Family Oral History and Smartphones

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Session Description:

Do you wish someone had recorded an audio interview with your great grandfather or great grandmother? How about your own father or mother? How valuable would an audio recording be in which one of your now-deceased relatives shared stories of their life growing up? What would it mean to hear that person share about their faith and their relationship with God, or how prayer and God sustained them through a dark valley in their life? It would be priceless to you and your family. Come to this session to hear examples of recorded family oral histories, and learn how to use free apps for your smartphone (iPhone or Android) to both record and share audio interviews with members of your family, church and community.

Creative Commons License

An audio recording of this session from May 3, 2014, is available.http://audio.speedofcreativity.org/2014/05/04/family-oral-history-and-smartphones-may-2014/

These materials by Wesley A. Fryer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Contact details for Wesley are available.

Playing with Media

Basic Mobile Apps

  1. SoundCloud (free - iOS / Android)
  2. iTalk and iTalkSync (free - iOS)
  3. Recordium ($2 - iOS)
  4. Spreaker (free - iOS / Android)
  5. AudioBoo (free for recordings <3 min, iOS / Android)

Intermediate / Advanced Mobile Apps

  1. Auphonic - post-production audio normalization (free - iOS/Android)
  2. Bossjock Studio - more advanced mobile podcasting ($10 - iOS)
  3. Other mobile audio creation apps (from SoundCloud)

Audio Interview Resources

  1. Great Questions List from Storycorps
  2. Normalize / clean up / remove noise with Auphonic (web-based tools, apps & software)

Oral History Projects and Podcasts

  1. The Story by Dick Gordon (NPR)
  2. Prtizker Military Library Podcasts
  3. Celebrate Oklahoma Voices videos
  4. Celebrate Kansas Voices videos
  5. Celebrate Texas Voices videos