Episode 47: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Three

Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As Podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As Podcast will highlight innovative practices and uncommon parallels in education. I have a new, simple way for you to reach out to me.

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You can go to my website, www.theteachersas.com, and you will see a prompt that says “Send Voicemail.” It's a simple, quick process and I would love to hear from you. I might even share the audio of your voicemail in an episode. Please let me know in your voicemail. If you're okay with me sharing your message, you can share your name or go incognito.

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Thank you in advance for taking the time to leave a voicemail. It means a lot to me. Hope to hear from you soon. Yeah, if you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that would be great. Mkay.

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This is part three of the Podcasting with Students series. This is the episode about the logistics of doing a podcast with students. I really struggled organizing and trying to figure out what would go into this episode. There are so many aspects and logistics to doing a podcast with students as specific as… you're in a school trying to record. How do you get the best acoustics if you're literally recording in a corner of your classroom?

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What equipment do you need? You're probably not planning on trying to push your student podcast as a business. So do you need to be on the podcast platforms? What are the decisions about whether you just use an embedded player in a website that you share with families? What's the difference between just an MP3 recording and a podcast?

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I could probably do three or four episodes on the logistics of recording and editing and then getting that podcast out to families and possibly out for the world to listen to. I would love feedback from you about what you'd like to hear next, but for this episode, I have decided I'm going to focus on what you need to know about getting your podcast ready to be shared on a small scale to families and/or on a larger scale on podcast platforms platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify, et cetera.

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I'm also going to share about getting parent permission and how we did that and my recommendations for recording equipment. I'm not going to go deep into the logistics of recording in your classroom, but again, I'd love to hear from you. Just go to www.theteacheras.com and leave me a voicemail or email me. Let me know what you'd like to know about podcasting with students. What do you want to know next? I do have podcasting related interviews coming up about vocal performance, writing and interviewing.

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(Soundbite) Okay, here we go. Focus.

Okay, Let's start at the start. What's a podcast? A podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device and it's usually available as a series. And so, like new installments, new episodes can be received by the subscribers automatically. So, for instance, Apple Podcasts, boop, there's a new episode in your Apple Podcast app. So your first decision is, do you want to have your class podcast on the podcast platforms, or do you have a class website and you just want to put an embedded player into your website? The bottom line is, who do you want listening to the podcast? How much support do you have from administration and families about putting it out to the world? If parents are like, on board and super psyched, then put them on podcast platforms. Let the world hear them. There are definitely advantages to having your class podcast on the podcast platforms. It's easier for parents and family to listen. They don't have to go to a website to listen to the embedded player.

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I'll be talking about a podcasting host, but when you go through a podcasting host, you get analytics, and it's really cool to show those analytics to the students. They can see on a map which countries are listening to their podcast. You know, it's a great geography lesson. And writing for an audience, now they're starting to know their audience is not just their parents. If you have a wider audience, students step up and really write for their audience.

(Soundbite) Oh, you betcha. Yeah.

So in order to make your class podcast available on the Internet, you need a media host. It's also called a podcast host. Media hosting or podcast hosting is basically a hosting account that stores and delivers your audio and maybe video if you’re doing that.

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There are a couple free media hosts. Like one is called Anchor, and it's an app on your phone, but you can also use it on a laptop. But beware of the fine print in these free media hosts because they basically can use your content. When working with students, I don't know if you want your content being used for other purposes.

(Soundbite) No! God, please. No!

We use Buzzsprout for our podcast. It's 12 dollars a month. Well, I shouldn't say that. If you want the Magic Mastering, which makes your sound even better then it's 18 dollars a month. We chose not to go with the Magic Mastering and just do the 12 dollars a month. For that 12 dollars, you get three hours a month, which really is, when you think about it, if you do 30 minute episodes, it's six episodes a month. That's a lot of episodes. You're probably not going to be cranking out six episodes a month.

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It's pretty affordable. You can try Buzzsprout for free. This includes two hours a month of episodes, but those episodes go off of Buzzsprout in 90 days. All the podcast platforms get your feed from, for instance, Buzzsprout. And if you only have 90 days for that episode to be on Buzzsprout, that means it's only on Apple or Spotify for 90 days, and then it goes away.

