Puzzlebrains

Hi all, does anyone have any recommendations about dictaphones? I need one which can upload into a suitable format like .wav or mp3 or something. I have read that it's hard to convert some of the other formats.

I use an Olympus WS-110 which loads into the computer and plays back on a media programme. It has about 10 hours of recording capability. I'm thick with gadgets but I can use it for recording and playback I think it does other stuff but I'm too scared to use it

I've used a little 'voice recorder' here at work - don't have the details of it, but it has a push-out USB connection that easily plugs into the computer for me to copy files from place to place. The files were playable directly by the laptop on the Media Player.

I used it to do some 'local history' work with a group of 'older' members of the community. They brought personal photos for us to scan and then told the story about the picture. The idea was to combine them in something like PowerPoint as an oral history.

Are you going to be using it for your old folk who are telling you about their childhood memories, Fraggle? Or are you just going to use it as a covert surveillance instrument so that you can play back something incriminating that your husband to be has said at your reception??

I was very tempted to get one when I was working as a mystery shopper, because the questionnaires you had to fill in wanted conversations repeated back verbatim and I could never remember exactly what was said.

I use mine for parish council meeting when 3 or 4 are shouting each other down I can usually pik out voices. Also they don't believe me when I tell them they talk rubbish like how much ham is in Sainsburys in the middle of a debate about services so I can play it back and watch their embarrased faces

Good suggestions - and yes it's to record the elderly people's voices. It will then be transcripted and some will be uploaded directly onto the website. I'll be doing my recording over the summer - after i get wed.

That's a good idea about the reception!

What I want to know is: how many cups of tea and custard creams will you have to have to get all those recordings?

That's so true.
I was speaking to one very elderly lady the other day and she was telling me that she remembers moving house in 1929. She was able to tell me lots about the area including the fact that her grandmother kept a goat tethered on the land that is now our school and pigs were kept where our dinner hall sits. I was fascinated. Then she asked if I would go to her little room in a residential home to talk more. She was the one who suggested I bring a dictaphone! But the shocker at the end of the conversation was...she asked if i would take a look at her computer because she can't get on to google!

I think it's brill.

Do you know what? I think it's a real shame that history teachers don't use old folk more as a "resource". I remember thinking when they were learning about the cities which suffered from German bombing raids and the effect this had on the people FROM A BOOK that I ought to get my Mum in to speak to them instead. She used to tell me about standing on the top of the field at her house in Exmoor, watching the red glow and wondering what it was, only to discover later that it was the glow from a burning Cardiff. She also had a story about how the Germans had bombed Pinkery Pond - because they had seen the reflection of the moon in the water. There was also the story about a German bomber swooping over her head - she was terrified and ran into the hedge to hide, only to see the pilot waving at her out of the cockpit. He landed the plane in a field and handed himself in. He told them, in broken English that once he'd got there and had seen young women and children below him, he couldn't bring himself to drop the bombs.

I wish I had now.

The most memorable part of the trip to Bletchley Park was meeting one of the people who actually worked there (albelit only at a junior level) - she made the nondescript rooms come alive. But she was also over eighty and there were very few of them left who had that personal experience. Mind you, it didn't help that they weren't allowed to talk about what they did until fairly recently!

Last week when my great aunt had her hundredth birthday I was thinking of all the things she had seen in her life. Two world wars, introduction of TV, she never went out to work, even before she was married, because although they didn't have much money, going out to work for a woman would have been a sign that they were working class and they were lower middle class !!! (She was the only girl with 3 brothers,which probably made a difference) She couldn't talk about it now as she was ill last autumn and has been a bit confused ever since.

Have spent hours trawling through currys and PC world today. Came home and had a look on Amazon. Finally chose a Philips model that uploads to MP3 and has a 2Gb memory. I can't wait to get started recording. These people are a mine of information otherwise lost.