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Today's educator who is adept with audio technology as well as the tools to harness its power is truly at the cutting edge of creating meaningful media for a variety of subject matter.
Introduction
In the past few years, there has been an increased emphasis for teachers to become more adept at multimedia-based skills. Whether it's creating PowerPoint® slides, MPEG movies, image files, or a host of other tasks, today's K-12 teacher needs to have an appropriate level of expertise in multimedia development. One aspect of this skill set that has not been emphasized is that of understanding and using audio files that can capture a wide variety of sounds for the benefit of the classroom.
Imagine how much better a geology class would be if the sounds of Old Faithful could be captured and included in a website. A music class could record its school band's rendition of the Alma Mater on the school's website to give a more complete experience to a visitor.
Would a workshop on bird songs be complete without hearing some? How about a lecture on life in a bustling city without hearing some of the typical city sounds: the clanging of the bells on San Francisco's trolley cars or the tolling of Big Ben's chimes in London? An educational website can be just as lacking without associated sounds. Sounds can provide an additional dimension to the standard text, images, and movies.
This article will explain the various types of audio file formats along with where each may be best utilized. Teachers will also come away with an understanding of how each file type is created and structured so that they can make the best possible choice. Software necessary to record and play back these files will also be discussed.
Audio File Formats
Some file formats are designed to store very particular sorts of data. The JPEG image format, for example, is designed only to store static images. Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the GIF format supports storage of both still images and simple animations.
An audio file format is a format for storing audio data (sound) on a computer system or media. There are numerous file formats for storing...