Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program which is completely free to download. It allows you to record simple tracks or more complex multi track recordings. It is an extremely effective as a program and it simple to use. In our primary school, we use Audacity to edit interviews for our school radio and to edit songs to re mix them. The children that utilise this program for the radio are typically year 5 (aged 9 and 10).

Even if you don't have special radio microphones, I find audacity simple enough to use in the class. I usually record straight on to the audio track, but it is also just as easy to record a podcast on a portable USB microphone and import the track on to the editor. 

Once you have the track you can then listen and highlight the parts you don't want and then delete them. Depending on the quality of the initial recording this might take some time, but is always good practise to do to get a professional sounding recording. 

The next step is to export your finished file and save it to the folder or area that you would like as an MP3 file. This enables it to be in a format that can be played on most media players, such as VLC, windows media player, QuickTime and iTunes. 

It took me a little while to figure out the controls and I definitely have not seen all it can do. It is a very clever and useful program. It's user friendly and perfect for primary school level children.

Thanks

Aimée