Hi there. I’m Heather Kaiser and I’d like to welcome you to the very first episode of How Does She Do It?
Time and time again this is the question that I am asked. And every time, I struggle to find a good answer. You see, I am one of those overachieving people who is constantly on the look out for innovative ideas. My goal with this podcast is to start sharing some of the ways I stay abreast of new ideas, best practices, current research, trends, and everything else that goes into making me the educator that I am. I hope to provide a new episode on a bi-weekly basis. Who knows, eventually I may even manage a weekly podcast. But for now, I think bi-weekly is more realistic. So here it goes, episode 1 of How Does She Do It?
Choosing a topic for my first podcast was no small task. But after a little consideration, I decided to begin with the beginning. Well, the beginning of podcasting anyhow. Earlier this year, a colleague of mine asked me “how can we create a podcast for parents?” Well, I’m embarrassed to say that although I told her that would be easy for me to help her with, I still haven’t helped her. So, I guess that would be a great place to begin as I begin this new podcast of my own. First of all, my favorite tool for audio recording is Audacity. It is free and the learning curve is minimal. In fact all the vocals and background music encompassed in this podcast have been created using this tool. It is a download and the buttons are easy to comprehend for those of us who grew up using a Walkman or boombox to record things off the radio. Once I had my recording, I just needed to decide where to make it available. You can place the recordings in so many places. Choosing the place really depends on the audience you are trying to reach. For my colleague, placing the podcast in Google Drive and then sharing a link via Class Dojo makes really good sense because she is trying to reach parents in her classroom. For my podcast, I am probably going to publish in several places while hosting it on my blog or website. Well, that is the basic gist of it. I would add that writing a script for your podcast can be a big timesaver in the long run and help you to talk smoothly without rambling on or getting off track. Yes, I tried to do this without a script a couple times and then realized that it was really a huge waste of time. So I sat down and typed up a script which took me about 10 minutes. Voila, hopefully you can tell how much that helped just by the way this podcast has flowed along in a fairly organized fashion.
I should mention that I separated the vocal and background music sound tracks. This is really a simple step. First I recorded the vocal (talking) part. In my script, I made notes of places where I should pause and how long I wanted to pause for a musical interlude. Then I selected my music from some royalty free music (a topic for another podcast - maybe in a couple weeks) and placed it in an underlying track. Adjusting the volume is done easily by just dragging the arrow on the volume bar for the music sound track.
Alright, that just about does it for my first “How Does She Do It?” Podcast. I hope it left you not only with some new ideas but also a better understanding of How I do it and How you could do it too! Check out the podcast notes for helpful links and the schedule of upcoming podcasts along with topics. I’m planning to include an area for listeners to interact with me via comments and questions, so please be on the lookout for that and consider subscribing to the feed so you will be notified when a new podcast comes out. Thanks for tuning in.
Time and time again this is the question that I am asked. And every time, I struggle to find a good answer. You see, I am one of those overachieving people who is constantly on the look out for innovative ideas. My goal with this podcast is to start sharing some of the ways I stay abreast of new ideas, best practices, current research, trends, and everything else that goes into making me the educator that I am. I hope to provide a new episode on a bi-weekly basis. Who knows, eventually I may even manage a weekly podcast. But for now, I think bi-weekly is more realistic. So here it goes, episode 1 of How Does She Do It?
Choosing a topic for my first podcast was no small task. But after a little consideration, I decided to begin with the beginning. Well, the beginning of podcasting anyhow. Earlier this year, a colleague of mine asked me “how can we create a podcast for parents?” Well, I’m embarrassed to say that although I told her that would be easy for me to help her with, I still haven’t helped her. So, I guess that would be a great place to begin as I begin this new podcast of my own. First of all, my favorite tool for audio recording is Audacity. It is free and the learning curve is minimal. In fact all the vocals and background music encompassed in this podcast have been created using this tool. It is a download and the buttons are easy to comprehend for those of us who grew up using a Walkman or boombox to record things off the radio. Once I had my recording, I just needed to decide where to make it available. You can place the recordings in so many places. Choosing the place really depends on the audience you are trying to reach. For my colleague, placing the podcast in Google Drive and then sharing a link via Class Dojo makes really good sense because she is trying to reach parents in her classroom. For my podcast, I am probably going to publish in several places while hosting it on my blog or website. Well, that is the basic gist of it. I would add that writing a script for your podcast can be a big timesaver in the long run and help you to talk smoothly without rambling on or getting off track. Yes, I tried to do this without a script a couple times and then realized that it was really a huge waste of time. So I sat down and typed up a script which took me about 10 minutes. Voila, hopefully you can tell how much that helped just by the way this podcast has flowed along in a fairly organized fashion.
I should mention that I separated the vocal and background music sound tracks. This is really a simple step. First I recorded the vocal (talking) part. In my script, I made notes of places where I should pause and how long I wanted to pause for a musical interlude. Then I selected my music from some royalty free music (a topic for another podcast - maybe in a couple weeks) and placed it in an underlying track. Adjusting the volume is done easily by just dragging the arrow on the volume bar for the music sound track.
Alright, that just about does it for my first “How Does She Do It?” Podcast. I hope it left you not only with some new ideas but also a better understanding of How I do it and How you could do it too! Check out the podcast notes for helpful links and the schedule of upcoming podcasts along with topics. I’m planning to include an area for listeners to interact with me via comments and questions, so please be on the lookout for that and consider subscribing to the feed so you will be notified when a new podcast comes out. Thanks for tuning in.
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