A Plethora of Projects & Practical Pursuits

I’ve been playing with ReQall today. It is a service that allows you to record 60 second reminders to yourself in English using your cell phone. It then transcribes what you have said, posts it to your private web account, and e-mails the transcript and the accompanying audio file (as a .wav) to the e-mail address you have provided. (You can change your settings if you don’t like this feature.)

You can then access your account online, view your memos, and listen to a looping audio recording of them as you read the transcripts (which are available almost instantly). You can also share your memos with other users (so students could share the things they’ve recorded with their teacher.) Set-up takes about 15 seconds, the interface is beautiful, it is easy to use, and you can access it online or offline. I’m also intrigued by the promise of a visual component (as they are currently soliciting images that people are using as memory aids).

Aside from its obvious applications as a tool for personal productivity, I think it could be interesting to experiment with it as a way for ESL students to create private, online audio portfolios that they could use to self-evaluate their progress over time. (I tried it in Spanish. It records just fine, but cannot transcribe even the most Americanized Spanish, so you get a lot of gibberish in the written transcriptions.)

For additional ways it might be used both in and out of the classroom, see Liz Kolb’s blog post about it.