Summary of Learning Podcast

To share my summary of learning, I decided to give a podcast format a shot.  I love listening to podcasts and really appreciate the casual, natural conversation style of delivery they often offer.

I found myself really struggling throughout the course to hit publish and share my thoughts if they weren’t perfectly polished and to the highest degree of quality I could imagine. As I worked through my learning project and sharing the posts, I slowly let this go and started to just hit publish. It helped. But, I figured forcing myself to speak and listen and share in that way would really push me outside of my comfort zone.

Here is my attempt at turning this into a podcast. It ended up being longer than I had initially planned, but that’s okay – I’m hitting publish!

I used Audacity to edit and mix the sound together. After some searching around online, I found that there really aren’t many other options available for podcasts. Luckily once you get the hang of Audacity, it comes together pretty quickly. My editing consisted mostly of trying to time the intro and closing music, throwing in some transitions, and editing out as many “umms” as I could without completely wrecking the flow of the speaking. I wanted to do more voice modification work, but this proved to be pretty difficult. I found a tool called Voxal that I used to create the different voice I used in the intro, but it proved to be more work than it was ultimately worth. Here is a screenshot of the final file all thrown together.

audacitysummaryoflearningscreenshot

I found the intro music from a site called BenSound.com which has a whole bunch of other great tracks to use free of charge (creative commons license) and I recommend checking out the work there. After searching for way too long, I settled on the transition sound from FreeSound.org called “Movie Short Swell“. The rest was just me recording.

And, although the final product ended up being almost 9 minutes, I had at least 5 times that in raw recording that I ultimately cut down or re-recorded. The process really gave me a deeper appreciation for the work and skill that goes into both podcasts and radio shows. Audio is a difficult medium to work with. I found it much more difficult than video since you can’t just zoom back and forth – you have to listen to it as you progress to remember your spots.

Photo from UnsplashKai Oberhäuser

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Comments 1
  1. Congratulations on an informative, thought-provoking and enjoyable podcast. While I was not part of the course, your description made it clear that the course worked. You certainly sound engaged in a way which will carry forward and make an impact for your current and future students.

    I also think you got just the right ‘informal’ tone and you did a very good job of editing to keep the podcast from being a long ramble.

    (For me, the transition sound was too loud. It reminded me of the same effect which is used during American football broadcasts. The big screen splash often has some ‘swoosh’ sound which can either fade into the background or become very annoying.)

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