| | So, as part of my job, I process raw audio recordings of math lectures. I do thinks like splice in edits, cut out audible mouse clicks, and other stuff like that. Because of the format for these lectures, I also edit pieces of audio that sound like this, "And in this problem, we'll have a remainder. Go ahead and do the division. That's right. No, here our answer is going to be 3 with a remainder of 1." Here, I would cut out "That's right" and save it as correct1.wav and then cut out "No, here our answer is going to be 3 with a remainder of 1" and save it as wrong1.wav so that they can be exported for use in the actionscript that makes interactive questions in the lecture. Needless to say, I listen to every lecture I work with over and over and over and over again. (Because we're working with 4th grade math, I've gotten really good at carrying.)
Now, here's the part that adds a layer of strangeness. You may already know that I'm actually working for the two brothers who ran my high school. The older one is the lecturer who does the recordings above. He's a nice enough guy, but he lives a life free from irony of any kind. Anyone who knows me will tell you how seriously I take things like irony, rhetorical distance, and the ability both to analyze and to laugh at oneself. I don't think I've ever heard this guy tell or laugh at a joke. We first met in 1997. Perhaps, to me, he will always be the bland math teacher I knew as a teenager.
Anyway, back to the audio lectures. To keep the kids engaged, we do a lot of things like small animations in the video component to the lectures, add sound effects, and generally try to keep things interesting for 10-year-olds. One of the ways we do that with the audio is by keeping the lecture conversational and varying the responses to right answers. If the student enters a right answer, he or she could hear "Correct" or "That's it" or "You got it." They might even hear "Great!" if it was a hard question. This morning, I edited a response that started with "Totally awesome!" I just wanted you all to understand how weird it was for me to hear the voice that taught me geometry say "totally awesome." It was like listening to Eric Cartman trying to speak Chinese. The words somehow couldn't fit in his mouth, so what came out was a parody of what others had exclaimed in moments of joy. At least, that's how I heard it.
all around the world hearts pound with the rhythm |
| | Posted 10/17/2008 1:03 PM - 8 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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