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Adding sound

My first classes are online! – after a somewhat discouraging start, I got the whole system working now.

I decided not to give virtual classes at a fixed times because it would require too much organization from some of the students, or even a quality of internet connection they don’t have. My digital classes consist in powerpoints with audio which I make available to the students, who can then either call me during my skype open hours or e-mail me or leave remarks in the common pad if they have questions about the content. They also have individual and/or group exercices to send to me via e-mail at fixed times.

Recording audio with powerpoint is really very simple, even for people who have no affinity to technique. You can pause to drink; when you’re done, you stop and save, and that’s it… but I still had a couple of rough hours until it really worked. First, it is extremely disconcerting to stare at a screen instead of students. I have recorded video classes in the past: having a microphone, a headset and a camera rolling kind of helped imagining who I was talking to or for. Sitting in front of my laptop at home is a completely different story.

One thing that irritated me at first was not to have any sound coming back at me. In the few class recordings I did in the past, the headset was a great help getting orientation in terms of what people are hearing in the end. And one additional problem while sitting at my desk staring at my monitor is that I get nervous and start fidgeting and touching things and then think about the fact that maybe this is very loud – which would make me lose track very easily.

Also, I belong to the people who speak more fluidly when they stand, better yet: walk and gesticulate. I need to move my hands. My family is very much making fun of me for that, but fact is that what I say is more coherent, more articulate when I can move my hands. So, again, sitting in front of my laptop, not being able to move in case it would be loud, was a really petrifying experience; the first part of my class, recorded yesterday afternoon, and the second part, recorded yesterday evening, were recorded with me sitting at a table, where I had the additional inconvenient of being poorly placed opposite my monitor and having trouble reading my text as soon as I started moving a bit. I think you can hear my reading difficulties, me losing track, and, well, some fidgeting.

So this morning, I asked my daughter if I could borrow her room for my recording sessions, and things were much easier: I could place my laptop at a level where I could stand, find a comfortable position to watch the monitor, and move my hands and legs around.

My optimal setting to record audio on powerpoints at home – March 22nd, 2020, Le Mans

The third and fourth parts of my first class were recorded in these conditions, and I started to speak more freely.

But figuring out where and how to record was not the only problem. Making the files available to the students was not as easy as I thought, due to the limitations in uploads on my university CMS. But I could “slice” my class in 5 segments (each segment lasting between 20 and 35 minutes), use my cloud space at the university, and link back to it from our CMS.

Now that I get the whole thing, though, I would be happy to make my classes available to a wider audience. But powerpoint is proprietary and apart from giving access to my university repository, I don’t really know how to make these resources available. I will look into that when term is over – the overview of German Literature could be useful to other people than just my 5 first years…

If you want to access these teaching materials (they are far from perfect! – rather first attempts…), you can access them per hyperlink: the powerpoint is in German, and my audio is mainly in French. You can also access per hyperlink and with an access code (the access code: IntroHN) the 10 to 15 minutes Introduction to Digital Humanities video classes for my first years (all in French, there are 20 of them). 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Anne Baillot (March 22, 2020). Adding sound. Digital Intellectuals. Retrieved November 9, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/nmye


Anne Baillot

I am a Professor of German Studies at Le Mans Université, currently Researcher in Residence at DARIAH-ERIC in Berlin. My areas of research include German literature, digital methods for Heritage and Humanities, textual scholarship and intellectual history.

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