Teacher Experience Exchange

Here's a quick tip for the foreign language classroom.Have students turn in recorded audio assignments with http://www.chirbit.com/. Each student will need an account so if you don't have student email accounts, you will need to use the "Gmail trick". After your students have accounts, they can easily record or upload audio to their page. It works great!

How do you find their work? Students can email a link to you or you can even setup an RSS feed. With an RSS feed, the audio assignments will show up automatically in your feed reader...the assignments turn themselves in!

You may be wondering, "What is an RSS feed?" or have other questions. Just let me know and I can help.

Mark

How would the students set up an RSS feed, and how would I receive them? In Outlook I have folders for RSS feeds, can I do the same thing in GMail?

Hi,

Here’s a detailed version of how to create RSS feeds from Chirbit.

If you have Outlook and it has an RSS Feeds folder you are ready to follow these steps.

Step 1. Create an account or accounts in Chirbit. If you want a classroom set of accounts, I recommend the Gmail trick.


The “Gmail Trick” is such a useful way to sign up for multiple student accounts that everyone should know how to do this.

1. Sign up for gmail. Create an account that is meaningful to your class and easy for kids to type (i.e. yourschool.yourlastname). Make sure you can access gmail from school. You may have to beg your network administrator to unblock it for you.

2. Go to the website of your choice, in this case Chirbit.com, and sign up for accounts like this:
Email: yourschool.yourlastname+1@gmail.com
Use a common password like the school mascot.
Use a naming convention for user names, such as yourlastname_user1.
The “+1” is a variable. All of the e-mail sent to this account goes to your main gmail inbox.

3. Repeat this procedure but change the “+1” to “+2”. Keep signing up for accounts until you have the amount you need. I commonly go through this procedure up to “+25”.

4. Check your Gmail. You may have to verify the accounts by clicking on a link in the e-mails.



Step 2. After your Chirbit accounts are setup, go to Outlook. Right click on RSS Feeds and choose Add a New RSS Feed. Type in http://www.chirbit.com/rss/yourusername (replace yourusername with the user name of a Chirbit account). You will have to setup an RSS feed for each Chirbit account you created. So, if you created 25 Chirbit accounts, you will have to setup 25 RSS feeds in Outlook. It is some work on the front end but worth it.

Now you are all set. Whenever a student makes a new recording, it will automatically show up in you Outlook RSS feeds.

Did this help?

Mark