How about adding a whole new facet to the website?
Well it's very easy for me to sit here and make what could be a rather huge suggestion, as I have no idea how much work this would mean for our wonderful website developer not to mention our awesome administrators and moderators but here it is anyway lol 
How about adding a recording option into our thread boxes? Then instead of just being able to write our answers we could leave a voice comment. On our games we would get to practice our pronunciation as well as our spelling and diacritics.
I don't know about everyone else but I read and write far more than I get to speak Spanish which is not ideal. After all the whole idea of learning a language should really be centered around speaking to others and hearing others speak shouldn't it. Sure I listen to podcasts and recordings in other forms but half of the battle is not just knowing how to say something but to give your mouth lots of practice to roll those words around and get them out in an understandable form for those who understand Spanish.
We have the little recording doofer already that we use at the end of the lessons so I wonder how difficult it would be to add this to the forum thread boxes themselves?
I think it would add another whole dimension to the forum getting to listen to each others accents and pronunciation etc and would be fantastically advantageous for 'speaking' every day!
Anyway I'm sure there will be thoughts both for and against the idea or improvements on it and I would love to hear them all
22 Answers
While I think the idea is very good, from a technical point of view I think it's very unlikely that the developers will go for it. Recording sound into the threads would require, aside from major modifications to the site's platform, investing a lot in infrastructure to support the additional load of storing and streaming sound. Much easier to record what you want in something like YouTube, and then just reference the link.
Well, I tried not to get too depressed when I read all of the reasons this might not work. To me, this is an unbelievably exciting idea!!! Not only would it help with our Spanish, but the idea that people could hear your accent from New Zealand, mine from Philadelphia, Eddy's from England, Izan from Texas....think of the variety of English accents we could expose people to! 
Well, since I am not a computer expert, I am going to just keep hoping and dreaming that this could some day be a reality. I do see what Pesta is saying about moderation, but since I have no computer technology skills, I will suggest one more probably impossible idea....namely to prevent certain words or phrases from being used much like we have a way of preventing people from typing in all caps.
You never know what is possible. Even though this might be difficult to do now, perhaps as technology improves at the rapid pace that it already is moving in, this could be possible in the not so distant future.
Who will audit them for "Family-friendly" content? This new feature will be bound to be abused by some.
As I said, who will do this?
I think it is all too easy to put forward ideas but give no solutions as to who would then do the corrections or listen to all the recordings etc.
We actually did have a recording function on the old site, which then crashed it was part of the Learn function, but of course, only two persons were actually listening to the recordings: Qquentin and Samdie
Two reasons why this is impossible :
1) technical issues
2) nobody to correct or audit
Yes, that's a Wonderful idea, MC
I am not sure just how keen our admin team will be about any work that may involve 
but I would support the idea in principle
Way to Go / Go for it girl
I hope that encourages you
As far as the infrastructure to store and stream sound goes, could there be a work-around so that the recording doofer is actually linked to an external site that offers such a service (gratis of course) like youtube, or I believe there are others, and automates the whole process, which would kill two birds if not three with one stone?
1 SD wouldn't have to make any major changes other than write a little program that makes the magic happen when you click on the button and 2. it doesn't have to have any extra room to store the recordings but at the same time 3. people who are not particularly computer savvy or just don't have enough time to go away, record and link such recording back to their thread, get an nifty little addition at the click of a button
Or am I oversimplifying something that would never work?
How about adding a recording option into our thread boxes? Then instead of just being able to write our answers we could leave a voice comment. On our games we would get to practice our pronunciation as well as our spelling and diacritics.
Apart from the technical issues, who would correct the pronunciation?
I love the idea. But there will be many reasons it can't be done. Quite a few are already posted. Here's one problem nobody mentioned yet: Who will audit them for "Family-friendly" content? This new feature will be bound to be abused by some.
I think that as an idea, it's fantastic. However, audio requires A LOT more bandwidth and storage space. These, of course, cost money. There is also, as Feliz pointed out, the added load on the admins.
Since I have no idea the cost-to-benefit ratio here, I cannot say whether it'll be worth it or not.
So I think it's an awesome idea, but maybe not practical - maybe.
Hey Kiwi, great ideas! +1
It is simple to create an audio reply. Simpe use Windows Sound Recorder that creates a .wma audio file that plays on Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, or most other free audio players.
Then upload that file to any online file hosting site like Skydrive. The hosting site will provide you with a link to the audio file that you can post into your reply. Then anyone wanting to listen to it can download and play it.
If you want to it to be even less hassle, then join a site that hosts audio files and has its own editor and player so that you just go to that site, create the message there, it is stored on that site and anyone can link to that site and play it.
Sound familiar to posting images in a reply? It is exactly the same except that you are dealing with audio files rather than image files.
