Kerr-ching! The use of sound in the classroom (except teachers’ and pupils’ voices) is often overlooked. Almost everywhere that our pupils go they are used to hearing things and sound is used to reinforce messages all over the place. Try watching a TV game show and listening out for the sounds that accompany whatever the contestents are doing.

Obviously our classrooms aren’t TV studios and our lessons aren’t gameshows, but we can use sound to reinforce what we are teaching, or just to add another dimension to some of the things we do. One possiblity is to play music to the pupils while they are working, but that is a topic for another post. What I want to talk about is using sound effects rather than long pieces of music.

I sometimes like to play games with my classes to help introduce or reinforce a topic, maybe as a starter or plenary. It might be along the lines of a TV quiz like Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Countdown, or something like a simple team head to head quiz. I want the pupils to enjoy these and find them fun so I use the interactive whiteboard to make them visually engaging and I can use sound effects to add a further dimension. Nothing complex, maybe a ‘Ding’ for a correct answer or a round of applause at the end of a round.

There are lots of sound effects freely available on the internet. I have collected a few together in Mp3 format that you can download from here (Zip file – 1.17Mb).

When you have the sound effects you want to play the next decision is how you are going to play them. It is possible to use Windows media player, itunes or any other mp3 playing software, but that can be cumbersome as they are not designed for playing short sounds easily. A better alternative it to use some software designed for this purpose. There are several suitable programs around, most of which we originally designed for radio DJs to play their sound effects and jingles. The two I will talk about are both free and will do the job, but they are different mainly in the way that you play the sound effects. One is designed to be used with the computer keyboard and the other works well with a mouse.

Jazler Show

Jazler show is program designed for ‘Radio Automation’, but performs the job of playing sound effects well. The full version is a commercial (and expensive), but there is a free version that has everything you will need in the classroom.

You can set up different banks of sound effects with up to 30 sounds per bank. A sound is played by clicking on it’s name in one of the white boxes. You can set up a series of sounds to play in sequence by using the ‘decks’ on the left of the program.

To add a sound your right click on a button and browse for the file on your computer. You can preview the sound or choose only part of it to play. The sound adding screen is shown below.

Download Jazler Show free direct (.exe file – 10Mb)

(Chris Moyles) Sound Machine

Another option for playing sound effects is a program called the Sound Machine which is connected with the BBC radio DJ Chris Moyles. Sound machine is a simpler program than Jazler show and works by loading sound packs (paks) that contain a set of sound effects. Up to 4 sound paks can be loaded at once and the sounds are associated with keys on the computer keyboard.

You can view a list of the currently loaded sounds and the keys that will play them.

The sound machine and several sound paks can be downloaded from the chrismoyles.net website

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