Get Ready for The Great Thanksgiving Listen 2022
During Tuesday night’s episode of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions the topic of audio recording came up. That prompted me to go on a little bit of a tangent (as I’m prone to doing) about The Great Thanksgiving Listen hosted by StoryCorps. The Great Thanksgiving Listen hosted by StoryCorps is back for the eigth year in […]
Why Our Voices Sounds Different to Us Than to Others
One of the questions that I often get asked after giving a keynote is “has anyone told you that you sound like Ray Romano?” I never thought that I did until people started asking me that. A dozen years later I’ve come to accept that I do sound like him. On a similar note, “do […]
Synth is Shutting Down to Focus on Focusable – Other Audio Recording Tools to Try
Synth is a podcasting tool that I’ve used and shared with countless teachers since 2018. Unfortunately, as the title of this post states, the owners of Synth are shutting it down to focus on their new service called Focusable (a cool service that I’ll be writing more about in the next issue of the Practical Ed […]
Tools for Asynchronously Collecting Stories
Nearly fifteen years ago I used VoiceThread to have my students collect stories from their parents about changes in the community since their time in high school. VoiceThread is still available today although it costs a lot more than it did when I used it (it was free back then). There are other free tools […]
Dan Russell Teaches Us How to Search for Audio Files
Dan Russell, whose book and other work I’ve referenced dozens of times on this blog, recently published a good lesson on how to find audio files. His post is not a lists of places to find audio files (I have a list of those here). Dan’s blog post teaches readers how to locate specific sounds […]
Easy Ways to Create Voice Recordings – No Account Required
The post that published on Wednesday about adding bird sounds to Google Slides prompted a couple of people to ask me about other tools for quickly recording audio files. There are three tools that I typically recommend to those who are looking to just record short spoken audio tracks and don’t require additional editing functions. […]
The 2021 Great Thanksgiving Listen
The Great Thanksgiving Listen hosted by StoryCorps is back for the seventh year in a row. This annual event is intended to get people to record audio stories with family and friends. This year there might be a lot more remote recording than in the past, but the goal of the project is still the […]
Share Voice Notes via Mote QR Codes
Earlier this year Mote emerged as one of my favorite new tools of the year. Mote is a Chrome extension that works with all of the core products in Google Workspace. With it you can add voice comments to Google Classroom, Google Docs, and Slides. You can also use it to add voice notes to Google […]
Three Good Tools for Recording and Publishing Audio Conversations
This is an excerpt from the latest version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. You can get your own copy for free when you sign-up for my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. Synth is a free service that was designed for classroom use. It has had some significant updates in 2021. Originally, Synth limited recordings to […]
Three Easy Ways for Students to Make Short Audio Recordings – No Email Required
Earlier this week I answered an email from a reader who was looking for suggestions for tools that her elementary school students can use to make short audio recordings. Since most elementary school students don’t have active email addresses, I suggested some tools that don’t require any registration or log-in. In the video included at […]
Sodaphonic – A Quick and Easy Way to Create MP3s
Sodaphonic is a free online audio recording and editing tool. It’s easy to use and can be used without creating an account on the site. To create a recording on Sodaphonic simply head to the site and click on “start new project.” As soon as you do that you’ll be in the Sodaphonic audio editor […]
Three Ways to Make Short Audio Recordings – No Accounts Required
Since late last year when Google finally added native support for audio in Google Slides I’ve fielded a steady stream of questions from readers looking for suggestions on the quickest and easiest ways for kids to record audio on their Chromebooks. There are three tools that I typically recommend to those who are looking to […]
How to Upload a Podcast to SoundCloud
Yesterday, I shared an update about NPR’s 2020 Student Podcast Challenge. One of the requirements for participation in that contest is that teachers have to upload students’ podcasts to SoundCloud. Watch the following video if you’re thinking about having your students participate in the contest, but you’re not sure how to go about uploading a […]
Reverb Record – Quickly Create Voice Recordings
Reverb is a relatively new service (still in beta) that is designed to let people create short voice recordings to share with others. The concept is similar to Voxer and Synth in that you can record a message for a group to listen to and then members of that group can reply with voice messages […]
Now You Can Use Vocaroo Without Flash
For more than a decade I’ve used Vocaroo.com whenever I’ve needed to quickly create an audio recording. The one complaint it about was that it required the use of Flash. And with Flash being deprecated in 2020 it looked like Vocaroo wouldn’t be in my toolbox any longer. That changed when I noticed that Vocaroo […]
Twisted Wave – Create and Edit Audio on Chromebooks
When it comes to recording and editing audio Mac users have Garage Band and Windows users have Audacity (it’s available for Mac too). Chromebook users have Twisted Wave. Through TwistedWave you can create and edit spoken audio recordings from scratch. Your completed tracks can be exported to Google Drive and SoundCloud. If you have existing […]
Synth Adds Podcast Moderation Features
Synth is an excellent tool for creating short podcasts. In fact, it’s one of my picks for Best of the Web for the 2018-19 school year. But to call Synth a podcasting tool is a bit misleading because it is more than that. On Synth you can create threaded audio conversations in which people reply […]
VoicePods Adds a Multiple Voice Option
VoicePods is a text-to-speech service that I started using last fall. It’s a service that will create an MP3 file from any text that you enter or from a web address that you enter. You can listen to your recordings online or download them for offline use. When you listen the recordings online you can […]
How to Use Audio or Video in Your Sub Plans
The other day I saw a meme that read, “a teacher never realizes how much they do until it’s written down in sub plans.” Many of the the comments written under that meme said things like, “that’s why I go in when I’m sick” and “it takes forever to write sub plans.” I felt that […]
New Features Added to Synth – Simple Podcasting for Students
Synth is one of my favorite new ed tech tools of the 2018-19 school year. If you’re familiar with what Synth does, it provides a simple way to create short podcasts that people can reply to with their own audio comments. Think of it kind of like Flipgrid for audio. You can experience a Synth […]
A Quick & Easy Way to Create an Audio Recording
For the last decade Vocaroo has been my go-to tool whenever I’ve needed to make a short spoken audio recording. That might change now that I’ve started using Online-Voice-Recorder.com from 123Apps. Online-Voice-Recorder.com offers the same simplicity of Vocaroo plus a couple of features that I’ve always wished Vocaroo had. One of those features is the […]
NPR is Hosting a Student Podcast Challenge
Thanks to Ms. Meade on Twitter, last night I learned about NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge. The challenge is open to students in fifth through twelfth grade. To enter the challenge students have to create a podcast that is three to twelve minutes long. Their podcasts can’t include music so it really is a contest about […]
How to Create a QR Code for a Voice Recording
Just a few minutes ago I answered an email from a reader named Chris who wanted a recommendation on how to have students create voice recordings that play back when a QR code is scanned. My recommendation was to try Vocaroo. Vocaroo lets you record for free (no registration required) then have a QR code […]
Synth – Quickly Record Short, Interactive Podcasts
Synth is a new service from Swivl. Synth is a free service that you can use to record short podcast episodes that are up to 256 seconds long. When you record your episode you post it publicly for others to listen to and record spoken responses. In that way it is somewhat like VoiceThread without […]