Audacity as a tool for the creation of educational materials. An approach through the MOOC «Music for the 21st century»

Abstract

This article analyses the relevance of Audacity as a creation tool of learning materials for both teachers and students, since it has multiple functions and provides numerous advantages, despite its simple use. To that purpose, thanks to the creation of an specific content analysis tool based in 8 items, an study of soundscapes created by the students of the MOOC Música para el Siglo XXI is carried out with the purpose of categorize their educative aims as well as distinguish and characterize each soundscape according with the origin of their sound source in relation with the classification proposed from Schafer (1993). Thanks to the latter analysis we know that the didactic applications are within those previously catalogued, where the use of soundscapes both to elaborate musical resources as well as to create sound representations through constructions carried out by the students make a clean sweep of almost all of the 55 analyzed compositions. The study concludes with the idea that this tool gives support to multiple areas of knowledge and that its capabilities as a multitasking tool provide a wide range of perspectives applicable within areas such as pedagogy or specific didactic fields.