to its lecture theatres and classrooms.

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A. For students who have problems with hearing, using audio and the braille, they can process the information from both touching and hearing, minimizing the impact of the visual inconvenience.

B.  Comparing the pure text, the audio can include more information(e.g. sound, emotion ,and atmosphere), a planar class without visual pictures. It creates a new learning place where is full of social presence, unconstrained by time and place ( Middleton, A. 2016),

C. I never use audio or podcast as formal learning material. I use podcast for listening to some interesting news. But for myself, it can be the supplementary materials for formal classes but not be the formal class, because it is hard for me to concentrate on audio, I will distract if I only use my ears for receiving information. Therefore, I think that audio is effective when it is auxiliary material for a formal class.(subjective personal view)

Xueyi Zhao

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Personal thoughts and reflections on audio materials

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Personal thoughts and reflections on audio materials

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What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?

1, It can be boring and fatiguing if students should always dive into reading tons of essays or other materials. Audio can be a good way to spice up the learning.
2, I found audio can be more clear and easy to understand compared with reading, as narrators usually use oral English to speak and express their thoughts, which is 100% easier to comprehend than reading a formal academic paper.
3, Audio can be more first hand, some theory or hypothesis can be explained by the author himself instead of reporting the author's main idea by written text.
4, If students are engaged as the content creators of the audio, they will gain more than knowledge, they can practice collaborating, task accomplishing, time managing, self-monitoring and technology learning.

Do you think educational audio is valuable? Why so?

yes, it's valuable. Professors can provide a variety of media for students to acquire information and knowledge. Then, students can choose their preferred way to learn, which improves flexibility and malleability in learning. It can inspire students' interest and promise them more time investment in learning. They can practice collaborating, task accomplishing, time managing, self-monitoring, and technology learning.

Is there an instance when you created, used or listened to an educational audio material/podcast that you thought was particularly useful?

yes, I listened to ESL PODCAST before to learn oral English and practice pronunciation. Chinese English language education puts speaking in a minor position for many reasons. As a result, people are poor in speaking, mainly because they are not exposed to enough English speaking materials. Those pedagogic materials are usually fossilized and unpragmatic in real life. At this point, podcasts can be a good input for students to learn language by imitating the conversation or speech. Besides, some podcasts say something about other subjects, like music, literacy, history, science, etc. Students will have more choice to find their interest and associate hobby with language learning.

-Yvonne (YUJIN YANG)

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What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?Some students have a good auditory memory when trying to remember a mathematical formula or recent news.Audio materials help teachers demonstrate a conception which is a bit abstract.More often an exact picture can limit one’s imagination.Audio materials are portable and easy to store.You just need a phone and an earphone.                              Do you think educational audio is valuable? Why so?Definitely yes.Auditory is a very important sense of human.First,in some certain subjects,for example,musicology, acoustics and psychology,audio materials are rigid demand.Second,educational audio enhance one’s auditory memory.They enable students to be more attentive.Because no specific picture or text is presented.Third,educational audio is useful when the students are doing practical works because their eyes and hands are not free. Is there an instance when you created, used or listened to an educational audio material/podcast that you thought was particularly useful?I used to listen to a material called 60-second science provided by Scientific American.It helps me learn English as well as various scientific discovery.Because every period is very short,I may avoid wasting my free time.                         

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What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?Some students have a good auditory memory when trying to remember a mathematical formula or recent news.Audio materials help teachers demonstrate a conception which is a bit abstract.More often an exact picture can limit one’s imagination.Audio materials are portable and easy to store.You just need a phone and an earphone.                              Do you think educational audio is valuable? Why so?Definitely yes.Auditory is a very important sense of human.First,in some certain subjects,for example,musicology, acoustics and psychology,audio materials are rigid demand.Second,educational audio enhance one’s auditory memory.They enable students to be more attentive.Because no specific picture or text is presented.Third,educational audio is useful when the students are doing practical works because their eyes and hands are not free. Is there an instance when you created, used or listened to an educational audio material/podcast that you thought was particularly useful?I used to listen to a material called 60-second science provided by Scientific American.It helps me learn English as well as various scientific discovery.Because every period is very short,I may avoid wasting my free time.                         

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Tian Tan

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Reasons of using audio materials in education

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Reasons of using audio materials in education

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Audio materials are not constrained by time or place. Students can listen to them at any time and wherever they are. Audio provides an additional space which can be used to supplement existing pedagogies and mediate new types of learning activity, develop and relocate existing activity, and support the review of class activity (Andrew, 2016).

In my opinion, educational audio is valuable. Any student who have difficulty in understanding a topic can listen to the audio repeatedly. They can study the content at their own pace. Besides, audio can keep the content for longer duration so that students can go over it.

