Hearing Grandma Maria’s stories about growing up on a farm. Nephew Marco’s first words. Uncle Fritz’s recollections about his life in the circus. Capturing and sharing their voices for posterity in a digital audio recording: Priceless.

Evoca offers its easy-to-use Evoca Call Recorder for Skype to capture, share, and archive family stories, oral histories, and special events as MP3 recordings. Skype call recording with Evoca is accomplished “in the cloud” with no downloads or updates required. It is like StoryCorps inside your phone or computer, without having to wait for a van to show up in your town every few years or have family members in the same place to record and preserve their stories.

Evoca enables its subscribers to easily record family stories using Skype or any type of phone, share the audio recordings via email for listening or downloading, save them in a private online album for convenient playback, or post to family and genealogy websites, blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter. Recording the audio stream of Skype video calls is another handy Evoca feature. Family members anywhere in the world can playback recordings from any mobile smartphone, tablet or computer. Burning a CD to send to non-technical family members is simple to do.

Evoca subscribers can interview family members between continents, across countries, or around the table. They also can invite family members to record their own voices using any of these three methods: 1 – Phone or Skype – subscriber registers up to 30 phone numbers or 30 Skype accounts of family members, so their recordings will be saved to the subscriber’s account; 2 – Recording by phone using a dedicated “family storytelling hotline” with an Evoca Local or Toll-Free Plan; 3 – Recording their voices using Evoca’s online recorder on a family website or blog.

Another quick gift idea is to give an Evoca Pro subscription to journalists, writers or bloggers to record their own voice, interviews and conference calls. As She Writes member Monique Fields said, “Every writer in the world should have an Evoca subscription!” The Evoca team agrees. A Free Trial subscription is available before upgrading to a Pro, Local or Paid Plan.

Evoca guest blogger Lynda Stucky, CEO of ClearySpeaking, the accent reduction specialists, shares terrific holiday gift ideas that provide fun and language skills exercise for people of all ages.

Are you looking for a unique gift this holiday season for the board game lover on your list?  Whether it is for a child or an adult, a native English speaker or non-native English speaker, building language skills is important for anybody at any level. How about a game that promotes language skill development or vocabulary building and promises hours of fun and laughter with your friends, family or colleagues!

Like anything else, practicing healthy habits and developing new speech and language skills can escalate self-confidence, improve memory and cognition.  If you were told that this process could be accomplished by playing games and having fun, would it sound too good to be true?  Well, it is true.  Here are a few games that will really bring joy this holiday season and build language and cognitive skills!

Mad Gab – an excellent game for learning the importance of stress in words

Taboo – learn to describe an action, idea, or thing using different words

Cranium – develops word finding, spelling, unscrambling, and vocabulary skills

Scattergories – a game that requires you to express yourself quickly

Balderdash – learn to use creative word expression

Scrabble – an all time classic that builds vocabulary and spelling

Do you fumble when trying to pronounce new words?  Mad Gab gives you the opportunity to explore how stress on words changes the meaning completely.  Try reading this combination of words until you are stressing the correct syllables and producing a common saying:  Twin Tea Twin Tea Heinz Height  OR  Thirst Aim Awning.  Can you figure it out?  This game proves that stressing the right syllables is important to figure out words and it shows you how we link words together to form thoughts. The slogan for this game is:  It’s not what you SAY, It’s what you HEAR!

Have you ever fumbled looking for the right words to use?  Learning to describe actions and ideas coherently is an important skill.  Most ideas can be expressed in multiple ways.  We can say the same thing using different words.  Since most of us experience moments of forgetting words, Taboo is a great way to practice describing ideas using different words. In this game, you must describe something without using specific words that are listed on your card.  For example, try describing sugar without saying the words sweet, white, brown, coffee or candy! The game further develops speaking with clarity.  When someone doesn’t understand what you say, being able to describe what you want to say in another way is important to help your listener understand.

Improving your vocabulary will reap benefits throughout your life.  New vocabulary helps build knowledge while ensuring brain activity for the aging brain.  When you can use and speak new words, you’ll produce a message that is clear and intentional.  By playing with new words, you may also be able to access them more readily and decrease the number of times that you experience word finding problems.  Both Scrabble and Cranium help develop vocabulary skills.

