> One thing that is a real drag right now is that they > are not making cassette > decks with external mikes anymore.
I went through this same thing a couple of months ago. I spent the better part of a day going to store after store looking for an affordable ghetto blaster (CD plus cassette deck) with a mic in. I eventually found a Curtis player with an "aux in" for $100 (all prices in Canadian dollars). I then had to get an Optimus Karaoke with voice canceller ($80 + $12 for an adapter) since you can't stick a mic directly into an aux in port.
This set up works fantastically. The karaoke thing came with a mic, and for something that was relatively inexpensive the sound quality is excellent. The benefit to getting the karoake thing (anyone know the technical term? it's not on the box) is that it can also be hooked up to a computer (do you have a laptop mike?) or presumably to a minidisc or other technology. And as I said, the sound quality is great.
Speaking of recording directly onto a computer, how about instead of burning CDs, which can be time consuming, recording as MP3s and emailing them to your students? They can then burn their own CDs, or download them to a portable device or minidisc player or whatever works best for them.
Jennifer
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