Podcasting

Since my last post I worked with Ms. Kate's 1st grade class to record some of their thoughts about their trip to the zoo. Ms. Kate had them write down their thoughts before I worked with them so that we were ready to record when I joined the class. Using Audacity, free audio recording software, each student recorded their prewritten sentences into my laptop. We used the built in microphone and afterwards the students were immediately able to hear their own recording.

After all the recordings were complete, I worked with the tracks to balance the sound as best as I could. Right now, this is the trickiest part for me. Each of the students voices had a different tone and pitch and finding the right balance was necessary for the track to come together nicely. I cut and pasted different parts of each track together and while the final product isn't perfect, it is so cute to hear their voices all put together and a great jumping off point for future podcasting projects.

You can visit my school site to hear Ms. Kate's class recording! Hopefully, you'll able to open it from there. It is there as a mp3 file. If not, you are always welcome to stop by and ask to hear it!

So, do you have an idea in mind for a podcast? Perhaps that project you have planned could be recorded by the students into a podcast instead of asking them to write or type it. Or maybe you're reading a book together as a class and would like the students to record their thoughts. Is your class ready to podcast? Just let me know!