KZ

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Comments on audio materials in education

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Comments on audio materials in education

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1. Reasons for using audio materials in education
convenience & flexibility
people can listen to anything when traveling, working out or cooking. The content of the podcast can be lecture, story, tips, etc.

compensation of lecture
Before or after courses, teachers can use audio to help students preview and review the main points. And those who are good at learning can also share their study strategies through audios.

deep learning
Students who make up audios need to understand points of view and paraphrase through their own words.

promote relationship and collaboration
the audios sound real human voices and audio materials are usually divided into bits so that  students focus on pieces of knowledges and engage in the study materials.

2. audio in education is valuable, it has many advantages and is a convenient method to share ideas without much cost. However, perhaps when explaining complex theories, it would be better to use video which has pictures or animations to aid learners' understanding.

3. when I was in middle school, teachers sometimes use audio to explain how to comprehend or answer the questions after I send them the pictures of questions. And I sometimes use audio to practice English speaking and reflect on them.

Li Zhe

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1. There are several reasons for using audio materials for education.

Accessibility

Audio cater to different learning needs. For example, it can help learners with dyslexia by non-text-based media or people who are deaf (like the woman in this video) who value being able to playback recordings (MELSIG 2014).

Ease of use

It is easy to learn how to create audio materials and how to use them. The perceived technical complexity of podcasting is mostly absent, where its pedagogic rationale would seem to dispel any associated anxiety of the academic producer(Andrew, 2016).

Flexibility

Learners can use audio materials anytime, anywhere. Education is theoretically no longer bound to its lecture theatres and classrooms, nor is it dependent on people being co-located, whether they are formally participating in the course or not.

Sustainability

Audio materials occupy a small amount of computer space. Merry & Orsmond (2007; 2008) confirm that audio feedback is more practical compared with another feedback as its electronic format makes it easy to archive, copy and distribute.

2. I think educational audio has its unique value, but this value often has limitations. Under the above problems, its advantages are already obvious:

It can help some learners with physical disabilities.

It is easy to create and access.

It is suitable for use in classrooms with underdeveloped networks and another specific classroom teaching.

However, with the development of new media, we can access video teaching materials more and more conveniently. I think the combination of verbal and pictorial learning can make people more focused. Moreover, the video also has audio characteristics and can be used as audio under special conditions.

3. I used to listen to some teaching audio about cooking while I was cooking. Because I will be distracted while watching the video and cooking at the same time, but I can listen to the producer's instructions to make the cook.

4. Because I think that audio materials 'liberate our eyes' and do not require us to sit in front of a computer or hold a mobile phone by hand, however, in my opinion, the efficiency is limited because I cannot concentrate if this knowledge of the audio is complicated. Therefore, for me, audio materials are limited to learning some relatively simple knowledge.

Tianlin Jiang / Taylen

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What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?

Its flexibility: unconstrained by time or place

Its contribution to student engagement, creativity and innovation

Its directness: the possibility to talk directly to students, to understand and answer their questions

Its supportiveness: help students better understand the relevant knowledge

Its workability: compared to other complex multimedia materials, it does not require a high level of technology

Do you think educational audio is valuable? Why so?
Yes, I think educational audio is valuable because students are able to learn and communicate effectively with high-quality audio, which can improve the educational experience for both teachers and students. However, sometimes it is a bit difficult for students to read effectively while listening to the audio.

PL

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Evaluation of audio materials in education

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Evaluation of audio materials in education

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Easy to record: As for teachers, most of time, they have to teach several courses, and if they use traditional teaching, writing lesson plans for their classes, their productivity is greatly reduced because of speaking faster than writing.

Higher efficiency of learning:  audio lessons could be separated into many episodes that means  the classroom is no longer confined to the classroom, the tube, the restaurant,  it can be anywhere. (Middleton, 2016)

Clarity of expression: text often tends to make people feel bogged down, especially when faced with dense and indistinguishable texts. And there is a lot of content that is expressed in words, such as music and the multimedia we are now studying.

Compared to text, it is obviously more interesting, and this increases the motivation of the students to learn. However there are some aspects that are really disadvantageous compared to other teaching tools

For example.
Compared to text, students can easily read a whole page in less than a minute, but when read in audio form, it can take the listener 3-5 minutes or more, and although the listener can speed up the reading by turning on the multiplier, it is still a far cry from reading the text.

Compared to video, video engages more of the sensory system. This means that students can watch and listen at the same time and grasp the content in many ways.

Xuan Li/ Jessie

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Task 2: Exploring the role of audio in learning

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Task 2: Exploring the role of audio in learning

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Read the following article: Middleton, A. (2016). Reconsidering the role of recorded audio as a rich, flexible and engaging learning space. Research in Learning Technology, 24, 28035.

https://shura.shu.ac.uk/13284/1/Middleton%20Reconsidering%20the%20role%20of%20recorded%20audio.pdf

And listen to the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/edsurge/a-podcast-for-every-discipline-the-rise-of-educational-audio

As you are reading and listening, please reflect on the following:

-What are some reasons of using audio materials in education?

-Do you think educational audio is valuable? Why so?

Optional:

-Is there an instance when you created, used or listened to an audio material/podcast particularly useful for enhancing learning?

-Why do you think the audio material/podcast was effective?