Say Your Comments 语音评语

One of the major time-consuming tasks for teachers is grading work and giving feedback.  Various studies on learning has showed the importance of feedback.  The work assigned by you and finished by students is useless to improve learning without your feedback.  However,  a lot of us do wonder whether students pay attention to the feedback we carefully constructed.  It seems that the kids just glanced at those sentences for less a second.  The same sentences you have spent quite a few minutes writing, making sure that you offer sincere suggestion but not too harsh to hurt any young, creative minds.

I am not sure if we give feedback in a different manner will help.  But I don't think it will hurt to try something new.  A month ago, at the workshop provided by our school's art teacher, I learned that you can leave voice comments on pdf. document using Adobe Acrobat Professional.  Most of us are familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader, the program we use to read pdf. documents.  And most of the time, the utility of the program stops here.  Adobe has many other powerful, renown programs.  However, I doubt any teachers will use Photoshop to correct papers.    

Using Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can leave your feedback in voice.  Students do not need to have Acrobat Professional to hear these feedbacks.  You can also leave writing comments on their work.  All the Word and PowerPoint documents can be saved as pdf. document.  This is extremely helpful when you hope students can collect feedbacks of their PowerPoint presentations and other work.  Have students save the PowerPoint slides they create as pdf. document and share with you first.  When students give the presentation, you can give the feedback in class and meanwhile, record these comments onto their pdf. presentation document and later share with students.

Depending on how much you speak and how fast you can type, recording the feedback might save you some time or not.  Recording the comments also give students an alternative way to view the feedback. I can imagine listening to the comments can benefit students with reading difficulties and those audio leaners.  And it might peak students interest and encourage them to listen to what their teachers have to say exactly.

在最近的一次校内讲座里，学到了一个老软件的新功能。大家一定都知道adobe acrobat，我们用来看pdf文件的软件。adobe acrobat professional的软件不仅可以让你看pdf文件，批注，也可以让录下语音批注。

批作业留评语是我们老师的一项重要工作。不少研究教学成果的报告都提到有针对性的
，及时的作业评语对学生学习的帮助。有时候我却不免纠结，小朋友到底有没有用心看我们老师们仔细斟酌后写下的评语。不知道录下语音评语是否可以让学生们有兴趣听听老师到底有什么重要讯息要传递。对阅读有障碍的学生和喜欢用听力接收信息的学生，语音评语对他们而言应该是个福音。

所有的word和powerpoint文档都可以被保存为pdf文档。学生不需要有acrobat professional的软件来看或听老师给的评语，普通的adobe acrobat reader就行了。学生做powerpoint报告时，老师常常在课堂直接给评语。如果让学生事先把他们的报告保存为pdf文档，传送给老师，老师可以直接把课堂上说的评语录下来。这样学生也可以收集这些评语。既然评语如此重要，保存老师的评语，比较评语，一定可以帮助学生看到自己的进步以及需要改进的地方。