Smart Ideas for Incorporating Your SMARTboard™

Description

I used Camtasia audio editing software to create the podcast, "Smart Ideas for Incorporating Your SMARTboard™ into Your Classroom." This podcast is 5 minutes long and discusses multiple ideas for teachers wanting to use their SMARTboard™more effectively utilizing SMART Technologies' online resource database, SMART Exchange.

Challenges, Solutions, and Future Implications

The most difficult task of this project was recording the narrative and editing the recorded audio. For this project it appeared simpler to rerecord the narrative rather than try to meticulously edit it. However, it made me realize how difficult it must be to edit long spans of narrative.  Once I found the zoom buttons, editing went a lot quicker since I could zoom in to pinpoint and cut out an an "ummm" or a thump in the background. Another issue I had was trying to figure out why the mp3 playback sounded differently on my desktop speakers compared to my phone speakers. I adjusted the different audio files to levelize the recordings in an effort to improve playback. Seeing no significant difference, I eventually realized that my desktop speakers are not as high quality has I had hoped so I finalized the podcast and uploaded it to the U of A Comp server.

I felt a bit of personal satisfaction from not having to consult a help manual or online forum to troubleshoot any of my issues. With what little experience I have using Camtasia, I managed to maneuver through the software fairly intuitively and I would highly recommend the software to anyone who may be in the market for video/audio software. 

In the future, I will use Camtasia to produce more podcasts to use in developing our online nutrition training course and our SNAP-Ed social media efforts. This activity has reminded me how involved, yet simple and effective a podcast can be.