Class Podcasting with Anchor.fm

Four years ago, I had the privilege of teaching British Literature in summer school. If you're new here, you need to know that all of my experience is as a math teacher, so this was a dramatic departure from my usual teaching and planning flow. 

However, the year before, I'd had the privilege of teaching Government (this all because my degree and 1st Missouri certification was actually in secondary social studies, but that's a whole other blog post #checkyourprivilege). The year before in Government, I had recorded and published our class discussions on a podcast, and I was quite pleased with how it had gone, so I was excited at this opportunity for more discussion in a literature class. 

I had really high hopes for these Brit Lit recordings, so I got it all set up here, published my intentions, and added a new side panel on this blog linking to it. 

And I never published them. 

Through the beauty of Google Classroom archives and Google Drive, I actually still have all of those recordings, so I'm going to take the opportunity of a question this week from a colleague about podcasting to correct a wrong from 4 years ago and publish these "Brit Lit Perspectives" using the Anchor app.

Here was my colleague's email:

I'm developing a performance assessment for a grad class, as well as an actual end of unit assessment for my students. I found the site "Anchor" which I am really excited about and seems very easy to use. 

However, I have some questions about how students post:

Are there sites that allow me to control content or do all students need to have their own individual podcasts?

This particular site seems like everyone would need to have their own account, using their school gmail, but then I would have no control over posting. Or, all students would have to use my account to post through, and that also doesn't seem productive.  

The way I understood it, she wanted an easy way to gather students' audio files and get them published while still being able to control and censor content as necessary. 

I've been a guest on an Anchor hosted podcast with Connected Learning, so I know it was simple, and a quick Google search verified that you could upload/import audio files to your Anchor account on the web or the app, so this was the suggestion I replied to my friend, the future podcaster: 

1.Have students record their clip with their smartphone or use the site https://online-voice-recorder.com/

2. Students turn in their file to you on Canvas. 

3. You preview as necessary

4. You upload to the anchor app or website the audio files from your account.

I would do it this way because (1) I think you're more likely to get a file turned in to Canvas than waiting on kids to upload to Anchor (and kids don't have another thing to login to), (2) it allows you to preview content for quality and appropriateness, (3) keeps kids from having to "use your account" (I could see one student's files accidentally getting deleted by another) and (4) gives you one place to show off your students' work when you share to a public audience.

Here's how that actually went for me...

1. Sign up for Anchor.fm

 Easy enough...they have the option to make an account or use Facebook, Google, Twitter, or Apple. I used Google, just in case you care. LOL

2. Getting started

What a friendly start page! I can do this! Also, I find myself oddly attracted to the "money" button. LOL. Looks like I need to click the purple button. 

3. Building your podcast

This is the stage where my process (and probably my friend's process, also) are going to be slightly different than "typical" because I will be pulling my old files from Google Drive (and her probably from Canvas, our new LMS because...COVID). For now, though, I am going to record a little preview/trailer blurb. (I'm loving the UI on this page, by the way.)

4. Recording your audio

As I remember, most of the student files you will hear once I publish on Anchor will be from the mic on the iPads I was using, so there will be a ton of ambient noise and the volume levels will vary. This was in part a matter of logistics and design - I wanted them to partner up, so even if they had earbuds with an inline mic, they couldn't use it. I would suggest NOW that you and your students use earbuds with a built in mic, or (if you're really serious about audio) a plug in USB mic. 

This page says they can hear me...I don't know how, so I tested it anyway. (It was correct. My audio was fine.)

My clip was recorded. AND I CAN ADD BACKGROUND MUSIC RIGHT NOW? That's a bonus feature I did not expect that renders useless my somewhat less than amateur skill at mixing audio tracks. Oh well. :)

5. Time to publish your episode!

After saving my episode by clicking on the purple button at the top, I came here to title and give a synopsis. If you a podcast fan, your favorite podcast might also give "show notes." I suspect this is also where I would post those. 

6. Finalizing your podcast details

I'd already named the podcast (although now "Brit Lit Perspectives" feels super lame), but choosing a category proved harder than I suspected. Good news is, it probably doesn't really matter. LOL

7. Cover Art

It's like judging a book by its cover...it's not "good" to do, but everyone does it anyway. 

Choose a photo, or upload your own. If you're feeling cute, you'll make something in Canva real quick. At first I picked the "Choose one for me" option, which seemed good enough, but Canva is just so easy, it's a crime to NOT use.

For real..I was able to make this in 5 minutes.

Too late for me now, but I could have done most of what I just made in Canva on this screen. Moving on!

8. Distribution

When I did this year's ago with Government Class and He REALLY Said That, getting your podcast on iTunes and other devices was a thing you had to Google and hope you did correctly. Now, you click a button. Beautiful.

9. You Have a Podcast Now

I clicked on the dashboard button and that's it! I'm a podcaster again! I appreciate the feedback this "Welcome to Anchor!" checklist gave me.

10. Adding your students' audio

This is what you really want to do!

1. Start a NEW episode and record an intro, setting up your listeners for that pure, silky student-created content.
2. Go to Google Drive, Classroom, Canvas, or whatever LMS or saving situation you are using for students' assignments and use the uploader to add the files as clips to your episode.
3. For an added touch of quality, use the transitions tab to drag over clips that smooth the transition from one students submission to the next.

