This week we learned about the uses of podcasts and other audio recordings. As someone who some days has an hour long commute or will walk for an hour because it’s the only way to get the baby to take a nap, I listen to podcasts a lot. I am the type of person who needs background noise while I am doing things such as housework or homework so I will play music, audio book, or a podcast. Background noise that I don’t have to visually pay attention to.

As a sound designer for theatre, I have recorded sounds or people talking for shows so this wasn’t a new concept for me. I used Audacity all through college since it was free and got the job done while after college I upgraded to Logic Pro, which is more on the pricey side but I used it for work so it justified the cost. For the classroom or library, one example where this can be used is if the student is really shy. If they have a hard time talking in-front of a lot of people, they can record their book review at home and play it in-front of the class until they become more comfortable. Another way you can use this in school is if you are helping a kid with their speech. You can record them saying whatever word or sound they are having trouble with and play it back to them. When I was younger, I pronounced my “s” as a “th” sound and while I thought I was saying it correctly, it did not sound that way.

One free website you can use in your classrooms is called Voki. It is very much geared towards children as you can build an avatar or object and then have that do the talking for you. If you pick an avatar, you can change their hair color, eye color, and features to make them into either the character from a book or yourself. The background is also changeable. Sadly, like a lot of free sites, there are a lot of ads so it would have to be supervised so they don’t click something they aren’t supposed to. I think for me the only downside is that the voices they have to say what you typed all like siri or alexa is talking but it’s not the worst. You are able to record your voice and upload audio into it but for the kids it may be fun to have them type it out and listen to the different voices the program has.

Vacaroo is the next website I checked out for recording audio and currently might be my favorite. It was easy to use with no need to create an account. You just record what you want, and then save or share. If you don’t need to do any editing or add effects to it, this is one I would recommend. While it is free there aren’t any ad’s surrounding it so it would be great to use with kids and with no need to supervise. It also has settings in the program that cancel out the background noise and adjust the volume. I recorded my review of a podcast called Book Club for Masochists: a Readers Advisory Podcast using Vocaroo while my dog was whining and it didn’t pick it up. It doesn’t cancel all the noise because on one of my attempts I could hear my nails tapping at the table but it was closer to the microphone then my dog was. One con is that they don’t give you a countdown or any way of knowing its about to start recording until you see the record button start blinking so you may have a few dead seconds at the beginning. Here is the link to my recording: https://voca.ro/14iBirmnG3gY

The last website recording program I tried was SpeckPipe. It is for the most part set up the same way as Vocaroo, you just record and then save or share with no editing tools. You do have to create an account for this website but it is free with no “you have to pay to use this tool”. This website has the same con as Vacaroo in that there isn’t a countdown to the recording starting so you will have a second or two of silence at the beginning. Unlike Vacaroo this program has a 90 sec max recording while Vacaroo doesn’t have a limit, or at least not a limit that I have discovered yet. There isn’t anything else wrong with it so if you aren’t doing any long recordings, this is one that you can easily use.

At the end of the day, I will probably still use either Audacity or Logic Pro to do any recordings I may need in the future just because I like being able to edit my sound if I mess up. However, if you aren’t comfortable using programs like Audacity, the ones I mentioned up above are great alternatives for teachers and librarians to use.