Top Tips for Podcasting in the Classroom

Love podcasts? Wondering how to use them in your class? Then this is for you! Joe Dale, host of a popular podcast on modern foreign languages, walks beginners through the benefits of podcasting in the classroom and gives his tips for the best podcasting tools to get teachers and students started.

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

Producing a podcast with your students has numerous educational benefits. It gives students a voice, promotes collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication.

Learners can write a script and rehearse as many times as required to master the content and feel confident about what they want to say. They are able to express themselves as individuals and convey a range of meaning through their own unique voice, intonation and pacing.

Podcasting helps learners organize their thoughts, not to mention that publishing to a real online audience is also a lot of fun!

Pupils can download podcasts onto their phone and listen on the move while going on a walk or traveling to or from school.

Listening to podcasts promotes learner autonomy and gives students the opportunity to extend their learning outside of the classroom at a time which suits them best.

The Best Websites and Tools for Podcasting in the Classroom

A really simple way of recording audio is to use a web tool like Vocaroo which works on all internet connected devices and doesn’t require students to create an account. Students click the big red recording button in the middle of the screen, record their voice and share the results as a link.

The teacher could collect these links via a Google or Microsoft Form, generate a spreadsheet and download the audio individually.

An online voice recording tool will allow you to edit the beginning and ending of recordings and export them as mp3 files which could then be uploaded to Google Classroom or Teams.

Use a teleprompter tool to turn your browser into a teleprompter so your script can scroll down the screen at your preferred speed as if you were a news reader.

Paste your script into the white box, click “Start Prompter,” and on the new page which appears, click “Forward,” and click on one of the numbers top right which changes the speed. Click “PgUp” to return to the beginning.

When you are ready, start recording, go to the script page and snap your fingers three times or clap to put a clear marker in the track before you start reading.

Click “Forward,” and once you’ve finished reading your script, snap your fingers or make another clap as another marker. Go back to the online voice recorder, stop recording, move the left play head to just after the marker and the right play head to just before. Click “Save” to export your audio.

Audacity is a free open source audio editor which works on Windows, Mac and Linux and lets you build your podcast and combine different sections of audio together. You can move tracks around, make simple edits, apply noise reduction plus a range of other post-production techniques within the simple interface.

The good news is there are lots of tutorials on YouTube to help you get acquainted with Audacity from first steps to advanced.

Adding soundtracks or sound effects to your recording can be a lot of fun, but of course you need to respect copyright.

The BBC has made available over 33,000 royalty free clips for you to incorporate into your projects, which are completely free to use if you are an educator.

To improve your sound quality in Audacity, you could invest in a dynamic plug and play microphone such as the ATR2100X or the Samsung Q2U which will make your podcast sound more professional and clear.

Another way of improving the overall sound of your finished episode is to run it through Auphonic which will balance your audio levels and add a bit of polish to the production. With a free account, you can process up to 2 hours of audio per month.

If you want to create a transcript of your podcast, this can be done using Microsoft Word Online. Click on the arrow to the right of “Dictate,” choose “Transcribe,” then upload your audio and wait for your transcription to appear. You can transcribe up to 300 minutes of speech content per month.

To finish the process and turn your recording into a proper podcast, you need to upload it to a podcast host.

Owned by Spotify, Anchor is a great and free way of doing this and allows you to push your podcast out to all the most popular places for consuming podcasts such as Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Alternatively, you may prefer to simply add your recording to a Google Slides presentation or Microsoft Sway and only share it with your school community.

How to Turn a Podcast Into a Lesson With Edpuzzle

Edpuzzle is a great way to turn a podcast into an interactive lesson.

Once you’ve created your podcast, download it, run it through an online MP3>MP4 converter (a quick Google search will turn up plenty of options) and upload it to Edpuzzle.

Use Edpuzzle’s editing tools to add comprehension questions at strategic points throughout the podcast to check for student understanding, and then check their results in real time.

Do you have questions about using podcasts in the classroom or want to share your experience? Let us know on Twitter and don’t forget to tag @edpuzzle and @joedale!

To learn more about podcasting from Joe Dale, check out his 5-part online masterclass with classes starting May 31, June 1, and June 4 (scroll down to view different dates and times).