Are you using these tools to add audio in your class?

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

Podcasts for Learning

Last year, I wrote about my Podcast Love and my podcast routines, but this summer, I presented Podcasts for Learning multiple times, so I wanted to share a few additional ideas about using audio and podcasts in the classroom.

Finding Audio

During my sessions, I share two tools to help find podcasts: Listen Notes and ListenWise.

Listen Notes is a search engine for podcasts, plus it allows you to clip podcasts and create podcast playlists. Here's a clip describing what Listen Notes can do (from our @DigLearnRadio podcast!) and here's a playlist of our episodes about coaching. I also just learned that your can add this playlist and all episodes into your podcast player. Use this feature to create a podcast choice board, perhaps?

ListenWise is a tool from NPR that has "curriculum-aligned podcasts with accompanying teacher resources." The audio clips can be filtered for content area and grade level (5 - 12). For the free version, you get the audio clip, listening comprehension questions, and a Socrative import quiz code.

Recording Audio

In my session, I joke that podcasts fall on a continuum from "Kathryn talks to pre-schoolers" --> This American Life. Students (or you) can record quick, unedited audio clips OR you can create full-blown podcasts that can be shared with others.

Creating audio can be as simple as using a recording app on your phone. Getting the recording to the teacher is sometimes a challenge, but educators in my sessions suggested email, Google Classroom, and a shared Google folder. 

I discovered the Online Voice Recorder on this post from Free Tech 4 Teachers, and it's a super simple way to record (and do a bit of editing.) Once you record, you save the file, and you still need to get that "published" in some way. When the Insert --> Audio feature in Google Slides is fully functional (rollout paused on 7/24/19) that may provide an easy way to collaborate and share, but until then... Here's my sample slide with a recording from the Online Voice Recorder inserted into Google Slides. (I have the Insert --> Audio feature in only one of my personal Gmail accounts, but not my Google for Education accounts.)

Synth is a relatively new tool for recording audio, and I've tried it in a few of my sessions with some success. It's still in beta form, and I think it's a bit challenging to get it going, but the teachers in my sessions this week saw a lot of potential. There are a lot of features educators loved about it, such as the time constraints, transcriptions, and the option to include text comments. It also embeds beautifully into a website, its target audience is educators, and you can create "closed" classrooms. The audio below is from our session...all in unedited format, so you get bonus content of all kinds of background noise. 😉


Within this session, I also share Anchor for creating podcasts. I keep trying to get more people to share a recording in Anchor, but its entry point is not quite as simple. For educators who want to create their own podcast, and for teachers whose students are >13 years old, it does seem like the easiest platform to use for creating and publishing to the world.

Using Anchor, I collected all of the audio from this week's sessions and created a new "podcast" of all shared ideas.

Sharing Audio

On the #mfltwitteratipodcast, the hosts shared a hack of how to embed podcast players into a Wakelet collection. Using links from Spotify, you tweak the code to create a collection where the specific episode plays within the Wakelet.

For my recent Podcasts for Learning session, I decided to keep track of what I listened to and learned during a single week, and I added all of my notes to this collection. Here's my Wakelet without the hack (podcasts open in a new tab) and with the hack (players are embedded, also shown at the bottom of the post). The first ISTE Standard for Educators is Learner, and I definitely use podcasts to learn from and improve my practice!

If you want to create a podcast choice board for your students, this trick might be a great way to share the collection. You could also us this hack to create your "Podcast Tasting" PD session, as described by my PLN friend Meredith Akers.

Even More

Within the session, we briefly discussed creating more structured, polished podcasts, and I shared resources from the EduBlogger, ListenWise, and NPR about creating podcasts in classrooms.

Any other tools for recording audio? Any other favorite podcasts? I share my finds using #R10PodPD and would love to have more suggestions!

Listening and learning...

Check out my Wakelet with embedded podcast episodes!

Read More

Unstuck

A bit of voice and choice...

I update this blog sporadically, at best, and I know I never wake up in the middle of the night excited to write a blog post. This morning, I started brainstorming a bit and I thought that adding a little bit of audio might motivate me to become unstuck about my blogging.

I was working on an upcoming session about podcasting, and I wanted to try the Anchor app. The website declares, "It's the easiest way to start a podcast. Ever." I knew other educators used Anchor for their podcasts, so I wanted to include this tool in my session. I decided as a model, I could try Anchor for this blog post.

In our sessions, we share the importance of providing voice and choice: to allow students to access the content or to share their work through audio, video, or text or a variety of mediums. We provide a plethora of sources and allow participants time to explore the readings and tools of their choice. That's what led me to wonder: is there a way I can add a little bit of choice on this blog? Would this choice in platform help me become unstuck with my blogging efforts?

It took me a little bit of time to create a logo for Anchor, and it's not great, but if I wanted to create audio connected to my blog, at least I already had a name and colors. Since my colleagues and I already create our Digital Learning Radio podcast, I was at least somewhat familiar with the other podcast requirements.