Having difficulty thinking quickly?  How about a game that promotes quick responses.  Sometimes when we want to express ourselves quickly, we need the skill of saying things concisely.  Scattergories helps develop quick thinking.  In this game, you match categories using words that start with the same letter.  The catch?  You only have three minutes to come up with the words to fit the categories.

Balderdash is a game of bluffing!  Ok, maybe that’s not such a good thing in real life but it sure is a lot of fun in a game.  You will have to display a lot of confidence to hide your bluff.  In this game you provide silly or serious descriptions of events and your team decides if you are telling the truth or bluffing.

If you are someone who likes to play games by yourself, there are plenty of language developing games available to play alone.  Crossword puzzles, JUMBLE puzzles and word searches are all excellent games for vocabulary building. You can extend the learning by looking up unfamiliar words in the dictionary and writing them down in a small notebook.  Then, try using them in conversation.  Review them frequently to assure that they become part of your vocabulary bank.

Working on developing your language skills is fun and entertaining with any of these award winning games for all ages.  Whether you are looking for something to do at a party, reunion, or during a vacation, you can’t go wrong with these educational games!  Don’t forget to add them to your holiday list this year!

Evoca is a featured app in the new Skype App Directory, making Evoca’s global cloud-based digital call recording service readily accessible to over 660 million registered Skype users worldwide. Evoca Call Recorder users can record Skype calls from their computers, smartphones, and tablets, using Skype apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Skype, the leading global VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] telephone brand, was acquired by Microsoft in October 2011.

The Evoca Call Recorder makes it easy to record Skype calls: your own voice, interviews, conference calls, and the audio stream of video calls and then post audio on websites, Facebook, and Twitter, email, or keep private. Evoca subscription plans are popular with journalists, authors, marketers, advocates, educators, students, coaches, and researchers.

A branded custom Skype call recorder also is available to invite visitors, customers, supporters, or fans to record opinions, testimonials, and stories directly into the user’s online Evoca account.

About Evoca

Evoca is a leading voice-to-web services company offering digital audio recording using Skype, any phone, and an online recorder. Recordings are instantly saved in MP3 format available for publishing to any website, blog, Facebook, or Twitter. Playback is possible from any computer, smartphone, or tablet. With auto-detection of a listener’s browser, Evoca’s “smartplayers” make it possible to listen from iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and any other browser-based mobile device or computer. Evoca has delivered Skype call recording since 2006. Evoca subscription plans offer a range of standard and customizable features.

Evoca also licenses Evoca Enterprise [RESTful HTTP API/application programming interface] for other web services and organizations that want to brand and integrate Evoca recording, management, and posting features into their applications. Evoca Labs provides customization services for Evoca Enterprise licensees.

In its November 15th Open Letter to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives about freedom of expression, intellectual property and H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, the Global Network Initiative (GNI) voiced its concern that “provisions of the proposed U.S. law H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and related legislation could have dangerous unintended consequences for freedom of expression and economic innovation in the U.S. and around the world.” Evoca is a Company Member of the Global Network Initiative.

GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan wrote, “It is critically important that Congress avoid measures that could erode free expression norms in a way that would set dangerous precedent for other countries considering similar measures, and make it more difficult for companies everywhere to resist surveillance and censorship demands that infringe upon individual rights.”

In her November 15th New York Times Op-Ed Contributor article, “Stop the Great Firewall of America,” Rebecca McKinnon, GNI board member, also warns, “The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial.”She continues, “The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.”

McKinnon also points out that, “… social networking services are protected by a “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants Web sites immunity from prosecution as long as they act in good faith to take down infringing content as soon as rights-holders point it out to them.” McKinnon is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a founder of Global Voices Online.

Sister Tania Santander Atauchi combines her Spanish language skills and cultural expertise about Spanish-speaking countries to educate her students at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. She expands her students’ educational experience “into the cloud” by enabling them to record their language-and-culture assignments simply by using their mobile phones to record from any location.