A lot of students are going to want to listen over and over again, you know, months later to earlier podcast. So you probably don't want to lose those episodes if you wanted to just have your class podcast on Apple podcast, for instance. I do remember hearing on the videos that there's a way that you can just take that MP3 and get it into just Apple podcasts. You will go directly to Apple to do that. On the videos, though, it sounded like it was a very complicated task and that for every episode you had to go and do that.

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Whereas with Buzzsprout, you enter the directories and it's more than one directory. It's not just Apple. You enter those all and then you don't have to keep putting it on each of those platforms. You just put your new episode into Buzzsprout and the platforms come to get it. Buzzsprout is extremely user friendly and I can't recommend the paid version enough.

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It also allows you to register with all the directories once…one time. So Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, a whole bunch of directories, and once those directories are registered that first time they come and get the feed automatically from Buzzsprout. You don't have to do anything.

(Soundbite) Awesome.

There are videos I'll share on this episode page about Buzzsprout and about how to get onto Buzzsprout and get started.

There's also videos about pros and cons of Anchor versus Buzzsprout and so on. If you want me to do a video about how to use Buzzsprout, go to theteacheras.com. Let me know that that's something you'd like. Let me go back for a second. You don't have to register with any of the podcast platforms.

However, you still need Buzzsprout to make your recording a podcast that can be sent out and shared. Buzzsprout’s really great for their embedded player. If you already have a class website, you can go ahead and put this embedded player in your website. And then parents who are already going to your website can go and listen to your latest podcast episodes. It's really easy to do.

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Arielle Mucha, shout out again, started a Google site with students because students already are pretty familiar with Google. It's a work in progress, but I was able to go into the Google site and embed the episodes. You can go to The Birch Meadow Way Podcast. The link is on The Teacher As website, Episode 47.

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Anchor does not have this media web player option. If you record and edit on Anchor, the only way your families can listen is to listen through a Spotify link. The great thing about Buzzsprout is not only does it have the embedded player option, but it also has an option where you can just share a link for the episode, and parents can click on that link and listen. There's also a website option in Buzzsprout, and then you can have your episodes there in that little Buzzsprout website that is part of that 12 dollars a month. Do your research, choose what will work best for you.

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But just sharing an MP3 is not a podcast. I just want to make sure that's clear. You can email parents an MP3 file. That's not a podcast. You have to take that MP3 file and put it into some kind of system that will get it to podcast platforms or make embedded players that you can share. And that's the shareability piece of podcasting. When I was learning how to podcast for The Teacher As…, I found that Pat Flynn’s YouTube videos were ridiculously helpful. I have links to some of those videos on the Episode 47 page of The Teacher As website as well.

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I have the Pat Flynn videos on how to record and edit in Audacity, which is for Windows and how to record and edit in Garage Band, which is for Mac and they're both free. Pat's videos are really informative, but he's also really relatable. I appreciate his work. The Birch Meadow Way is not on every single platform. I chose to just put it on four really popular ones, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify. I will say that the process of registering for these directories take some time, but once you do it, it's done.

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Don't wait to get that process going if you want to be ready to go for your episodes. So within Buzzsprout, you need a live episode in order to start the process of registering for podcast platforms. My class recorded some things real quick and I uploaded that as like a sample episode, and then I published that. And even though it was published, no one would really see it to listen to it unless I share it. So I wasn't too nervous about publishing a sample. Once I had that sample episode up in Buzzsprout, I could then go in and register with all the directories that I chose to register with.

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Once I had a real episode up, I went in and I deleted that sample episode because I really didn't want that on all the podcast platforms. And just to clarify, when I say you need a live episode, I mean, you need a published episode, not an actual live episode. I recommend doing that because once it's done, it's so nice. It's so hands off. Every time you have a new episode, you upload it to Buzzsprout, and boom, those directories grab the feed. All right. In the process of registering for directories, there's different fields to fill out, and one of them is you need to have podcast artwork.

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So that's another thing that you might want to start early on in this podcasting process. We had an optional assignment for our fourth graders to create podcast art. Then we took pictures of the art, put them in Google Slides, and then students voted for their favorites on a Google form. I knew nothing about designing podcast artwork and what size it needed to be, et cetera. My friend and graphic design social media guru Amy Malkoff, who did The Teacher As… podcast art, helped me out a lot at the time when I was figuring all that out.

