There are many terrific uses for digital audio in the classroom, ranging from developing spoken podcasts in world language classes to tracking oral reading fluency in the primary classroom.  Allowing students to access audio recordings of texts is also a great way to help students to embrace reading.  Here are a few tips regarding a variety of topics.

Audiobooks

Ten years ago, classrooms had assortments of tape cassettes and players in the classroom for listening stations.  (Many still do.  I have a few.)  Now CDs are common, but in the primary grades, they’re vulnerable to the indelicate handling that comes from young hands and eager students.  Consider importing audio CDs onto your computer and using them on portable MP3 players.  These need not be Apple-brand iPods – there are plenty of inexpensive audio players that will do the job quite well.  I have imported the CDs that came with our anthology series and put the MP3s onto a player that I bought for $20 on clearance at an office supply store.  When students need to listen to the story while reading the text, I don’t have to fumble through an assortment of CDs and search for the right track.  Rather, I just pull out the MP3 player, find the story, and press play.  A $5 headphone splitter lets pairs of students read together.

For a terrific set of directions on how to import audio books from CD into iTunes, read this article.  It was a huge help to me!  The writer explains the benefits of importing the CDs as audio books, not just as music, and how you can do so properly.