Students can record, listen, and re-record. Their audio assignments are saved online as MP3 recordings. Sister Tania emails the recordings, with feedback, to the students, who can listen, download, embed in their own websites or blogs, or even post to Facebook or Twitter to share their accomplishments. Their instructor easily registered the students’ mobile phone numbers to instantly save and store the recordings in her password-protected Evoca account, one of several recording management methods available with Evoca for Educators.

When the Evoca team learned that Sister Tania was applying Evoca is exactly one of the uses for which it was built, we wanted to hear more about her background, her work inside and outside of the classroom, and the faith and devotion she brings to her students. Listen to Sister Tania’s own words.

Sister Tania Santander Atauchi was born in Urubamba, Cusco, a mountains city in Peru, in 1971. She attended elementary and high school there. At age 19, Sister Tania joined the Congregation of Divine Providence. As part of her mission, she  moved to United States in 2002 and started graduate studies at Boston College, from which she received an M.A. in Hispanic Studies. Presently, she is involved in academic and parish work, at Stonehill College and the Boston Cathedral of the Holy Cross respectively.

When we learned that Jim Kouzes, renown co-author with Barry Posner of The Leadership Challenge, the award-winning and best-selling book and leadership series, had become an Evoca subscriber, we wanted to hear more about how he and Barry amassed their treasure trove of publications, clients, workshops, and online learning tools. We are delighted that Jim has been capturing leaders’ voices using Evoca’s convenient phone interview recording feature and online transcription service.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary of the book’s initial publication, Jim and Barry are distilling their knowledge into a remarkable fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge. Backed by over 30 years of original research and data from over 3 million leaders, The Leadership Challenge is the foundation of their leadership development program by the same name. Their diverse, global client list includes the American Cancer Society, Caterpillar, Cornell University, Herman Miller, Kaiser Permanente, SAS Institute, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

The guiding principle is evidence-based leadership. For example, The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership resulted from an intensive research project to determine the leadership competencies that are essential to getting extraordinary things done in organizations. To conduct the research, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have collected thousands of “Personal Best” stories—the experiences people recalled when asked to think of a peak leadership experience. Murem Sharpe, Evoca CEO, invited Jim to tell his story. Listen in.

Fluency in English is not enough to ensure that a speaker will be understood. Lynda Stucky, president of ClearlySpeaking and certified speech pathologist, advocates for clear, professional speech in the global workplace. Her company helps her clients speak more clearly and be understood. Good English pronunciation can provide the competitive edge for a promotion, new job, or sale. ClearlySpeaking offers tele-coaching sessions recorded using Evoca, one-on-one instruction, corporate group meetings, and digital media products.

ClearlySpeaking trains individuals with a variety of communication challenges including accent modification — regional and foreign, care of the professional voice, vocal dynamics, diction, grammar and how to speak concisely. Businesses and groups are educated on effective communication skills, the spoken image and vocal hygiene.

In her phone interview with Evoca CEO Murem Sharpe, Lynda explains, “I work with non-native English speakers who have a great grasp of the English language, but they struggle with intelligibility or being better understood because they are not following American intonations.” She adds, “Our language has a very definite rhythm and melody to it.”  Hear examples about correcting Eastern Indian and “Pittsburghese” accents in the Lynda Stucky interview recorded and shared online using Evoca.

About Lynda Stucky and ClearySpeaking: Ms. Stucky earned her Bachelor of Science in Speech Pathology from the University of Kansas and Master of Arts in Speech Pathology from the University of Kansas Medical Center. She is a certified speech pathologist and a member of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, an affiliate member of the National Speakers Association, a member of Pittsburgh Technology Council and a Toastmaster.  She serves on the board of Ten Thousand Villages which supports entrepreneurs of Developing World countries. For more information about ClearySpeaking, use the online contact form or call: +1 412-264-1717.

About Evoca: Evoca makes it easy to record voice using any phone, Skype or computer microphone and publish MP3 recordings on websites, blogs, Facebook, or Twitter, keep private, or share with an internal group. Evoca Plans offer voice recording using any phone, Skype or computer microphone and posting to any website, blog, Facebook or Twitter or sharing privately. With dedicated local or toll-free numbers and custom Skype call recorders, subscribers can to comments from followers and fans and embed online recorders to capture language practice sessions, opinions, and testimonials.

