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Radio Programs in the Classroom - Using Audacity




The other day I worked with a 5th grade class teaching them how to use Audacity (free, open source, audio software). They had to recite the shortened poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and add in eight sound effects (that I curated for them). The project was leading up to a larger one after the break where students will be making WW2 era radio broadcasts in their Social Studies class. 

Finished student poem project - Tyler's Recording

Audacity is available in our district software center for students to download. It looks intimidating to use but there are really only a few things that students needed to learn how to do (I made the cheat sheets above so they could have some reference materials to refer back to). My goals for the students were to teach them how to:

- Record an audio track
- Delete an audio track
- Split and move audio tracks
- Trim audio tracks
- Import audio tracks
- Fade In and Out
- Reduce the volume
- Know the difference between inserting and layering a sound effect
- Save their working project
- Save their final project (as a WAV file)
- Upload to a Google Classroom assignment

I am by no means an Audacity expert so I watched several YouTube videos prior to the lesson. In the past I have used Audacity to split and merge music tracks and that was pretty much the extent of my experience with the software. 

The introduction lesson was done in two 5th grade gifted and talented classes the week of Christmas break in her 2 hour ELA blocks. The teacher is very tech savvy and was interested in having her students learn the tool for future recordings. She said, after the project, that she was going to add the introductory lesson to her December lesson plans each year going forward (so that made me happy!).  

For our whole group lesson we all did the same simple recording adding in four sound effects (which I got from the Discovery Education sound effects library and curated into a file, sharing the file with students). Our district has a subscription to Discovery Education and I would say their sound effects are often overlooked in their audio library. They have a lot but it is by no means the most comprehensive effects library (for instance I couldn't find a sound effect for paper ripping) but all the students have access to it and they are easily downloadable to student tablets, which I needed. We block a lot of audio sites in our district (I'll list a couple of sound effects sites to try at the end of this post).

The simple recording was a short announcement of a grant with their teachers as the surprise winners. The sound effects were as follows:

- Intro music
- Envelope ripping (got from the YouTube audio library)
- Crowd gasp
- Crowd cheer

Once we completed the recording (took about 1 hour) the students had the second hour to work independently on their poem recording. 

In Google Classroom I put a link to their sound effects in Discovery Education (you can add outside resources to your file library in DE and still share) and I had pre-printed the poem with what sound effects went where (see picture below). 



Student had to download the sound effects first (it helped to delete the sound effects from the first group project so they weren't confused). Then they had to record their poem (it helped to have them pause the recording between stanzas to keep the pacing...those who didn't made a lot of mistakes and spoke too quickly). Once they were done recording they saved everything and started to insert and/or overlap the sound effects, ALWAYS saving between changes. We learned, after the first group, that overlapping the sound effects on to the readings worked better then inserting them between stanzas...which led to learning how to adjust the volume of the sound effects so they didn't drown out the main voice. 

The students were happily engaged for two solid hours and learned a lot of skills that will help them with future recordings (poems, podcasts, mock radio broadcasts). 

If you are interested in doing this with children I would definitely check out the following sound effect libraries on a student device to see what may or may not be blocked (if you want students to find their own sound effects). Look for sites that don't require students to make an account. If you are finding the effects for students you can curate sound effects in a Google Drive folder if you don't have access to Discovery Education.

Free Play Music (chose the educational license ..you need to make an account so more for teachers)
Free Sound Effects (they have a pro version so if you see pricing move back to the "free" area)

If you have any other sites you recommend, please let me know in the comments or tag me on Twitter @atechcoachlife.



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