Podcasts have become an increasingly popular method of consuming content. There are approx 135 million podcast listeners in the United States, and 70 percent of adult listeners participate in podcasts with their children. What do these figures mean for schools? Producing a podcast provides a simple and convenient alternative to keeping families and community members informed about your school or district. Podcasts prevent email overload and confusing navigation on school websites, and provide consistency between schools when it comes to updates. The flexibility of podcasts eliminates time constraints, allowing families to listen whenever they have time.
Here are five steps to get started.
Step 1: Inform the right channels and create a vision
First, make sure all district administrators or essential officials are aware that a podcast is being produced. You can then start thinking about a podcast vision. The name is an important consideration. It should be something that people can easily remember; One way to accomplish this is to include the name of the district or school somewhere in the name of the podcast. Keeping the name simple will help more families and community members find the show.
Step 2: Determine the delivery format
While many podcasts stick to one structure, feel free to experiment with the variety of formats and see what works best. Here are some popular options:
- Staff conversations: Have the staff summarize events (athletics, extracurricular activities, classroom projects, or initiatives) to give parents and community members a look at some of the district’s highlights.
- Interviews with students: Bring a student’s perspective to an initiative and make sure you get parental permission before involving students in the podcast. One way to respect student privacy is to use only the student’s first name.
- Community Interviews: Emphasize partnerships with community organizations, such as the city library or local businesses. It’s a great way to continue bridging those connections and celebrating the work done. For example, in a previous district we interviewed a local restaurant that worked with our post-secondary students to give them work experience.
- News: Have an admin share a quick update or important information for parents and community members.
Step 3: Set up the technical logistics
Once your vision is established, it’s time to choose a hosting platform, the space that will manage, store and distribute your episodes. There are several platform options to meet the different needs of podcasters, including popular platforms such as Spotify for podcasters, Podboon, BuzzspruitAnd Libsyn.
There are several factors to consider when choosing a hosting platform. An important consideration is price. Many platforms are completely free or free with limitations on the number of episodes or minutes per month. You’ll also want to consider the platform’s user interface. How easy is it to upload and share an episode you’ve made? Finally, you’ll want to think about storage capacity. Is there a limit to the number of minutes or episodes you can save?
Step 4: Start recording
Expensive equipment and special studio space are not necessary. Podcasts can be run on little to no budget by utilizing existing equipment and spaces.
Microphones are essential for the information in an episode to be heard. However, a large, expensive microphone is not necessary. A podcaster can use headphones with an attached microphone or even just wireless headphones. If you want to invest in something smaller, there are several inexpensive stand microphones that you can connect to a computer for easy recording.
Room setup is extremely important when recording. When setting up a room for a recording session, you’ll want to do a sound quality check. Make a test recording to determine whether the voices are captured properly by the microphones. Listen for any background noise, such as bells or conversations in the hallway. Small spaces, such as offices with a door, or even small classrooms are ideal for recording, as larger spaces often cause an echo.
As with hosting platforms, there are many types of recording software available that you can use. I recommend you start with something that is open source. Dare is a long-term free option. Adobe recently launched a free education podcast platform called Adobe podcast. Another option is to record meetings through a virtual conferencing tool your district already has, such as Zoom or Google Meetthat make recording possible.
After every shot it is important to reflect. Identify opportunities for improvement and review any challenges you encountered during the shoot so they can be resolved for the next shoot.
Step 5: Edit, Publish and Share
When considering edits, it’s important to decide if anything needs to be removed. For example, if someone shared confidential information during an interview, it can be removed from an episode. Otherwise, you can listen back to the episode and choose phrases or sentences that can be eliminated to optimize the flow and conversation.
Many of the free recording platforms, such as Audacity, offer built-in editing, where you can highlight and delete parts of the episode. While there are premium editing software options available, it’s best to use accessible tools when starting out. Adobe’s free platform offers editing options such as reducing background noise and increasing microphone clarity.
Once your episode has been edited, it is ready to be published. When recordings are uploaded to the hosting platform, they can be shared immediately. The platform creates an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, allowing your podcast to be shared with popular apps such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
With published episodes, you can start sharing links to promote the series. If you have a social media channel in your district, the links to the new episodes can be provided with each release. If a parent subscribes to your show, he/she will continue to receive alerts when new episodes are published so that he/she can stay up to date with happenings in the neighborhood.
Final thoughts
Producing a podcast is a great opportunity to celebrate the different initiatives, events and people in your school or district. While it may seem like a lot of work at first, the process becomes easier as you record and share more episodes. After recording my first three episodes, I felt more comfortable and natural with the process and felt ready to release them publicly.
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