A 15-day Evoca free trial subscription is available with no credit card required. For companies and web services that want to brand and integrate Evoca features into their applications, Evoca also licenses Evoca Enterprise, our RESTful HTTP API [application programming interface]. Learn more at Evoca’s How It Works section, email businessdevelopment@evoca.com or call +1.212.372.7670 or toll-free U.S./Canada: 1-866-940-9988.

Using a high school student’s favorite companion — the mobile phone — an experienced  Spanish language teacher has increased opportunities for her students to learn Spanish and boost performance in the Speaking section of the College Board Advanced Placement [AP] Spanish Language Exam, 20% of the total score. Teacher Irene Zingg reports,”The kids really, really like it!” Students in Ms. Zingg’s Spanish classes are producing 10 times more practice sessions using Evoca.

The students dial a local number from their mobile phone and start talking. The audio session is saved as an MP3 recording into the student’s online album in the teacher’s Evoca account. The student can listen to the recording on any computer, smartphone or tablet and download it to track progress. Students achieve two key language learning objectives: improve pronunciation and think in the language, fast and efficiently. Another bonus: shy students no longer have to speak in front of the entire class. Their mobile phone is their private online language lab, sharing results only with the teacher.

Listen to the interview with Ms. Zingg about how she has created a mobile online language lab.

Before using Evoca, Ms. Zingg’s students had only one chance per class to record at the classroom’s only computer workstation. They sat through the rest of class, bored by listening to their classmates answering the same question over and over again. Then she tried to get the students to record on their laptop computers, but there were frequent problems — no charger, no sound card, no microphone. When the student made a recording and emailed to her, it might be in an unusual file format, not have title, and have no name recorded at the beginning to identify the student.

In addition to phone recording, educators can embed an online recorder into any web or blog page and even create an online language lab web page exclusive to a student or class using Evoca’s WordPress Voice Comments Recorder.  And educators can offer Skype recording by registering their students’ Skype accounts to record and save to the educator’s Evoca account.

Language educators can learn more about using Evoca for high school students, college students, ESL learners, and professional clients at Evoca for Educators. Evoca Plans are available for online signup including 15-day Free Trial subscription. Subscribers can archive their Evoca account between semesters and assignments for up to 90 days, suspend monthly subscription payments while saving all recordings and settings and reactivating at any time.

Educational and e-learning organizations also can integrate Evoca features into their web applications “in the cloud” using Evoca Enterprise, the company’s Software-as-a-Service [SaaS] delivered through a RESTful HTTP API [application programming interface.]

Simple English News [SEN] publishes interesting English language news articles with audio recordings to help ESL [English-as-a-Second Language] learners around the world to read English, listen to the pronunciation, and practice it.

Using Evoca’s universal Evoca smart audio player, a listener can playback audio recordings with any smartphones or tablets – including iPhones, iPads, Androids, and BlackBerrys, and any computer. The Evoca smart player automatically detects the listener’s browser type and streams the right audio player – Flash for Androids and other devices or HTML5 for Apple devices. Three other player widget types are available: Flash, iFrame, and HTML5.

Simple English News Founder Sam Margolis launched the website to make the news accessible to people learning English. Sam operates his global website from his new home country of Hungary with this mission: “Simple English News hopes to be what it says it is. Our desire is to make the news more understandable for those who are learning English.”  Margolis is a journalist, language educator, and former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in the small city of Papa, Hungary, where he taught English to high school students. His articles have appeared in The Independent, The International Herald Tribune, Wired Magazine, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, and other publications.

Listen to a Skype interview with Sam Margolis about how his career led to founding and growing Simple English News. Spread the word about how to learn English by posting Sam’s interview to your website, blog with the Evoca smart player and Post to Facebook profile or fan page and Post to Twitter features.

Easily record voice-overs for videos, radio and TV programs, business presentations — including PowerPoint and SlideShare, personal histories, and more using Evoca.

Record your own voice or invite others to jump in to record using any phone, Skype, or computer mic, like a virtual recording studio.

Jim Romig, Chairman of MICR Prime Services, uses Evoca’s digital voice-over recording to add board members and executives’ voices to boost his investor pitch.

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