Feel like gabbing?

Via Jessica Haxhi, an easy to use web-based voice recording tool. Gabcast is a free utility to create sound files by calling an 800 number from your phone. No advertising, easy interface. Took me all of 5 minutes to set up, record, and publish here. Audio files can be downloaded as MP3 files. Slick. Audio quality is acceptable – sounds like a phone. By clicking the link below you will be sent over to the Gabcast website. Theoretically, I could save the MP3 file and put it up on DivShare, which may be needed depending on the number and size of audio files allowed in Gabcast’s free account. But for now I will leave it as the code is presented by Gabcast.

Gabcast! Communicate #1

How could a world language teacher use this?

  • -Students or teachers could call in and create audio files for use on blogs, wikis, or simple assignments.
  • -Students could each create their own channel and create a library of audio files
  • -Gabcast has a conference calling feature – I didn’t explore it much, but potentially teachers-students, or student-student could record a voice conversation via cell phone.

Volunteering at Kiva

Ever hear of Kiva? Kiva lets you select entrepreneurs in developing nations and contribute a loan to that person through financial partner organizations. Basically, it works like this:

kiva loan cycle

Pretty cool! Creating that connection by personalizing the loans. I admit, I have few loans out – and it is very addicting to want to help others. And you can see the other people who have also contributed loans. Loan recipients submit 1-2 journals over the course of the loan, enabling the lenders to receive news of the endeavor.

In the spirit of helping, I noticed that Kiva needs volunteers to translate microloan descriptions. So I am now officially a Kiva Volunteer. Every week, on Fridays, I translate loan descriptions from Spanish to English. Pretty neat thing going on here, connecting every day people from around the world to give a helping hand to our fellow human beings!


Kiva - loans that change lives