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 […]
Focusable Looks Like a Promising New Approach to Online Instruction
Focusable is a new service from the same people that brought us Swivl and Synth. Focusable is currently in a private beta (public beta to launch in August) so there isn’t a lot of information available about it. That said, what I’ve seen so far makes Focusable look like a promising new approach to online […]
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 […]
How to Change Camera and Microphone Access Settings in Chrome
On a fairly regular basis I get questions from readers that go something like this, “I’m trying to use Flipgrid but my camera won’t work. What can I do?” A variation on that question asks for help with a microphone. When you’re trying to use a website like Flipgrid, Vocaroo, GoSynth, or any other site […]
Synth Relaunches With a Renewed Focus on Asynchronous Audio Conversations
This week Synth released an updated user interface and a renewed focus on helping teachers and students engage in asynchronous audio conversations. In this post I’ll provide an overview of what Synth does, what has been updated in its user interface, what’s still the same, and how Synth can be used by teachers. What is […]
Three Tools for Collecting Stories from Students and Parents
Earlier this week I hosted a webinar about using online tools to build communities. One of the topics within that webinar was collecting and publishing stories from students and their parents. To that end, there were three tools that I recommended. Those were Flipgrid, GoSynth, and Wakelet. Flipgrid Flipgrid was originally designed for classroom use […]
My Top 5 Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students (Non-Google Edition)
Earlier this week I published my top five Google tools for social studies teachers and students. Recognizing that not everyone wants to use or has access to G Suite for Education accounts, here are my top five non-Google tools for social studies teachers and students. I didn’t include my all-time favorite timeline tool, Timeline JS […]
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 […]
Now You Can Download Your Synth Podcasts
Synth is a free podcasting tool that I’ve been recommending since its launch last fall. 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. Yesterday, Synth announced that you and your students can now download your […]
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 […]
Four Podcasting Tutorials – From Basic to Robust
Earlier this morning I shared news about NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge that starts in January. While NPR does provide some good guides for students and teachers to use to plan podcasts, those guides don’t include tutorials on specific podcast recording and editing tools. If you’re thinking about having students create podcasts either for NPR’s contest […]
Recap is Shutting Down
Swivl has announced that they are shutting down their Recap service and replacing it with a new podcasting service called Synth. Once a competitor to Flipgrid, Recap just didn’t experience the popularity that Flipgrid does. Recap will be shut down in January of 2019. That gives you about ten weeks to find an alternative. You […]
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 […]