I have never attempted to make a podcast before, however my university assessment called for it and I set out in my attempt to learn how to do it.
I encountered some difficulties along the way, such as trying to find copyright free music to use in my podcast. I’m going to try and save you the trouble should you ever choose to start your own podcast; my lecturer shared a site that has royalty free music that you can use. You can find that here, it should hopefully make life easier and there is a plethora of different genres/songs to choose from.
The next challenge was learning a new software to edit my podcast, there are so many options to choose from, but I went with the recommendation of my lecturer and downloaded Audacity. It is free to download but not the simplest of programs and will likely take a bit of playing around and watching tutorials to figure it out.
I’m also not set up with proper equipment, so I did the best with what I had (the voice recorder on my phone). Finding a quiet place to record and not be interrupted proved to be another challenge. It is really important to try and record nice clean audio without any distortion or background noise.
You can check out a tweet I did below trying my best to offer some tips based off my experience and what I learnt when making this podcast.
That’s the technical stuff out the way; the next and most important element is the content. My topic is to do with the use of digital media in education. There has never been a more relevant time than now when we are turning to online sources to educate ourselves. Not only in the traditional sense such as school and university but in a myriad of ways of learning something new. The future, in my humble opinion, is leaning to an overwhelming amount of choice in the digital space. The knowledge available to anyone with an internet connection is almost infinite.
Lastly you need somewhere to host the audio, we were advised to upload our podcast onto Soundcloud, they allow you to upload up to 180 mins for free before you would need to upgrade to a pro account. Setting up the account was straightforward; I created the header image for the background and uploaded the logo I had previously created as my profile pic. If you want your podcast to be accessible across various listening platforms you will need to add it to an RSS feed. If you end up using Soundcloud I have sourced a handy how to article here.
I would love to get your feedback on how you think it turned out, so I have included it for your listening pleasure below.
Happy Podcasting!
References:
Glenn, M 2008, ‘The future of higher education: How technology will shape learning’, Austin, Texas, The New Media Consortium, p.4, Retrieved April 29, 2020 from www.learntechlib.org/p/182088/
Network Support, n.d., ‘How Can Teachers Use Digital Media to Improve Teaching and Learning?’, Professional Learning Board, retrieved 5th May 2020, https://bit.ly/2L5x2ws
Rajabalee, B. Y, Santally, M. I and Rennie, F 2020 ‘A study of the relationship between students’ engagement and their academic performances in an eLearning environment’, E-Learning and Digital Media, 17(1), pp. 1–20. doi: 10.1177/2042753019882567
Sobko, S, Unadkat, D, Adams, J and Hull, G 2020 ‘Learning through collaboration: A networked approach to online pedagogy’, E-Learning and Digital Media, 17(1), pp. 36–55, doi: 10.1177/2042753019882562
Music:
‘Chill Wave’ by Kevin MacLeod (CC BY 3.0)
Kevin-9-1 – Chill-wave
Featured Image: Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
Social Confetti Co | Keshena Libbis 