11. Final Touches

I clicked save with my episode of students audio and got back to the episode details. Hey! This is where I get to specify the season and episode number! Another Anchor win. So easy.

12. Sharing is caring!

Okay, so obviously I want to share this now. Looks like I can share using these buttons as one option. 

Using "public site" seems good for posting back to your class website or LMS, (Canvas, Google Classroom, etc) and for spamming all of your friends and family via DM and email.

13. The final product

Look how good that public page above looks! I can't believe how easy this was...all of this work was about 2 and a half hours, and that includes the screenshots and commentary for this blog!

https://anchor.fm/chuck-baker3/episodes/Why-do-we-study-Brit-Lit-ehlent/a-a2s2g1o

Enrich Class Discussions by Podcasting Them

This post describes the rationale and some nuts and bolts of the Government class podcast I'm working on this summer. You can read more about that class and listen to the episodes at governmentclass.mrcbaker.com.

This summer school I am delighted to be teaching a 2 week "credit recovery" course for Government, something I taught in my student teaching in 2005, but have not worked with since.

One of the things I'm looking most forward to is the class discussion. There are opportunities for these in math class the deeper you go with relevance, 3 Act Math Stories, and or project-based learning, but because much of studying the social sciences is how everything that has (or may) happen relates to you or others, class discussions are something that I like to do several times a week.

I used today's first podcast as a way to get the kids to reflect on what they see as the role of the federal government, if they think the government is doing well in that role, and to think of or research specific cases that exemplify their stance. Here's a link to the prewriting doc I put in Google Classroom for them.

I gave them 15 minutes to think through the doc and get some of their answers down, stressing that the idea does not have to be at its fullest fruition since we were prewriting. I moved around the room, talking through some ideas with students, clarifying questions, and encouraging that putting good effort in the prewriting was going to make them sound really smart when we started recording.

After their prewriting time was up, ordinarily, that's where you would have a class discussion, right? You, the teacher would throw out a question, the students would share their responses, you would counter with follow-up questions to help clarify their statements and summarize for everyone else, and students would respond to each other. And then with the exception perhaps of some stellar note-taking from some student, the discussion would die as soon as the bell rang, living only as a memory, and only for the benefit of the people in the room.

But if you record it, the discussion lives on! Why record (and why podcast specifically)?

1. Recording the discussion archives it for students who were absent or want to review it later when studying
2. Recording and pushing it out as a podcast invites parents into the classroom without having to be IN the classroom.
3. An audio recording is less intimidating to students who may not want to be on video and less intrusive to the normal flow of the discussion. I set my Chromebook in the middle of the circle, pressed record, and then left it alone.
4. Podcasting the discussion creates an audience for your students beyond their classmates and you, their teacher. A class discussion may have gotten blown off, but everyone was on their best behavior and best engagement while we were recording. 
5. Letting kids know you trust and value what they say to put it on the internet is a message of trust and value in them as people. Who doesn't love to hear that?

But HOW do I do this, Chuck?

1. Get a voice recorder app for your iOS or Android device, or open up an online audio recorder. Today I used online-voice-recorder.com. When you save/export these, it will save as an .mp3 file.

2. What if you can't hear my students on the playback? I used twistedwave.com to edit individual files with fade in/fade in or cutting out any period of more than like, 5 seconds of silence, but MUCH more useful was the "normalize' tool, that allowed me to highlight the quiet sound signature from a quiet student, "normalize" it to the rest of the audio, and turn up the volume just in that one segment.

3. Ideally, things will go great and everything your students say will get recorded. :) If that doesn't happen, or you need to separate the recording between different hours (or any other reason you may have two separate .mp3 files that you want together) I used http://audio-joiner.com/ to put my files together after I had them edited how I liked.

4. Do you have the .mp3 file how you want it now? What should you do with it? You could do something like attach the file to your website, Google Classroom, Edmodo, or other LMS, or even share the link from Google Drive via email or Remind. That's by far the simplest solution. If you want to try posting your audio as a real life, honest-to-goodness podcast, you'll need a blog post the files to, generate an RSS feed, and get yourself submitted to iTunes. Here are tutorials for that.

• Setting up Drive and Blogger
• Making and submitting a podcast to Apple iTunes 

When deciding if you need the extra layer of complication submitting to iTunes, consider your audience. Are you podcasting your class discussions for the stakeholders of your school and/or district, or are you hoping to share with a larger audience? If your answer is the former, you don't really have a need for iTunes - people you want to share with can just get the file as an .mp3 shared via email or Google Drive.

However, as I said in the Why Podcast section, I sensed that my students stepped up their game knowing that other people were going to be turning in as well, so it is worth the steps to host the podcast on iTunes and this blog.

MY next step is to start to train the students to be able to record, facilitate, save the .mp3 files themselves. My government class is less than 10 students this summer - I don't think it would have been as successful an experience if we were trying to get a "regular" class size all engaged in the same discussion at the same time. In that case, I would hope to split it into at least 2 concurrent recording sessions. The obvious advantage here is that then the teacher steps even further into the background and can just sit in a guide/contribute rather than driving the discussion.