Audio Adventures with Audacity

By Alix E. Peshette

I’ve been on an interesting learning curve lately, nailing down the intricacies of Google Earth, YouTube and Audacity so that I can build staff development trainings around these exciting tools. The training titled “Audio Adventures with Audacity” debuted last week.

“Learn how easy it is for students and teachers to record narration, edit, and add sound effects and music to create an audio recording. From poetry, storytelling, interviews, and how-to instructions, audio recordings fit into almost every subject area. Using free software called Audacity, and an inexpensive microphone, students and teachers can create powerful audio recordings that can be used in PowerPoint, Photo Story 3, Movie Maker and podcasting. Participants receive a free microphone for classroom use.“

There were the usual expected technical glitches and a few unexpected ones stemming from the variety of Dell laptops we were using. Who would have guessed that the control panel sound settings would be significantly different between a Latitude D505, D510, and D520? Lesson learned!

The other lessons I learned before, during and after the training have been:

The spoken word is a hugely compelling multimedia art form and instructional product! Students have to research and write a script, read it aloud, know what they are reading, and infuse it with emotion and intention. Think how invested a student becomes as he produces an audio recording. Think of all the English Language Arts Content Standards addressed in that process!

Other content standards that come into play are:

Mathematics
Sound recordings in Audacity produce very interesting visual representations of the recording. There is mathematics at work here! Check out the K-12 lesson opportunities at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Visual and Performing Arts
Besides meeting the obvious content standards for performance and audio editing skills, audio recordings can be the springboard for a flourishing art career as a Foley artist. Both film and sound recordings are sweetened with sound effects! A favorite example I use to illustrate the power of sound effects is a recording of “The Raven” by the actor Christopher Walken. Turn up the sound and close your eyes while you listen.

Software and Hardware
Readers’ Theaters are wonderful sources of scripts for sound recording. Imagine a circle of students, each reading their part of the script to create – dare I say – Radio Theatre! Technology-wise, this will require a decent omni-directional microphone to get the entire production in one or two takes. Take a look at this retro-tinged very cool microphone at a very do-able price – the Blue Snowball USB Microphone.

After recording multiple voices comes the task of adjusting the audio levels for variations from one speaker to the next. A nice piece of Open Source software for this job is the Levelator. It runs on Windows or Mac and is drop-dead easy to use. Drag the sound file onto the Levelator window and it’s done!

The last lesson I learned is perhaps the best. It’s often the little things that count. Each teacher in the training walked away with an inexpensive Cyber Acoustic ACM1 microphone, the kind that used to come free with every brand new computer. Leaving the training with this microphone in hand makes it so much more likely that a novice-techie teacher will infuse sound recording into the classroom.