Thing 7:

For this thing, I opted to try out podcasting. Our 12th grade English teacher had recently asked for my help in getting her students podcasting, so it was an opportune time to experiment. She has a cart of Chromebooks in her room, so I was specifically looking for a free tool that would work well with these and allow for some editing.

I tried out Audioboom first, but as of October, it appears to have gone over to paid service. That won't work for me in this project, so I kept looking.

I tried out Clyp, both on my Chromebook and as an iPhone app.  It is a quick, easy way to record and upload an audio file. I preferred the iPhone app. The audio quality was much better and the app allowed for clipping the beginning and end of the recording, which the website did not. I think that the phone app has some promise as an option for some students.

Next I tried out the Chrome Extension Beautiful Audio Editor. This is a much more full featured experience, but I am concerned that it may be too complicated for some. It does have Google single sign on, works beautifully with Chromebooks and automatically saves to Google Drive, which I think are great features. 

I think I will plan to give our students both options--Clyp & Beautiful Audio Editor and let them decide what works best for them. I'm also trying to decide how best to provide recording space and will be pondering that as well.

I'm not sure how I'll use podcasting myself. I hate hearing my voice recorded. When I've recorded in the past, I've done it as part of a screencast. At the moment, I can't think of a reason to podcast, but I'll keep it in mind with tese new tools at my disposal!