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I reached out to her when the Birch Meadow Way was doing this process, and she took the artwork and made it into podcast-ready art to be uploaded to Buzzsprout. I asked Amy, what are her key things to keep in mind when creating podcast artwork? You can take these tips and run with them. So her first tip was, Your art is going to be seen on mostly small screens and even smaller formats, and you want it to be readable in those small formats.

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So readability should be your number one goal in creating your art. So keep it simple. Keep it readable, keep it legible. She recommends looking at lots of other podcasts logos first to get inspired to see which ones work and which ones don't. And she said the latter may be even more important. And look at them on your phone or whatever your smallest device is. Amy's next tip for podcast artwork is to keep text to the very minimum, probably just your podcast name. The next step is the required sizing for podcast logos is always 3,000 by 3,000 pixels.

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Any other size will be bounced back to you, she said. You can use a platform like Canva or Adobe Spark to create your art. She also said she's pretty sure there's other resources out there. Some are free, some are not. Make sure you save your art in whatever platform or format you use just in case you want to make changes or need other sizes. Another recommendation is using bright colors and not using a white background. Bright colors tend to be more eye catching at those smaller sizes… at bigger sizes too,

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but small is key here, and her last tip is have fun with it. This is the tiny visual representation of your podcast, so do put some time and thought into its design as it will be the podcast branding. If you are like me and have no experience using Canva or Adobe Spark, I recommend you do what I did. Ask a friend to help you. Odds are you have a friend or colleague who knows how to do this kind of design work. Thanks again, Amy. As far as recording, you need a microphone if you want your podcast to sound good.

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Without a microphone, you might be able to hear your voice and it might sound okay, but it will probably have a very tinny kind of a sound. I'm going to share a recording of me without a microphone on a pretty new laptop, my Lenovo ThinkPad. But on my school regular HP older laptop, I bet the sound would be even worse. This doesn't sound horrible, but you can hear the quality of my voice and the background quality just has a different sound to it.

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It sounds like I'm sort of in a tunnel. Alright, so here we go.

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This is a recording just using the laptop microphone. Listen to the quality of the sound. Notice that my “P”s and my “S”s and some of my other letters might pop too much. I might be popping my “P”s too much, whereas if I have a microphone, I have a pop filter on the microphone itself, or I have something called a wind screen. If you want to see what those are, you can go to the website page on the Teacher As. So this is what it sounds like from just a plain old laptop with no windscreen, pop filter, or other equipment.

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All right, we're back to using a microphone. So here's the deal. If you listen to that and you thought it sounded fine and you know, it's just a student podcast and you're not worried about having to have professional sound quality, then don't spend the money on getting a mic. It's as simple as that. However, you might want to do a sound test with your laptop to make sure it doesn't sound too tinny and too hard to listen to. This didn't sound horrible, but I like having the microphone and the wind screen to take care of some of the popping sounds, to stabilize the sound.

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For the Teacher As, I feel it's important. And since I already had the equipment, we use it for the classroom podcast as well. Information about different types of microphones is on the Episode 47 page of The Teacher As… website. And this is a situation where it depends on whether you go with Buzzsprout or Anchor as far as what microphone you might consider. With anchor, you're recording, usually a lot of people find it's easier just to record on their iphones. I would test it and see if the sound is decent or not.

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You can get… it's called a lavalier mic, clip it onto your collar. So lavalier mic is one link I have on there. I think they were like… they range from like 14 dollars to 25 dollars on Amazon. Another option is literally it plugs where you put the power cord for your iphone. Sorry, people who don't have an iphone. The place where you plug the power cord in, there's a little microphone that you plug in there, and I have a link to that as well. That's a little more pricey.

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But again, if you're using the Anchor app, this might be something that will help the sound quality. The other mic I have as a link is the Audio Technica microphone. It's about 109 dollars, I believe on Amazon. It comes with the Boom arm, which is very adjustable. You can attach the Boom, which is basically like a mic stand, but to be attached to tables and edges of things. So you get the Boom mic, you get the stabilizer, you get the microphone, you get a little table stand, and it comes with the wind screen, which is sort of like a pop filter.

