Yahoo! Audio Search

Audio Search in the Online and Blended Classroom

Yahoo! Audio Search (YAS) is a new Yahoo! product that allows users to scour the web for a myriad of audio files including: music, podcasts, speeches, e-books, and interviews. Y! Audio Search also displays related content such as video, websites, Wikipedia pages, and images. These constructivist-based design elements allow users to both discover new content as well as self-regulate their experience based on their own intrinsic needs and interests.

For example, a student who enters a query for “Neil Armstrong” will also have the video version of the Moon Landing listed in their search results. This way, if a student is a visual learner they can utilize the media that best suits their learning style. This is a nice integration of Yahoo services and one that makes the student user experience, not only easier, but also more productive.

In addition, web-based audio content can be easily saved to My Web 2.0 with a just click of a link on the results page. Once audio files have been saved to My Web 2, you can add tags, share your audio files, and organize your content. Members in a “My Community” group can then search their community knowledge pool adding yet another layer of relevance to the social bookmarking space.

Y! Audio Search Curriculum Ideas

• Teachers can create original audio content (such as lectures) and then upload them to Y! Audio Search for download by students onto their computer or mp3 player. In addition, teachers can link to the audio content (or “podcast”) from their web-based course syllabus, web-based group, weblog, Flickr group, or wiki.

• Learning communities that have formed a Flickr group can link relevant audio files to the pictures in their group photo pool. For example, an American Studies teacher with a series of Mississippi River photos can post an audio link in a Flickr discussion thread to a dramatic reading from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
  
  Or a history teacher can start a discussion thread in a Flickr group about the Civil War, providing a link to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in her pool of Gettysburg photographs. This application provides both audio and visual elements, thereby appealing to the differing and multiple learning styles of students.
  
  In all of the aforementioned examples, teachers are doing more than combining different types of media to support student learning. They are also providing “on demand” learning opportunities designed to meet the “always on” learning styles of today’s students.

• Listening to content in its original context is also an effective situated learning tool that provides an avenue for students to actively participate in their learning. Instead of reading about Albert Einstein’s scientific contributions in a textbook, students can use Y! Audio Search to actually hear Einstein himself explain his Theory of Relativity.
  
  Moreover, having students listen to period news reports about the fiery crash of the Hindenburg, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Robert F. Kennedy’s news conference announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, or Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights speech helps them make emotional connections to shared cultural experiences.
  
  
• Audio Search also has the potential to provide educational resources for teachers in underserved areas by providing them access to low (or no) cost audio content they can integrate into their curriculum. For example, teachers could burn multiple audio (mp3) files onto a CD-ROM and then distribute audio ‘resource discs’ to students.

Y! Audio Search provides students with an opportunity to research, replay, and reflect on their own learning experience. More importantly, as students incorporate different types of social media into their collaborative project-based learning activities, they develop the critical problem solving, web, knowledge management, and technology skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century.

And in that regard, Y! Audio Search is an important milestone in the evolution of online learning, social software, and self-publishing on the web.


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