We'll see how this works and how often I include a little bit of audio on the posts...but for now, this idea inspired me to jump out of bed on a summer Saturday morning. I'm a little less stuck now, and I am motivated to try something new, to explore new tools, and to share content in new ways.

Thanks for listening! 

Read More

Takeaways from Episode Three

As I mentioned at the end of this post, my work team and I host a podcast called Digital Learning Radio. In our podcast, we discuss ideas for implementing technology, interview guests, and share some of our favorite things.

This year, we are working our way through the ISTE Educator Standards, and we're talking to leaders in the field as we take a deep-dive into each one of the standards. For Standard 4, Collaborator, we had the privilege of interviewing Gary Hirsch, who is a Portland artist, botjoy creator, and co-founder of On Your Feet. I shared how I discovered his work in this post about Joy Bots, but participating in this conversation with him was one of the highlights of my year!

As we were getting ready to publish this episode, my colleague Ashley asked if I would create a sketchnote to illustrate a portion of the interview. Gary talked a lot about letting going and the power of risk-taking, so even though I'm still working on my sketchnotes, I thought I could take a risk and share this one (in honor of the interview!)

Used for the thumbnail in the podcast excerpt

Listen to Gary discuss risk-taking:

I originally created this sketchnote for Gary's TEDx talk, which is all about the power of collaboration...and it's what prompted us to reach out to him to discuss ISTE Educator Standard 4.

After posting these sketches, I decided to really take a risk, so I sketched one of my favorite quotes from this episode. I also created a sketchnote of 5 of my favorite takeaways from our conversation.

Listen to the entire episode here, and enjoy.

Google Hangout with the DL Team and Gary Hirsh

I'm always learning...and thanks to this inspiring interview, I'm learning to take more risks!

Read More

Podcast Love

I'm kind of a podcast rookie (I missed the whole Serial excitement) but now that my work often includes quality time in my car, listening may be one of my favorite ways to learn. I recently noticed how often "I heard in a podcast..." creeps into my conversations!

I used to watch the news before work, but now I keep a podcast playing during my morning routines. I know listening and learning is a much more positive way to begin the day! At home, I sometimes use a small Bluetooth speaker that connects to my phone; otherwise, I prop up my phone in the kitchen window and listen while preparing meals or doing chores.

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, and I keep others in my feed in case I run out of content. My rule is to stop listening if I'm not enjoying the episode. (I often feel like I have to finish that book, but it's easy for me to delete a podcast that I'm not enjoying!)

My favorite, non-educator specific podcasts:

• For positivity and self-improvement, my top choice is Happier by Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen and her sister Liz Craft co-host this podcast, and I love their conversations, the podcast structure, their rapport, and even their word choices! (You can tell they're both writers!) The length of time is perfect for me (30 - 45 minutes) and I know I can finish an episode before I leave for work. It makes me happier to wake up on Wednesday mornings and anticipate a new episode! And understanding Gretchen's Four Tendencies framework is so useful for working with students and colleagues.
• Gayle Allen's interviews on Curious Minds are thought-provoking and interesting. I want to know more, read the author's works, and keep learning! I realize I'm already biased because I'm such a fan of Dr. Allen's book, The New Pillars of Modern Teaching (see my post about it) but she is an incredible interviewer, and she is so knowledgeable about her subject's work; you can tell all parties enjoy the conversations.
• Note to Self, "the tech show about being human," is relevant to my job, since I'm a Digital Learning Consultant, but the host Manoush Zomorodi provides us with information and ideas to help us control our technology, rather than the other way around. She creates one big listener challenge a year and follows up with research, solutions, and predictions. The results from her Bored and Brilliant project even became a TED talk and a book!
• One of the reasons that I enjoy Pop Culture Happy Hour is that it is pure brain candy. The roundtable discussions are lively, fun, and interesting, and I hear a lot of fantastic book, TV, and movie recommendations...but I doubt I'll use this information during one of my PD sessions. 

For educator specific, my go-to's are these very popular podcasts: Cult of Pedagogy, Google Teacher Tribe, and 10-Minute Teacher with Vicki Davis. I also can't leave out my team's podcast, Digital Learning Radio! (Check out this episode where we interview Gayle Allen.)

For those who don't (YET) listen to podcasts, this video with Ira Glass and his friend Mary is priceless! They share and show how to listen to a podcast:

Of course, This American Life is the premier podcast, and I bet many podcast hosts secretly aspire to be like Ira. :)

For listening, I use the Overcast app, and I like how easy it is to share an episode at a particular minute.

I know audio isn't for everyone, but I find that podcasts meet my learning preferences and they're easy to share. For my professional learning sessions, I try to play at least a minute or two of audio, and I now add podcasts (or particular episodes) to my resource pages.

I'm always on the lookout for recommendations, so what are your favorite podcasts? Do you use podcasts for learning?

Read More