At this time because of the Covid-19 pandemic more teaching has moved online. Consider your smartphone as one of the devices you could use for your online teaching. You can send lectures or materials by audio and video. This post will focus on sending audio.
Sending audio
I find that participants in a course like to receive audio feedback on their performance of an assignment. Here is one way of recording and sending an audio file to your online class. This audio can be a lecture, an explanation, a review or feedback on performance, a story that you read or even instructions for participants to follow. You want to record it so it will be available for students whenever they wish to refer to it.
First you need to install a voice recorder app on your phone. Go to the app store on your phone and in the search, type “voice recorder”. Several apps will show up. I use Easy Voice Recorder. It is simple to use and it is free. Here is how to make a recording with it. After you have installed the app, open it. You will see the app is ready to record.
Click on the red button with the microphone at the bottom of the screen and you can begin recording. It would be best to write the script of what you want to say before you begin recording. Speak clearly and in a natural tone. The internal microphone of your smartphone will pick up the sound. When you begin recording the screen will show that.
The app has a timer at the bottom of the screen so you can see how much time your recording is taking. You can pause the recording by pressing the red record button. Below the timer you can see a check mark on one side of the record button and an X on the other side. If you are not satisfied with the recording click on the X at any time while recording and you will be given the opportunity to delete the recording. You can delete and start over.
On the other hand if you continue your recording until the end of your message or lecture you should click on the check mark to show that you are done. At this point the app will show that it is ready to start a new recording. As you are not ready for a new recording click on “Listen” to hear your recording. Click on the blue play button at the bottom of the screen, to listen to your recording. You can also fast forward or rewind to listen to particular sections of the audio. You can also see the duration of your audio and the data size of the audio.
Click on the three vertical dots on the right of the recording and you will see several actions you can take. You can delete the recording if you are not satisfied and redo it. If you want to keep it choose “Rename “ to give it the name you prefer. You will want to share the recording with your course participants. The easiest way is to share by Google Drive. After renaming your audio touch the three dots again and choose “Share with Drive”. A window will pop up showing the name of the recording. Choose Save.
The recording will be uploaded to your Google Drive. Your phone will notify you when the upload is completed. The time it takes will depend on the length of your audio. From your Google Drive you can share the recording with your online course participants directly or you can email them a link to the recording in your Google Drive.