Using Yodio in Your Classroom to Record Cell Phone Narrations and Create Embeddable Movies

In another article of cell phones in the classroom, in hopes of finding engaging projects with my students, I was informed about a web site called Yodio. With Yodio, you can register your cell phone with their site to record narrations. Those narrations can then be attached to images in the form of an embeddable movie called a Yodio. By pairing up the audio with the still image, you can also create transitions in between the "tracks" and then publish the film on the Yodio site so that the world can see.

The first time that I did this project with my students, I started off as a massive cell phone extravaganza of activities. I informed my students that they needed to bring their cell phones to class, as long as they had a form of unlimited texting and/or unlimited minutes. I thought that if I created one generic username and password, it would be much easier for all of my students to access it. Yodio even boasts that users can call in a toll free number, and utilize a special PIN number so that one username can receive phone call narrations from phone numbers that were not registered underneath that original account. I had several students use my account, and even though we ran through the process together, their cell phone narrations did not appear on my account.

Determined to use this site, and due to the fact that some students did not have their own cell phone, I thought that this could work better in conjunction with the net book computers at our school. The net books have a built in microphone and web cam, but access to our networked programs would be constrained. I thought that all of the net books had the program of Audacity installed on it, which is an excellent open source program that allows users to record their voice, and mix tracks to make their own MP3 files or Pod casts. Instead, we were only confined to using Windows Movie Maker to record their voice.

DO NOT MAKE MY MISTAKE FELLOW TEACHERS! I thought that WMM would be capable of saving audio files into something other than a .WMV format, but I was wrong - and .WMV is one of the few audio types that is not supported by Yodio. I then tried to install Audacity again on the net books, and that I could just instruct the students on how to convert audio files from .WMV into MP3. But I then found out the hard way that Audacity doesn't have the capabilities to convert WMV files. So after much frustration with the project, my students would have to individually send me their WMV file, by utilizing the file sharing functions of our Edmodo site. (If you would like to learn more about the great features of Edmodo, check out my other previous articles on it here.)

After the students sent me their files, I then had to convert it with another open source / third party software to convert their files into MP3's. I then had to send the converted files back to them on Edmodo, so that they could then upload the audio into the Yodio site. The entire process was very frustrating, and a few students were able to actually able to complete and publish their film. But, if I were to do this project again, I would show every student how to register their cell phone for the site and record their narrations through their phone. For the students that do not have cell phones, I would make sure that Audacity was installed on the net books and they could record their narration, save it as a MP3 from the start and upload it to the site. I have also recorded a series of Jing tutorials for my students, so they can independently create their work next time. If you would like to see those tutorials, and would like to create a movie with cell phones for your students, please click the link here to my Posterous site.

Resources:

www.yodio.com

www.edmodo.com

http://mrgsblog.posterous.com/how-to-create-your-yodio-movie-a-collection-o

http://k12cellphoneprojects.wikispaces.com/