Elevate Your Teacher Voice: 3 Steps to Starting Your Podcast

Are you really passionate about your content?  Maybe you have excellent strategies to incorporate tech in the classroom.  Maybe you want to share resources for teachers to bring more culturally responsive practices into their classrooms.  Whatever it is you can’t get enough of learning about and talking about as it relates to your teaching craft, you should consider sharing it as a podcast.  It’s a simple, easy way to share your passion with educators across the globe that they can tune into while they are commuting, walking their dog, or maybe while they are hanging in the break room.

What follows is a 3-step approach to starting your podcast: pre-recording, recording & editing, and broadcasting & marketing.  You should also download the free checklist and brainstorming guided that will help keep you focused, organized, and has links to every single thing you need to get up and running in under 4 weeks.

PRE-RECORDING
Before you get started, it’s important to understand what the content of your podcast will be and purchase all necessary equipment.

For content, you will want to plan for consistency and a theme. Questions you want to know the answers to are: 

• How frequently will you release a new episode?  Will it be weekly, every other week, or monthly?
• How long do you want each episode to be?
• Will you be releasing episodes in perpetuity or will you release episodes in seasons?
• Will you be doing all the talking by yourself or will you be interviewing guests?  If you will be interviewing guests, will you do this in person or virtually?

For the EDpiphany podcast, our final decision was to release the first season with 8 episodes in the spring of 2018.  We will record Season 2 in the fall of 2018 and launch in January 2019. Each episode will be released every other Wednesday at 12pm EST.  Guests were interviewed using the Zoom platform, which converts all interviews to an audio file.

Once you have a vision and a purpose for your podcast, you’re ready to prepare for your first recording session.  Visit the checklist for links of what recording software to download and what equipment to purchase.

RECORDING AND EDITING
Now the fun part begins!  Once you have all the necessary equipment, it’s time to record.  You can record directly in Audacity or upload the audio from your Zoom call to Audacity.  If you will be interviewing someone in person, connecting your microphones to a mixer will be necessary in order for Audacity to pick up both voices.  If you will be interviewing guests virtually, a mixer is not necessary as you can connect your single microphone to your laptop.

Make sure to prepare your guests by sending them the script for your show.  Share with them the theme and atmosphere you want to create as well as questions you will be asking them so they can prepare thoughtful answers. The important thing to remember during your interview is that it doesn’t need to be perfect.  Sometimes your guests will ramble on about something that isn’t useful. That’s ok. You can just cut that part out. You’ll want to get between 45-60 minutes of audio which will give you ample material that you can shave down to 20-30 minutes of only the best insights.

Next, you’re ready to edit.  Editing can seem scary and daunting, but Audacity has an incredible help center and there are hundreds and hundreds of forums and YouTube videos that can walk you step-by-step through anything you would want to learn how to do in Audacity.

​I have found that the most important skills to have are knowing how to cut, copy and paste audio. Once you figure that out, moving on to how to add tracks, add music, fade in and fade out audio, and generate silence should be your next goal. With these skills, I have had a very easy 

experience in creating intros, outros, moving segments of my interview into the order I want them in, and inserting voice overs with information for my listeners.

If that overwhelms you, stay calm!  The checklist also has links to tutorials for how you can learn all of these skills.  One step at a time.
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BROADCASTING & MARKETING
When your first episode is ready, it’s time to get it into the hands, ears, and devices of your target audience.  The EDpiphany podcast is hosted on Lisbyn for $7/month. We simply opened up an account, uploaded the audio file, named the episode, and it was shot into the world wide web for people to listen. 

Of course, nobody will listen if you do not share with others that your podcast is live.  Make sure to create a Facebook page, Twitter handle, and Instagram account to share behind-the-scenes photos, quotes, and information about your guests and the topics of your episodes.

SOUND EASY?
That’s because it is!  Whatever you do, just take it one step at a time.  The checklist provides you with bite-sized tasks with relevant “how-to” links that will make this process simple and manageable.

We could have bombarded you with all that info, but that would defeat the whole purpose of making you feel like you could handle this!  We recommend budgeting 1 week per section on the checklist. We also recommend that you DO NOT click on the hyperlinks until you are ready to take on the next task on the to-do list.

You can do this.  You’ll love this. Share your voice!