HOW TO: Basic Classroom Podcasting

Classroom podcasting is something I had heard a lot about, but hadn't seen in practice. So when I decided that podcasting would be my next techie project, to the Internet I turned.

Our podcasting centre - cheap, old, but effective!

I discovered that if you a have a Macintosh computer in your classroom, the app Garage Band is probably the easiest way to produce a podcast. Garage Band makes recording, editing, importing effects/music, and publishing pretty easy. The problem though was that we don't have Macs at our school - we rely on ancient PCs running Windows XP.

To make my plan work I had to come up with an easy to use audio editing app that works on older computers. Audacity was the answer, and better yet, it's completely free. After installing Audacity and playing around with it for a few minutes I felt pretty confident that my students (grades 4 and 5) could learn it. The controls are very simple, the app uses the same symbols for recording and playback as you would find on an old tape reorder. The menus are simple and straightforward.

I attached a cheap microphone and headphones I found in the school basement to the back of the computer and we were in business. Students started recording their poetry as an oral communication centre during literacy centres time.

To make the recordings more interesting for the listener, and to get students thinking about their audience, I created an account at freesound.org where students could download sound effects and music. Freesound is a fantastic website full of audio content that is freely available for this sort of application.

Audacity for Windows screenshot.

To get the downloaded content into Audacity, students downloaded the track they wanted, then simply imported the sound file using the "Import" option in the "File" menu. This added a new track to their projects. With some simple exploration, students were able to loop, trim, and adjust the volume of the effects to compliment their spoken words.

As students finished up their work and were happy with the results, they exported their podcast as a .wav file using the "Export" command in the "File" menu. When exporting, students have the option to add a track title and artist - this will show up when playing the file on an iPod. I suggest making sure that students know to save their Audacity project files as well as their exported .wav final product so that they can go back and make changes if needed.

Later on, I imported all the .wav files into iTunes to upload onto the class iPod. The next week, students were listening to and reflecting on their peers' podcasts as a literacy centres activity.