Google Voice

As a Spanish teacher, I know I will have to do reading, writing, speaking and listening assessments with my students.  Managing the amount of paper work and time spent in class these assessments will involve seems like a huge task.  The one that concerns me most is speaking assessments.

How do I listen to a student speak while keeping my other students busy and quiet? How do I ensure the student who is doing his/her listening assessment can complete the assessment without being self conscience about other students listening in? How can I listen to the student speaking and instantly judge a student’s ability/

I asked some Spanish teachers how they handle speaking assessments.  I got answers that include: “I avoid them because they are almost impossible to do.”  “I give the other students busy work while I stand in the hall with each student while I pray that no one kills anyone else in my classroom.” (Yikes!) and “I take the students to the computer lab and use a program called Audacity.  The kids wear headphones with a microphone and record their speaking assessment. They then save them to their Elockers and then I have to go into each of their lockers and listen to them.  It takes forever so I don’t do it often.” And “I use Google Voice. It’s fast and easy.”

Google Voice caught my attention.  I did a little research and found out the Google Voice is a Google sponsored, free telephone number with a digital voicemail component that can be recorded from any phone.  The teacher sets up an account.  Google Voice has telephone numbers available for every area code.  The students call the number, follow a prompt recorded by the teacher, leave their speaking assessment “message” and then hang up.  The teacher then logs on at his or her convenience, listens to each student’s message and then grades it.  The teacher can listen to it as many times as he or she needs. The recordings can be deleted or saved.  I think students will find it fun to use their cell phones in class and teachers will find it handy to be able to have the students do their speaking assessments at the same time or at home. 

A world language teacher could do lot of types of speaking assessments using Google Voice.  He or she could give the students a poem or paragraph to recite in order to practice proper pronunciation.  The teacher could provide a picture and then ask students to react to it in the target language, or give them a question to respond to. The possibilities are endless.

I suggested Google Voice to my cooperative teacher.  He tried it and thought it was great! 

To set up a Google Voice account, go to: https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=grandcentral&passive=1209600&continue=https://www.google.com/voice&followup=https://www.google.com/voice&ltmpl=open

 

Reference:

ESL and Foreign Language Resources (n.d.)  Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/eslandforeignlanguage/tools/google-voice