Vocaroo and AudioBoo

These two sites are both great for recording yourself or for your learners to record themselves.  They're both great and both have their places. Vocaroo is really easy, straightforward to use and is a great tool for learners to use and e-mail their recordings to you, their teacher.  AudioBoo is a bit more complicated although the layout is very nice, but you can do a lot more with the recordings you make.

With Vocaroo, the website interface couldn't be more simple.

Press where it says 'Click to Record', speak, and then click to finish.  You then have the option to listen to what you've recorded, record again if you want to and then send it as an e-mail or post it on the net.  I really like the idea of getting learners to record themselves speaking for homework and for them to send this to me.
Here's a bit of 'The Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll that I recorded:

The second audio site I tried was AudioBoo.  This is much more sophisticated, and Russell can tell you better than I can how to use it:  Here's a Boo that I made earlier, one of the downsides of it is that when you've made your boo it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to load to the computer, but once you've done it, it's saved and you can then tweet it, embed it, send it to facebook etc. You can also follow other people, so there is a lot of potential for authentic listening practice here.....

Which of these sites is more sutable for your learners will depend a lot on your learners.  If you have young, digital natives who are comfortable with Twitter, etc, they'll probably get a lot out of AudioBoo, but if you have less tech-savvie learners, or want to do some recording very simply, then, I'd say Vocaroo is better.

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