Create Audio Books of Student Work
with a CD Burner and Free Software
http://cdbooks.tusd.us

Take that student writing and put it in the ears of family, friends, and other students! Burn a CD of student work to create your own audio book on CD (and while you're at it, continue to post it on the wall and up on the web).  You also upload the audio as a podcast!

Most schools have at least one machine with a CD burner or you can burn at home. Some free software, a cheap microphone, and some blank CDs and you can either record students reading their work or use text-to-speech technology to have the computer read the text. The resulting audio files make up the chapters of your class book.

Hardware:
    • Computer
    • Microphone
    • CD Burner
    • Blank CD-R Media

Software:

Record & Edit Audio

Convert Text to Sound Files

Burn CDs and Create Labels (you should already have this software)

Procedure:

You will need a computer (Mac or PC) with a microphone attached or use a built-in microphone. Old Macintosh microphones work just fine on a PC. Alternately, you could record to tape and the connect the tape recorder to your computer to "dub" the sound to digital.  You could also use a combo MP3 player/recorder and transfer the file to edit and burn on the computer.
  1. Using a sound recorder (Audacity, free, is recommended) record a student reading his/her story. Ignore mistakes and re-reads -- the audio can be edited later.
  2. Alternately, use Hal (free) or Natural Text (Pro version required to convert text) to have the computer convert the story to an audio file.
  3. Use your CD burning software to burn an audio CD of the audio files.
  4. Have students design a cover and table of contents on the computer or by hand to include with the CD.
  5. Make copies of the CD (burn multiple copies or copy CD-to-CD if you have an external burner).
Podcasting:

You can upload your audio files or even record them from scratch online with the free PodOmatic website: http://www.podomatic.com/ 

Revised 4-9-2006