Spoken Word Services

What can I hear on the internet?

The Spoken Word Services aims to answer just this question. Part of the jointly funded Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) / National Science Foundation (NSF) programme, Digital Libraries in the Classroom, the Spoken Word Services aims to transform higher education through the integration of digitised audio into learning and teaching. At Glasgow Caledonian, we are making a substantial portion of the BBC's radio archive accessible online for educational use, ranging from Leonard Cheshire's eyewitness account of the Nagasaki atomic bomb to Boy George's frank discussion of his own heroin addiction.

But as well as making digitized audio accessible, the Spoken Word project aims to enhance the usability of streamed audio resources. In collaboration with partners, Michigan State University and Northwestern University, we are developing a set of software tools that will allow students and teachers to locate, segment, annotate and organise audio - and share and discuss their findings with a community of users.

Though the project is still in its development phase, the Spoken Word team has begun working closely with a pilot group of teachers and students, reflecting the project's pedagogical focus. We hope soon to make our repository accessible to all users at GCU through our own website and through the library catalogue. In the meantime, the project team are happy to give advice on how to source relevant digital content, how to clear third party copyright for online use and the best methods of delivering multimedia in learning and teaching.

Contact

Project manager: David Donald

For further information please contact David Donald (0141 273 1901, d.donald@gcal.ac.uk)

Project timescale: February 2003 - February 2008

Last Updated: 31 October, 2005
Edited by: Learning Services Web Team