Electronic Education: Digital Voice Journals - Beyond Pencil and Paper

The benefits of written dialogue journals are well-documented, and this tool has found its home in many classrooms around the world. Furthermore, the use of audiotaped dialogue journals has been explored, and electronic journals, such as e-mail exchanges, are finding a niche in the language classroom.

One relatively unexplored area with dynamic potential is the use of digital voice (and even video) journals to accomplish many of the same tasks as their predecessors and, like audiotaped journals, enhance the teacher-student relationship by adding a more humanistic quality to the exchange. Also, now that computers have permeated into many language classrooms, the use of digital audio and video will create more opportunities for teacher and students to exchange communications in new ways by combining the concept of journal writing with the Internet. There are a number of software products available for preparing audio and video e-mail messages for use over the Web. One free example for audio is PureVoice (www.eudora.com/purevoice/), a audio recorder/player technology developed by QUALCOMM Inc. which can be downloaded from the Internet. This easy-to-use software allows users to create compressed digital sound files and send them as attachments via Eudora or other e-mail software programs.
Implementation of Voice Journals

Here are some basic steps for carrying out digital audio dialogue exchanges, but these steps can be adapted to the logistics of your course and hardware and software available. Whatever the case, teachers should make sure their computers meet the system and hardware requirements of any product they are considering. This study model is based on a situation for a class of about fifteen students with Internet access at school and the PureVoice player/recorder installed, an e-mail account (in this case, Hotmail, a web-based e-mail account), and a microphone for recording. Students, however, can do this assignment at home if they have the required hardware and software.

1. During the first few weeks of class, students are told that they will be required to send the teacher a voice journal entry once every two weeks for a total of five times. Students are given hands-on instruction on how to use the e-mail program and PureVoice recorder and player, and then they practice using the basic functions of these programs. Many schools provide e-mail accounts for their students on a network, but if your students only have Internet access, there are several free Web-based E-mail accounts your students can sign up for and use.

2. In their audio entries, students talk about five specific topics predetermined by the teacher which could include: (a) a basic introduction, (b) their experience learning English in their native country, or in the case of EFL settings, in their former schools; (c) travel tips they would give someone preparing to visit their home country, (d) their future educational and occupational goals, and (e) the most influential person in their life. Students are allowed to write out some of their ideas on paper in preparation for the recording, but they are discouraged from memorizing or reading from their notes word for word when creating the audio file. The more rehearsed the recording, the less natural it will sound, and the student will have a harder time demonstrating conversational repair strategies.

3. Students create the audio file (generally between 30 seconds and three minutes depending on the level of the student). While there is no limit as to the number of times students can record and re-record their journal entries before sending the final version, students are discouraged from doing so.

4. Students send the audio file as an e-mail attachment to the teacher by a set date. Depending on the teacher's workload, he or she could ask half of the class to e-mail the audio file one week, and the rest of the students complete the assignment the following week.

5. The teacher listens to the audio files, grades the assignment based on the criteria below, if desired, prepares an audio and/or written response, and then sends the response and any evaluation back to the student. Such an evaluation could be determined using certain criteria including:
(a) Timeliness: the assignment was completed on schedule; (b) Content: the assigned topic is covered sufficiently based on the individual's ability level; (c) Accuracy: use of grammatical structures studied in class, which are related to the journal topic; (d) Fluency: use of circumlocution, hesitation pauses, and repair strategies when needed; (e) Vocabulary: depth and breadth of words used; (f) Development: improvement was made from each assignment to the next based on suggestions and corrections given by the teacher (e.g., selected aspects of pronunciation, vocabulary, organization and depth of ideas, etc.).

Future Considerations
The potential of audio journals has opened up new possibilities in language learning, building on the tradition of dialogue journals. There are even Internet sites such as ShoutMail (www.shoutmail.com) which allow users to send voice e-mail via a regular telephone, eliminating the need for a computer at all. As technology develops, video mail as a multidimensional learning tool, will become more of an attractive option by allowing for the expression of both verbal and non-verbal elements. In this case, both visual and auditory cues will provide a rich multisensory learning experience that should benefit learners with mixed learning styles. A whole array of learning and teaching possibilities for distance learning could benefit from audio exchanges as well.