We now have access to the Horizon
Wimba voice tools which are integrated into
Blackboard. There are currently four voice
tools:
-
Voice recorder
-
Voice Email
-
Voice direct (a voice chat tool)
-
Voice boards (audio discussion
boards)
This page describes how to make a
simple voice announcement in your Blackboard course
announcement area.
First, login to Blackboard go to the
control panel.
From the control panel, in the
"Course Tools" area, click on "Voice Announcements."
The first time you select this, you
may be prompted to install a Java plug-in from Sun
Microsystems. As of July, 2006, the current
plug-in was version 1.5, called the "J2SE runtime
environment 5." This will install quickly on
the fly. Then, you may be warned by your
computer about trusting "the signed applet
distributed by 'Horizon Wimba'." Select
"Always" to always trust Horizon Wimba applets.
You may already have gone through
these steps, in which case you may not see both of
these messages. In any event, you will now see
a screen that allows for entry of a textual Subject
and Message in section 1, and a Vocal Message in
section 2:
Type your Subjcet and any textual
comments you want to go along with the voice
message. Since this is something new your
students might not have seen before, you might
provide some sort of instruction, like "Click the
play button on the player below to listen to my
message." You might also include a textual
version of the message for students who may have
difficulty playing it or for the hearing impaired.
Now, click the record button and
record your message:
A recording level meter will appear
as you record, and the elapsed time of your
recording will also be displayed. You may
click the Pause button during recording and then
resume if you wish. When done, click the
square Stop button.
WARNING:
Do not click Submit on this page
before making your recording! If you do, you
will not be able to see the record player and you
will not be able to delete this announcement.
Voice announcements behave differently than
standard, content-area voice recordings. They
must be made BEFORE they are first submitted, and
they cannot be edited or re-recorded after you click
the Submit button. Note also that you cannot
even edit the textual component of the Voice
Announcement without losing the voice recording.
This seems to be a bug in this tool from Horizon
Wimba. Please be aware of it before you start
creating voice announcements.
You can apply the standard content
availability and date availability filters to this
tool if you wish on the same screen.
Click Submit at the bottom of this
screen, then click OK on the next screen.
Remember, you cannot edit this announcement
later and you cannot remove it if you attempt to
edit it and then click Submit.
You will be taken back to the
announcements preview area. DO NOT CLICK the
"Edit" button you see on this screen. Voice
announcements cannot be edited. If you do, you
will lose the audio announcement, and will not be
able to delete this announcement from your course
without deleting all announcements. Just click
OK, and you will be returned to the control panel.
To play the recording, your students
simply click the Play button on the Horizon Wimba
player. As you can see, the total time of the
recording is shown in the player (7 seconds, in this
case). If your students click the drop-down
symbol on the player, they will be given the option
to save the recording on their local systems:
There are three file formats in
which the recording can be saved:
mp3 is the most compressed, and
therefore smallest, file.
Don't forget, as of version 5.0 of
this product, you cannot edit the text of one of
these announcements once it has been created, or
re-record the audio. If you attempt to do so,
you will lose the audio portion of the announcement
and also lose the ability to delete the announcement
from your course without recycling all your
announcements.
How
to create a voice announcement using the Wimba voice
recorder
