How to Clear the Ambient Noise from a Podcast Recording

One of the things that can ruin an otherwise good podcast is an annoying hiss or similar ambient noise in the background. Fortunately, there are ways to remove or replace that noise in post-production. I was recently looking for a way to do this when I came across a video from Make Use Of on how to remove ambient noise by using Audacity.


Applications for Education
Recording podcasts can be a good way for students to record and share their thoughts about any topic they pic or are assigned. Students can record alone or record a conversation with friends, classmates, or family. Don't let an annoying hiss in the background ruin an otherwise great conversation recorded by students, try using this method in Audacity to remove that ambient noise.

For a complete Audacity tutorial and other methods of recording podcasts, check out this article that I published last fall.

The Cost of Owning a Car - Free Lesson Plan

The cover image on my personal Facebook page is currently a picture of my first car. I'm pretty sure I paid $1500 for it which was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state's safety inspection and then needed about a dozen other little repairs over the next two years. Fortunately, I had someone in my life who taught me a lot about working on cars and saved me lots of money in the process. I made the same mistake that many young people make in believing that saving money to purchase the car was all that I needed. That's why I got excited when I saw an email from EconEdLink that featured their free lesson plan titled Owning a Car.

Owning a Car is a free lesson plan from EconEdLink that is designed as a personal finance lesson for high school students. The lesson is based around a video titled What are the True Costs of Car Ownership? The video was produced as a collaboration between Bank of America and Khan Academy. The lesson plan has students first estimate what they think the costs of car ownership are then watch the video while taking notes (template provided) about the actual costs of car ownership. The follow-up activity has students comparing ownership costs for a variety of vehicle types.

To build upon EconEdLink's Owning a Car lesson plan consider showing your students Common Craft's videos about insurance and borrowing money. You can preview both of those videos as embedded below.



Disclosure: I have a long-standing in-kind relationship with Common Craft. 

5 Highlights of Getting Organized With Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep

This Thursday at 4pm ET I'm hosting a Practical Ed Tech Webinar titled Get Organized With Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep. It is the first of four webinars that I'm hosting on Practical Ed Tech in August.

In the video embedded below I highlight the key elements of Thursday's webinar.

Register Here

5 Highlights of the Webinar

• How to streamline your workflow through Google Classroom.
• How to organize and share resources with students.
• How to keep track of goals (yours and your students’) through Google Keep and Calendar.
• How to streamline meetings and meeting scheduling.
• How to save time when giving feedback on students’ documents and presentations.

Professional Development Certificates

• I provide a certificate for attending the webinar. Whether or not the organization that governs your teaching certificate/ license will accept it is a determination that you will have to make. Some organizations will accept it for contact hours/ credits toward certificate/license renewal and some will not. 

QuickCite - A Site That Helps Students Properly Format Citations

From the developer of the popular Flippity service comes a new tool designed for students. That tool is called QuickCite and it helps students properly format MLA 8 citations. Students can also use QuickCite for less formal citation needs like those used in slideshows and video credits.

QuickCite is not like many of the well-known online citation tools that provide automatic citation formatting for students. QuickCite doesn't just pull a URL or an ISBN and then spit out a citation for students to copy. Instead, to create an MLA 8 citation students have to manually enter required information then the citation is created for them. QuickCite provides little help buttons that students can click on to get clarifications on the type of information that needs to be included in each section of the citation.

Applications for Education
There are a few things that I appreciate about QuickCite for students. First, it doesn't do all the work for student. Second, QuickCite provides guidance on what goes into each part of an MLA 8 citation. Third, students don't need to create an account or even have an email address to use QuickCite.

Create a Directory App for Your School

Last week's most popular post was Dozens of Apps for Physical Education. In that post I highlighted the work that Kevin Shephard at Support REAL Teachers has done to develop apps through the free Glide service. Glide enables anyone who can create a Google Sheet to create a mobile app. You can start building an app from scratch or you can use one Glide's free templates to get started.

One of the templates that Glide offers is for building a staff directory app. The directory template can be used to include pictures of staff members, contact information, and brief bios of staff members.


You can find more Glide tutorials here.

Applications for Education
My first thought when seeing the directory template was to create a staff directory app that included not only the basic contact information for staff members but also where students and parents can find teachers' websites and supply/ materials lists. Depending upon the school you might also add teaching or course schedules to the directory app.