#367 – Adobe Podcast

#367 — Adobe Podcast

AVID Open Access
9 min

Keywords
Adobe podcast, free version, premium version, enhance speech, mic check, studio tool, upload audio, invite guests, record option, royalty-free music, transcript editing, filter option, placeholder option, download projects, hosting options

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:00 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckerman.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is Adobe Podcast. Last month, I did a Tech Talk for Teachers episode about podcasting. Podcasting is a great way to engage students, have them internalize their learning, and give them a chance to use their own authentic voice. As you can tell, I’m a big fan of having students create podcasts about course content.

Now, since that last episode, I’ve discovered a great new podcasting tool that simplifies and streamlines the process. If you haven’t gotten a chance, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to my last episode on podcasting; that’ll provide a nice foundation for you. But I wanted to add this episode as well, since I think it can be a great option for classroom podcasting.

The new tool I discovered is called Adobe Podcast. You can find it at podcast.adobe.com, and you’ll notice that there’s both a free and a paid version for this product. The free version is just for audio.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 If you want your students to be creating video podcasts, you’ll need the premium version. With the free version, your students can create podcasts up to 30 minutes in length and download two finished projects per day, which should be sufficient for most school projects. With that in mind, let’s dive into Adobe Podcast and see how it works.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 2:04 Here’s the tool for today.

Paul Beckermann 2:11 First, you’ll need to navigate to podcast.adobe.com and set up your free account. You can log in with Google, Facebook, Apple, or use another email of your choice. After you’ve logged in, you can choose from three main tools at the top: Enhance Speech, Studio, and Mic Check. Let’s take a look at each of these, one at a time.

First, Enhance Speech. This tool allows AI to improve the sound quality of an audio clip. To use it, you’ll need to upload an audio file, like an MP3 or WAV file. If you want to enhance the sound of a video clip, you will need the premium version for audio.

Paul Beckermann 2:11 The free version works. Once your clip has been uploaded, you can turn on the enhance speech option and adjust a slider to meet your desired needs. You’ll notice that as you move the slider to the right, more enhancement is applied. The more you add, the more background noise is removed, and the more your voice stands out. It also makes the tone of your voice sound richer and fuller. When you’ve got it the way you want it, you can download the processed clip.

The second tool is called Mic Check. This lets you check your microphone setup before you record your podcast or audio recording. You simply plug in your mic and click the Test Mic button, say a few sentences, and then click stop. Adobe Podcast will give you an analysis in four different areas: distance to microphone, gain, background noise, and echo. It will place a marker on a scale from excellent to poor to show you how you’re doing for each one. It also provides information about how to adjust common devices for each of these four areas. Adjust your microphone or device and test it again until you get the results that you feel are acceptable. This can help you and your students get much better quality audio when you record your podcasts.

The third tool is called Studio. This is the heart of the program. Again, if you want to produce video, you’ll need the premium account. But for audio, the free version should suffice, unless students need to produce and download more than the allowed two episode downloads per day. As with most programs, you can open an existing project or create a new one. When you create a new one, you’ll have three main options to get started: Upload Audio, Invite Guests to Record, and Start Recording. If you’ve already got audio files that you want to use, maybe some music or audio you’ve recorded somewhere else that you’d like to add, you can use the Upload Audio option. This does just what it sounds like. It allows you to upload these files into the system so you can add them to your production.

The Invite Guest option is really great if you want to have a guest on your show. When you click this option, you can either email an invite or get a shareable link to give to your guest. When your guest clicks the link or accepts the invite, they can engage in a conversation with you in real time. They won’t even have to log in or create an account. This is a great feature if you want your students to interview other people, which can be a great learning experience and fantastic way to bring experts into your classroom experience.

Then, of course, you’ve got the Record option. It’s a simple start and stop system. Press the red record button to begin and the stop button when you’re finished. You can repeat this option as many times as you want during your session, so if you don’t get it all recorded in one take, no problem.

Paul Beckermann 7:07 Once your main audio has been recorded, you can polish it up and add music. The platform includes a collection of royalty-free music clips that you can add into your production. Simply select one you like and click the plus symbol next to it to add it to the production. Once it’s in the project, you can split it, fade it in or out, or set it as background music behind your voice. If you choose background, the program will automatically make the music quieter so it doesn’t drown out your voice.

If you want to edit the recordings of your voice, no problem there, either. Once your audio has been recorded, a transcript appears. If you remove a word from the transcript, it automatically removes it from the recording. It’s like magic. The same goes with filler words: a little dot will appear on the transcript when you say a filler word. If you delete the dot, the filler word disappears from the recording. Essentially, students can clean up the audio recording simply by editing the transcript. It makes the editing process really easy and takes the technical difficulty out of the equation.

You’ll also find a filter option on the right side. If you click this, you can enhance the audio right here in the studio without needing to go to the Enhance Speech menu separately. It’s really handy. It can make your audio sound really professional.

Then there’s a placeholder option on the right menu. This allows you to put notes into your script, like “Add music here,” or “Add interview clip here later”. These are reminders to yourself of content you still need to add. When you add that content, you can simply drag and drop it into the placeholder, and the placeholder will disappear and be replaced by that content. Another option with the placeholder feature is to create a template that others can use as a starting point and then edit and complete on their own.

Paul Beckermann 9:02 If you click the Share button, you can make a template out of your own project, or you can use one of the templates listed on the first page of the Studio portion of Adobe Podcast. There are some already provided to you to try out.

Finally, when you’re finished, you can download your project. There’s a download button at the top which allows you to download your file audio as MP3 or WAV. You can even download the transcript as a text document, DOCX, or PDF file. Remember, you can download twice per day with the free version.

Adobe Podcast seems to have been designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It’s got pretty much everything you need to plan, record, edit, and produce a podcast. The only thing it won’t give you is a place to host it or share it with others. You’ll need to decide what works best for your classroom in that regard. That might be putting the finished files in a shared Google Drive folder or maybe uploading them to a learning management system.

Paul Beckermann 10:14 If you want to share them more broadly, you could create a classroom website to host them, or maybe put them on social media. You could even subscribe to Spotify and set up a real podcast account. Of course, as always, you want to be sure to check out your local guidelines and restrictions for sharing student work publicly, whatever path you decide to take. I think Adobe Podcast can be a powerful and efficient solution to your podcast and audio production needs.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the collection of articles titled, Empower Students Through Creativity and Choice. And, of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.