First Voices

Blog Entry #3:

In preparing for this blog entry on oracy and voice recording, I came across what I believe to be a truly innovative idea that began as one teacher’s idea for literacy within the classroom. At the LAU-WELNEW Tribal School in Brentwood Bay, Peter Brand a 55 year-old Australian born teacher and advocate of Aboriginal culture began using computers within the school to explore the use of indigenous language with voice recording software. This simple idea had a great impact within the school and community. With much angst at the prospect of the loss of the Saanich original language, voice recording technology was used as a means to engage the younger, tech savvy, visual learners within the school. The program was so successful that it caught the interest of the wider community and has since 1999, seen significant investment in the development and creation of the website FirstVoices, an online database that uses text, sound and video. This web database is available to any language group to develop its own authentic language reference resource from within its own community as a tool for the development of language resources. Please check it out, it is an amazing resource!

www.firstvoices.com