Audacity and Hot Potatoes

Today another duo of new program were introduced for our e-learning project, Audacity and Hot Potatoes.

The freeware audio editing program Audacity showed me that it was easy to record and modify your own voice. I've used it previously for another project where I had to create an audio recording with recorded voice, music, sound effects and other modifications like cross-fading etc. That time, I didn't use the Record function of Audacity so I was happy to see that it was as simple as easy as clicking one button and talking. I really hope my previous experience of using Audacity, limited though it may be, will help me when it comes to finishing up my final project.

Hot Potatoes, on the other hand, was completely new to me and therefore I had expected a learning curve while I got to grips with the software. However, it was surprisingly easy to create detailed, challenging and helpful exercises like cloze passage, mix and match games and quizzes which would provide a more interactive element to my e-learning package. Personally I feel that these exercises are the most fun that users of the packages will have, and it would give them incentive to pay attention and learn from the powerpoint slides and audio narration, so they would be able to do well for the quizzes and other assorted exercises.

All in all, the full capabilites of an exhaustive e-learning package are slowly being opened up to me and I look forward to exploring all the possible avenues. I have realised that with a full complement of additions, like audio narration and exercises like quizzes, an e-learning package can be both fun and yet extremely educational at the same time, perhaps having that interactive challenging aspect that normal teaching seems to lack, which causes boredom among many students.

I hope to unlock the e-learning treasure chest and benefit from the gold within.