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(Soundbite) Check, check, check one. Check, check. sibilance. Check two. Sibilance, Sibilance.

You're ready to record, but what are you recording on? There's a few options you might be using. Anchor, like I mentioned earlier, where you're recording literally in the Anchor app or on the Anchor website on your laptop. If you're going with Buzzsprout as your podcast host, you can record and edit in Garage Band, which is Mac or Audacity, which is Windows. Both of those are free. You can also record in Zoom and save it to your computer or the Cloud, which is also free.

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You don't need to have a paid Zoom account in order to do that. You can then bring that Zoom file into Audacity or Garage Band to edit. I'm going through this very quickly because there's so much to say about how to record. It's so much easier just to give you the links to the Pat Flynn videos. And then let me know if you want more specific videos about recording and editing with students, because I'm gonna be honest, I didn't find a lot out there as far as YouTube videos about this topic.

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So maybe this is content that I should be creating. If people are interested, send me a voicemail or an email through the website. So to finish up this episode, I want to share about parent permissions. It's really important, obviously, to get these permissions before having students’ voices on the podcast. You can make a decision that there will be no names mentioned or just first names. That's up to you and maybe your principal, if you're unsure. Decide that. And then in the permission form, explain that. So you might say we'll be using first names only.

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Or you could say there'll be no names mentioned in the podcast. We ended up just sending out a Google form to parents to fill out. Each classroom teacher sent this out to their families. This was quick and easy. This is an example of what we wrote on the Google form for our class. We are excited for a new project for Room 20 students. The class will create a podcast called The Birch Way Podcast which will allow students to work on speaking fluently and to analyze their communication skills.

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The opportunity to create a show about what students are learning and want to discuss is extremely motivating. We will be using podcast episodes to share our work and create informational persuasive and entertaining content. For safety reasons, we will not use last names in audio recordings that are uploaded to the Internet. We will use first names only. All students will be involved in creating the content for the podcast, but we need your permission to include your child's voice in this project. Please fill out the form below by… and we gave the date.

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We will not include your child in any recordings for this project unless we have your permission. So after that little blurb, there was a field for child's name and then a field for parent name and then one that read: I give permission for my child's voice to be used on the Internet. I understand that only my child's first name will be used. And then it was multiple choice, simply Yes or no. There was also a field for any questions parents might have. This worked really well and we had great support from all our families.

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What I'm zooming in on is really focusing not just on podcasting, but maybe all ways of publishing student work and different ways to provide voice and choice for your students. I would love to hear how you publish your students’ work. So, for instance, do you make books every year with your class? Do you have an author's day at the end of the year? Do you want to celebrate student work more often and wonder how to do that? Is this a topic in which you would like more episodes?

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This podcast is for my listeners and I'm open to morphing it into whatever you want it to be and need it to be for your work with students. The Teacher As… is about using our expertise and passions, but it's also about supporting each other and curating best practices.

To finish off, back to podcasting for one more minute. There are so many other logistical aspects to podcasting with students. I'll say it again. I need feedback from you to know the direction you want me to go in.

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So what best practices do you want me to curate? And what do you want to learn more about? Do you want me to stick with podcasting or do you want me to open it up to all ways of publishing student work? Because podcasting really is about publishing students’ written work and about performance, because some students may be comfortable sharing their informational text as more of a chat than an actual written piece. Angela Stockman talks about how there are many ways of writing, and it's not just the physical writing.

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Podcasting is a great way to even the playing field. You might have students who struggle with writing, who can chat up a storm about what they know about. What writing or performance skills would you like me to curate more resources for on my website or in the episodes? Do you want to know more about voice and choice for publishing? Let me know by going on the website and leaving a voicemail or an email.

(Soundbite) No, seriously, come on, do it. Do it.

If you enjoyed this episode and have not done so already, please hit the Subscribe button for the Teacher As Podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner, and I hope you check out the Teacher As… Facebook page for episode updates. I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was Upbeat Party by Scott Holmes. So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm, and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.

Melissa Milner

Episode 47: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Three

Episode 48: Zooming In on Interviewing with Dave Malkoff

Episode 46: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Two