Five of My Favourite Audio Services for Teachers

1. JustCast
A while ago I published this post, sharing one of my favourite new web services: JustCast which lets you publish any audio file on your computer as a podcast, simply by dragging it to a Dropbox folder.  Give your students your JustCast RSS feed URL and they can subscribe to it in their favourite podcast player app or subscribe to it yourself, then drop any audio file in there and listen to it on your commute!

2. Huffduffer
Huffduffer is another great tool, which is similar in purpose to JustCast. The end result is the same – a personal podcast feed for you or one to share with your students. The difference is that Huffduffer adds audio on the web to a personal podcast feed. If you visit a web page and there is an audio file embedded there, you can “huffduff it” using the browser plugin for your favourite browser. It’s as easy as bookmarking it.

3. Narro
Narro is similar in concept to Huffduffer, but whereas Huffduffer adds audio files to a podcast feed, Narro adds written text to a podcast feed.  Let’s say you find a really interesting but rather long blog post that you want to read. You can bookmark it using the Narro bookmarklet (available from the Narro website) and it shows up in your podcast feed as a spoken podcast.  Sure, it’s a computer voice but it’s surprisingly realistic. It even adds emphasis to key words. It is a great way to digest written content on the go.

4. TapeACall Pro
TapeACall Pro is an app (and service) that allows you to record phone calls made or received on your iPhone. There are obvious ethical (and depending on where you live, legal) considerations here. You should ask the other person for consent to record the call but it’s really useful for important phone calls discussing details that you need to remember – and so much easier than trying to scribble notes while talking. If you make a podcast for your students it’s also the simplest way I know to record an interview with an expert which you can then insert to your podcast.

5. SpeakPipe
SpeakPipe allows you to place a button, widget or link on your own website, blog or wiki. Your students (or anyone else who visits the site from any device) can click the link and record an audio comment or question – which is delivered to your email! If you like you can also reply, by voice, to their email. Again if you make a podcast for your class it’s a convenient, and very simple way to gather your students’ contributions together. If you’d like to see how this looks, check out the orange SpeakPipe button on the biology page of my website. You will need a SpeakPipe account to place the button on your site, but your students won’t need an account to use it.

Publishing a podcast just got simple!

If you make a podcast for your students, you really should create an RSS feed for it – so they can subscribe using their Podcast app of choice.  There are lots of advantages in this:

• New episodes are downloaded automatically in the background when the student is connected to Wi-Fi.
• Students have control over playback speed.
• The app remembers where they are up to if they don’t finish listening in one go.
• They can create playlists for continuous play

The Problem

I’ve found lots of teachers who make ‘podcasts’ for their students don’t do this; instead, they simply upload the podcast to a folder on their school LMS and instruct students to go there and download it.  Even though services like PodOmatic make it simpler than it once was to create an RSS feed, I think a lot of teachers still just think there are too many hoops to jump through.

The Solution

I’ve just discovered a super-cool, and drop-dead simple service called JustCast.  Go to the JustCast website, click a button to allow access to Dropbox.  They then create a JustCast folder inside your Dropbox folder, and give you an RSS feed for that folder!

Any audio file you drag into that folder within Dropbox, gets pushed to the apps of anyone subscribed to that RSS feed. it’s so simple I’m stunned that it works – but, incredibly, it does!

The free service allows you to have three episodes in the RSS feed at any time. Adding a fourth episode will make the oldest episode unavailable to subscribers. Upgrade pricing allows unlimited episodes in the feed. (But three might be enough?)

I’ve discovered another really convenient use for JustCast – I’ve set this up for my own personal use. I’ve subscribed to my own RSS feed! Now any random audio file I want to listen to while driving, when dragged into my JustCast folder in Dropbox, appears in my podcast app along with all the other podcast I listen to. Sensational!

Student in a Flipped Class? Cut homework time in half using this tip!

Most of us read much faster than talking speed yet still comprehend what we read. In the same way, it’s possible to listen much faster than your teacher can speak. But many of us have never thought about that, because in real life, we only hear words as they are uttered. (In the classroom, the speed your teacher can move her mouth is holding you back!)

But If your teacher makes screencasts, videos, or audio podcasts, try playing them at double speed. You’ll be amazed to find that you can comprehend what you are listening to just fine. In fact, after listening for a while, you’ll discover that it starts to sound surprisingly normal. After listening at double speed, if I slow a podcast down to “normal” speed, it sounds comically slow!

So how do you do it?

With an audio podcast it’s easy. Almost all podcast players have the option to adjust playback speed. My favourite is Overcast. To my ears it does the best job of speeding up voice while preserving clarity. Plus it has some really innovative features like “Smart Speed” which reduces the length of the pauses between words; shortening the total listening time, without speeding up the words themselves. Brilliant!

Swift Player

For videos or screencasts on your iPhone or iPad, try Swift Player. It lets you speed up any video on your device, or online (YouTube, Vimeo, etc).

Less is More: Why audio podcasts are more powerful than video for flipping a class

It’s counterintuitive.

Most of the talk around flipping classrooms assumes the use of video.  That’s understandable.  One would intuitively think that a vodcast or screencast is more effective than a humble audio podcast, but that is not my experience.

I have been flipping my classroom using audio podcasts (see example) since 2005.  Then, as screencasting tools became increasingly user-friendly, I started in 2008 to make e-podcasts and screencasts (see example) – thinking that the visual element would augment the effectiveness of my out-of-class tuition.  I was wrong.

The response my students gave me was quite unanticipated!  Almost unanimously they said that they preferred the audio podcasts!  While this was initially unexpected, their reasons actually make sense, and highlight a fundamental advantage of audio podcasting.

One boy explained that he likes to listen to the podcast while working on the farm on the weekend.  He could no longer do that now that he had to watch the screen.  Another said he likes to listen to the podcast while working out at the gym.  One of the girls said she likes to listen to the podcast while soaking in the bath, another on her morning walk.  Yet another student said she just likes to sit on the bus after a long day at school, shut her eyes and listen – without having to look at anything.

We all have daily activities that preclude us from watching a screen: driving, washing the dishes, walking the dog, shopping or mowing the lawn.  An audio podcast fits perfectly in that space, allowing a student to focus his mind on biology (in my students’ case), while using his hands and eyes for some other mundane chore.  It’s a win-win.  The Podcast makes the chore less boring, while the chore makes the learning feel like a good use of time!

A video on the other hand, can’t be multitasked with anything else.  It competes for time with reading, traditional homework, watching TV and in fact, with most of our other daily activities.

There are of course, some topics that can’t easily be explained in an audio-only podcast (think: calculus, fine art or in my case, genetic pedigree analysis). That’s where video is the right, and only choice.  But in my experience, when there’s an option, audio podcasts have proven more effective and certainly more popular with students.

As an indication of their relative popularity, my weekly 90-minute biology podcast gets more than 1000 downloads per day on average.   Even my most popular 10-minute YouTube screencasts might only get 1000 views per month.

Have others found this too?