I agree with you Mick (you can pick yourself up off the floor now)
certainly about the use such devices are put to. Students are very
fortunate that there are so many different strategies that can be
suggested and adopted now, choice is always best isn't it?
I might disagree ever so slightly with you (if you can bear it after
your massacring) on the use of tapes over digital, digital will always
give a better quality sound, but you are right (again!) about the fiddly
nature of minidisks and this needs to be addressed, anyone from the RNIB
here with any opinions on this? Could a foot switch be fitted to a
minidisk do you think? (remember I'm only a pretend techie).
:)
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Trott [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 18 December 2003 20:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Letter on recording lectures


In a message dated 18/12/03 17:29:37 GMT Standard Time,
[log in to unmask]
writes:

<< Hi

 Is anyone aware of any research or informed guidance on the pragmatics
of recording lectures, i.e.  minidisk or analogue, directional or
boundary mic etc?

 Having permission is one thing - securing a half-decent recording is
another.

 Regards

 Peter Hill >>
At the risk of getting massacred twice in one week. Preface - my
comments are made with dyslexic students in mind. Other disabilities
might require a different approach. This is one soliution, there may be
others, I'm not saaying that it's the only way

There are (at least) 2 factors to consider
1) audio quality
2) what the student does with it afterwards.

1) My opinion (duck) and it was supported by a recording engineer (!) is
that in a lecture room there is very little difference ion quality
between the various types of devices when using only the built in mic.
Once you have added a good directional mic to a tape recorder you can
have pretty much good quality combined with a device that has buttons
that are easier to operate and require no reading of a manual.

2) A recording is no use to anyone by itself. The student needs to
extract information in a form akin to notes. Not transcribe the whole
lot or transfer it as an audio file to a PC to remain there forever
unused. I always talk to students about the strategy they will use to
extract information.

A workable solution we have arrived at is to use a SONY ECM-Z60
directional mic with an OPTIMUS 122 tape recorder with a 'tone index
button'.  The student records the whole lecture and everytime they want
to find something later (they are getting overwhelmed or the lecturer
says something they realiose is
important) they press the indexing button.

This puts a beep on the tape. After the lecrture the student has the
choice of either listening to all the lecture or pressing PLAY and then
holding down FASTFORWARD until they hear the beep at the section they
marked. They can then play that section until they want to move on to
the next point they marked.

I usually, depending on circumstances, suggest that the student also
writes notes and inserts a number in the margin at an appropriate point
each time they index the recordings. The theory being that knowing
everything is being recordeed and that they can mark the tape
corresponding to any gaps in their notes is reassuring to the student.

I am often sceptical that student who says "I need a digital recorder so
that I can tranasfer recordings to my computer" is actually going to do
anything with the recordings. What I suspect happens is that they use it
once or twice, forget to download and turbn up at an important lecture
with the memory full.

And I've lost count of the number of students with minidisk recorders
that tell me they can't use them in lectures because the buttons are too
fiddley (Oh yes, I'm sure some can use them) or thatb they record them
but find that even track marking doesn't help them retrieve information.

OK, that's my strategy for using a tape recorder. I'm prepared to listen
to all arguments for minidiscks and digital recorders in the context of
dyslexic students (to keep it simple) provided they are accompanied by a
strategy for extracting information.

Merry Christmas One and All

Mick Trott