{"id":6974,"date":"2021-05-27T13:53:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T13:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6974"},"modified":"2021-06-03T02:10:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:10:51","slug":"adventures-in-podcasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2021\/05\/27\/adventures-in-podcasting\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Podcasting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"TimothyAdventures in Podcasting<\/h3>\n

Timothy Hampson<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I decided to start my podcast, ELT WTF<\/a> (the WTF, naturally, stands for \u2018What Tim Feels\u2019) while listening to the TEFLology podcast<\/a>. In the past I had blogged, but I was never sure that I had much of interest to say. On the other hand, I am always full of questions that I want to ask people. Starting an interview-based podcast was a solution to both those problems; I wouldn\u2019t have to come up with things to say each week, just a list of questions. Besides, the TEFLology crew seemed to be having a good time and their episodes were really interesting. I wanted to be having similar conversations.<\/p>\n

Getting started<\/h4>\n

I had the idea to start a podcast at around eight pm one evening and by nine I had ordered an all in one recorder and sent some emails asking people to be guests on the show. One reason for starting the pod was wanting an opportunity (or perhaps an excuse) to have more conversations about English language teaching. Another was a desire to scratch that creative itch that many teachers have. I was also interested in having a chance to give a platform to people and causes I believe in.<\/p>\n

One thing that is certain is that podcasting can open doors. I can\u2019t imagine emailing someone to say \u201cHi this is Tim Hampson, a teacher without much experience. Fancy a chat about teaching?\u201d However, an email asking someone to appear on a podcast is certainly doable. I feel really lucky to have been able to talk to, and even meet, some of my TEFL heroes and even more lucky to get to ask them exactly the questions I wanted to without having to share their attention with anyone else.<\/p>\n

My favourite podcasts so far are ones where I\u2019ve honed in on a specific topic rather than having a broad chat. When I interviewed Reiko Yoshihara<\/a>, it was after seeing her speak about feminist language teaching at a conference. After her sessions I had a list of questions I wanted to ask her but didn\u2019t get the chance. I also thought what she was talking about was something more people should hear about. I was really proud of how the interview turned out because I think that shared interest came across.<\/p>\n

Investing in equipment<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s a little clich\u00e9 to say \u2018You don\u2019t need a lot of equipment to start out\u2019, but it\u2019s a clich\u00e9 for a reason. It\u2019s totally possible to start out recording everything on a mobile phone. If you\u2019re interviewing someone by Skype, you can both wear headphones and both record your respective sides of the conversation on your phones. When you start out podcasting, you will most likely be annoyed with yourself when you listen back to your tape and hear yourself going \u2018mmmm hmmmm\u2019 in agreement with everything your guest says. This two phones and Skype setup makes it really easy to edit out all those extra noises. Given how many podcasters Skype and only record on their side, this will already result in better audio than 75% of what\u2019s on the market.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anything like me though, you\u2019ll want to splash a little cash on your set up. The good news is that, compared to videography or photography, a little cash goes a long way when you\u2019re shopping for audio equipment. My first recorder was a Zoom h2n. This set me back about a hundred US dollars. This isn\u2019t peanuts, but compared to the cost of a \u2018decent\u2019 camera, it\u2019s a steal. More recently I\u2019ve upgraded to a Zoom H5 recorder with a Rode NH4 microphone which cost around $400 in total. Once again, not cheap, but I think the audio quality is so good to professional podcasting equipment that only the snootiest of audiophiles would be able to tell the difference.<\/p>\n

Organizing your podcast<\/h4>\n

My process for producing a podcast is based around seasons. In the past I\u2019ve been very ambitious about seasons and wanted each one to be seven episodes long. The two that I\u2019ve done so far have ended after the fifth episode and so I think this is maybe a more managable amount. Seasons work for me because I can record a bunch of episodes back to back and then edit them in batches too. I\u2019ll start a season by making a list of people I\u2019m interested in interviewing and then sending out emails to everyone. I always carry a notebook with me and so I\u2019ll write down questions as they come to me in the time before the interview. The night before I\u2019ll usually write down a condensed version of the list and try and put them in an order that makes sense. I always start off the interview by going through a checklist of things I tell every interviewee (\u201cTake as much time to think as you\u2019d like, I\u2019ll just edit it out.\u201d, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like a question, it\u2019s no problem to skip it.\u201d and so on). I try and warm up the guest with some more general questions to get them comfortable and then take a deeper dive into a specific area.<\/p>\n

My experience has been that it\u2019s better to pick one or two themes to go into in depth rather than try and talk about everything. When going through your interview questions, you might find a segue that breaks up the order of questions you have. I think it\u2019s always a good idea to take that segue and for that reason I\u2019ll tick off questions as I ask them. This gives a nice visual guide to what\u2019s left to go into in the interview. I often find that follow up questions that come up in the interview are often more interesting than the questions you had written down. Feel free to go off piste if you want to change your questions mid-interview.<\/p>\n

Editing your audio<\/h4>\n

The last part of the process is the edit. This is my favourite part, not because the process is fun, but because a good edit can make even the most ineloquent host (i.e. me) sound professional, More importantly it\u2019s the part where you get to make your guests sound great! There will probably be a lot of \u2018umms\u2019 and \u2018ahhs\u2019 and other noises that you don\u2019t want in your recording. You may also find yourself wanting to edit your podcast for brevity and clarity. The good news is that modern editing software makes this process very easy and relatively quick. Editing audio isn\u2019t that much more complicated than using word processing software, but good editing, like good writing,is a skill that takes a bit of time to hone. One of my first interviewees told me that I\u2019d edited out so many of his pauses that he sounded like he had taken speed, so don\u2019t try and over edit and you\u2019ll be doing better than me.<\/p>\n

Podcasting as a professional development tool<\/h4>\n

I hope that this article has convinced you that not only can podcasting be a great tool for professional development for teachers, but that it can be an easy and fun way to produce great content for other teachers in the community. Imagine a world where there were hundreds of great podcasts about language teaching. Having that much access to teachers having intelligent conversations about teaching would be a huge boon to the profession. It would allow good ideas to spread and for teachers to have debates important issues. I\u2019d also hope it would allow for a more diverse group of teachers to have a voice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adventures in Podcasting Timothy Hampson   I decided to start my podcast, ELT WTF (the WTF, naturally, stands for \u2018What Tim Feels\u2019) while listening to the TEFLology podcast. In the past I had blogged, but I was never sure that I had much of interest to say. On the other hand, I am always full … Continue reading Adventures in Podcasting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6974"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6998,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions\/6998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}