The main drawback is the same as with image files. Storage. When I first joined SD you could post almost anything into a reply (image files, audio files, animations, gadgets, streaming video, blogs, etc.). Everthing about your reply was stored on the SD server, so that 6 months later if someone looked at your reply everthing was there. Of course, that led to unbelievable storage requirements so the concept of only accepting links to material stored elsewhere was applied. You used to be able to post a YouTube video (player and all) into your reply. Now you can only link to one on YouTube's site.
The problem with that? I'll use myself as an example. I use Photobucket as an image hosting site. If I wish to post an image not already located somewhere online, I upload it to Photobucket and then link to the image from my SD reply. So far so good. The problem is that I routinely clear old photos off my Photobucket page. So if someone looks at my reply 6 months later the image has a broken link and it is not available. Its even worse with screen capture images. I have my screen capture software set up so that it deletes captured image files after 5 days. So if someone looks at my reply a week later the captured image is no longer there.
Thatimage loss isn't critical, but if you start actually giving audio replies to questions, then the same problem will occur. These audio answers will be stored somewhere other than SD and are subject to having broken links due to deletions on the source site. The only solution would be to store the audio file on the SD server which is the same nightmare that happened with image storage on the SD server.
So, thoretically, audio answers are available now. No additional changes are needed. Just post your audio reply somewhere online and provide a link to the audio file (or to a player where the file is stored). The only problem is that the person rearching the question at a later date may not find your audio reply if you have broken the link for whatever reason.
his thread has been active long enough, that I would imagine either an admin or someone well versed in SD parameters has read this, and no one has shown up to say "Hold it right thar varmint".
I had not seen this thread until now, so hold it right there kiwi, not gonna happen, if you have any doubt or want to suggest the issue to the web owner, feel free to write on feedback.
There is simply no way at all to implement all you are asking for, especially not the work implied for those who would have to moderate.
What good would it do to make a recording if you don't get corrected?
Go to skype chats if you feel you need to talk Spanish, but a special thread for recordings, no way at all.
There is nobody to moderate this kind of thing and special access to only a certain group of people....ask gekko about that, he tried something far easier and no luck at all of course.
I especially like the idea of an area perhaps for audio postings - nice
As I said before: Who would do the auditing? You?
Thank you everyone for your input - perhaps using external links back would be a way we could get this off the ground ourselves if admin have no issues with it.
But also just thinking more on Pesta's comments about the extra work load for moderating etc. If a 'record doofer' was say included on this site it could be done a bit like the privilege of commenting. For instance it could be earnt by those who had somehow proven themselves to be trustworthy site members - for instance access could be given after the 25k point mark. Hopefully those members having reached that level would give little trouble with audio clips and with admin having the control over the access to such a privilege there shouldn't be too much problem. Flagging could also be used for the recordings as it is with comments already, alerting admin to any problems and then acess to the 'doofer' revoked for those who might abuse the privilege.
Kiwi, I would encourage you to make a recording, ask a question on the forum, add the link, and see what happens.
This thread has been active long enough, that I would imagine either an admin or someone well versed in SD parameters has read this, and no one has shown up to say "Hold it right thar varmint".
Of course if they don't like what they see, someone will tell you. They will probably be nice about it if they do.
And anyone here is already able to post links, and the admins get help by our flagging of inappropriate things in the forum. So no system really needs be created, as the system in place already has it covered.
Then again, I have sometimes been lax in my situational awareness, and situational assessment skills.
If you have a goal of your speech being corrected, that could create some issues.
As far as the infrastructure to store and stream sound goes, could there be a work-around so that the recording doofer is actually linked to an external site that offers such a service (gratis of course) like youtube, or I believe there are others, and automates the whole process, which would kill two birds if not three with one stone?
Any one from Admin?
Kiwi, I really think the idea is good. Truly. But it's not going to happen.
First of all, a number of far less complex changes have been suggested and requested before, and thus far none have been accepted. Apparently the work required to implement changes in the current SD Forum platform is too demanding to the resources available to the SD keepers. I have not been told this in some many words, and I cannot speak on behalf on the developers and administrators, but this is something that I can easily deduce from the answers I have received.
Second, even the second proposed solution, while technically feasible, does require a fair amount of programming and fiddling, plus all the bureaucracy of signing some sort of agreement with "x- sound handling service", in order to be able to have a permanent sound recording feature implemented on the site.
Finally, if the solution were so simple, we probably would be seeing it in lots of places already. My guess is that this is something that will have to be widely adopted by the social networks first, before we get to see it in other places.
Meanwhile, anyone who wishes to share voice, there are a number of ways to record voice and uploaded to the Internet, and then it's a simple matter to include a link to that recording from your post. This subject was discussed a couple of years ago in a series of threads started by Carlos.
I suggest you give this a shot - and don't hold your breath for any major changes in SD.
