Top 5 microphones to use in a Primary School Classroom

Before you get a mic, check to see if your monitor or netbook/laptop has one built in.

5. Use the microphone on your netbook / laptop.
This will not give you high quality audio recording and you may struggle if the room is full of kids. Most devices now have microphones built and you may even be able to use your speakers to record the sound if quality is not an issue.

The Logitech headset is a standard microphone with average to good audio recording quality. The common problem with headsets such as this is that the wires often get tangled/chewed. A headset also allows the child to have personal audio output space which is useful when working on individual audio projects. Read this guide to keep your headphone wires free from tangles.

3. The Leapfrog Learn and Grove Microphone from £10
This is a microphone for pre school . It does not allow you to record to a PC. This microphone is designed to instil confidence, increase social skills and stimulate a child’s senses. It is not USB or powered by any device so requires 3x AA batteries.

A desk microphone tends to be an ideal solution if your static ICT learning location such as an ICT suite. Desk Microphones are good for recording up to 2 people and tend not to get as damaged as head sets. The audio quality is similar to that of a head set mic with no real ability to cancel out background noise.

1. TTS EasiSpeak – £30+

No wires, no fuss. No direct sound recording onto websites/software etc. This microphone is the most simple of the above to use. Simply press record, say what you have to say then hit play and instantly get audible feedback. Once you have recorded what you want to say and you are happy you plug the microphone directly into your laptop/netbook/pc and use the audio file however you want. The microphone comes with a copy of audacity on the USB stick ready to install (very easy process). The main disadvantage to this device is you cannot use it to directly record audio onto any websites so creating voki’s and other broadcasting methods can be slightly more tricky.

Web2 Primary School go go magic arms

Due to the success of the etherpad on schools web2 services I decided to create a searchable engine. It’s very easy to use, check it out here.

It’s nothing fancy, don’t expect much other than a simple way to find the right service for you. If it’s wrong then let me know. If you want to be able to search by subject, year etc. then please get in touch!!

Primary Blogger – How to use your own domain

So you want to move your current website to primary blogger or use a domain you own.

An Example of this is http://www.wilsdenprimary.co.uk

You can do this for free by accessing your DNS control panel and creating a new A record for your domain.

Note: Having 2 entries means if one fails the visitor will automatically try the next. It also means we can load balance (Which is nice because PrimaryBlogger is huge).

Add entries called www that point to 94.136.53.6, 217.199.169.145 & 109.107.35.108 (Or modify your existing A record to point to these).

If you need assistance with this step please get in touch with Primary Technology.

Once you have set your DNS then log into your Primary Blogger Dashboard by visiting your blog and clicking Site Admin.

  1. Click Tools
  2. Click Domain Mapping
  3. Under add a new domain type in your domain name.
  4. Click OK
  5. Wait 24 hours.

You may want to let us know if you are going to do this.. Why? I hear you ask.. Well we have some clever caching in place that speeds up websites based on their hostname and if your hostname is not included it may mean your PrimaryBlogger blog does some weird things..