I will be holding one final web help session tomorrow (Monday, May 10) from 6:00 – 7:30 pm in our regular classroom (Eddy 4). Note that this is a slightly later time than our previous help sessions. If you cannot make the help session and need assistance with your site, let me know and we can set up an appointment earlier in the day.

Here is a final bit of interesting information for those of you who are not burnt out on thinking about technology. This week’s On the Media had two interesting stories. The first is about ROFLcon, a conference about internet memes and why they go viral (keyboard cat, David after Dentist, etc), and the second is about copyright and the Hitler internet meme—all those video parodies that take a clip from the film The Downfall where Hitler is ranting about something in German and add subtitles that have him ranting about all sorts of things such as losing his house in the mortgage crisis. The third clip is a related story about whether or not it is disrespectful to victims of the holocaust to make Hitler humorous.

Today I will walk you through the basic steps of using the sound editing program Audacity. To prepare for the in-class activity, please download the following sound files to the computer you are using. These are the sounds you will remix in Audacity to create a unique 10-30 second audio file. You can also visit the website Freesound to get more audio clips if you like.

Door slamming

siren

wind and rainthunder

whispering in Spanish

woman speaking in Dutch with answering machine beep

scary voice

children in a store

“angels”

To learn how to use the program, you will watch the following tutorial video. I will walk you through this process and answer any questions you have. I will also show you how to upload the sound remix that you create during class to the Writing Studio so that I can hear what you have created.

I created folders in the Writing Studio for our audio activity. When you visit our class page, click on “dropbox” and upload y0ur file in the “Audacity Activity 1” folder. If that folder is full, use the “Audacity Activity 2″ folder.  Upload your audio file as a “.mp3″ file NOT a “.aup” file.

Audacity Tips
Remember that your audio file needs to be 5MB or smaller in order to upload in the Writing Studio and it must be in the correct file format: “.mp3″ or “.wav”. Mp3 is the best file format for most online spaces because it creates a smaller file that loads faster. So, export your file from Audacity as an Mp3 and check the file size. If it’s too large, go to the “preferences” section of Audacity, choose the “file formats” tab and lower the “bit rate” under “MP3 Export Setup.” Now, export again; the file should be smaller this time. Continue to lower the bit rate and export until the file is the appropriate size. Lowering the bit rate also lowers the quality of the audio file, so only lower it as much as necessary to hit the 5MB mark you need to upload.

When working in Audacity, exporting as an Mp3 will not affect your original Audacity file. However, if you make a “quick mix” before exporting (this collapses all your separate audio tracks into one track) and save it, you are changing the Audacity file itself in a way that will make it really difficult to do further editing. The best thing to do when you are ready to start quick mixing and exporting is to open your Audacity project, choose “save as” and save it under a new name. This way, if you accidentally alter the Audacity file in a way you don’t want to during the exporting process, you can go back to the original. When you begin work on your formal audio project it is good practice to start each work session by doing a “save as.” This way, if something goes wrong you won’t have to start over from scratch—at worst you will lose only a few hours of work.

Also remember that Audacity saves your project in two parts: a “.aup” file and a “data folder.” You need both of these files/folders in order to open and work with your Audacity project. So, if you are working at home and then bringing your project to class to continue working, make sure to bring both with you. The two files will look something like this:

Finally, Audacity often creates a backup file with the extension “.bak”.Never, never open this file or use it in any way. Doing so could corrupt your project files making them impossible to open!

Portable Applications
If you want to get Audacity for portable use on your USB flash drive, you can get the portable applications from the network drives in Eddy 300, 2, and 4. Go to one of these rooms, click “My Computer” and then on the network drive, and then on the folder “Portable Apps.” Drag the Audacity folder to your disk or USB flash drive. You can then run the program from your disk or USB drive on any computer without needing to put the program on the computer itself.