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The sounds of silence–or not! So your students have been using Audacity to record news events, interesting science facts, or stories they created, but getting the recording just right is a bit troublesome, and no one wants to try 15 takes. Can the audio be edited?
Absolutely! Audacity has some pretty advanced features, but removing unwanted bits is extremely easy. Let’s take the simplest case: A student begins recording but doesn’t start talking for a few seconds. Those seconds can seem like an eternity to a web-raised fourth grader, so she may think something is wrong when no sound is coming out of the speakers.
Step 1. A recording has been made, and you can see the “vibrations” of the recording.
Step 2. Looking at the recording “vibrations” you’ll see that the line is quite flat where there is no talking.
Step 3. Simply highlight (just like you were selecting a word to change its font) the flat area where there is no talking in the recording.
Step 4. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard one time. The silence was eliminated!
Step 5. Play the recording to make sure no part of the good content was eliminated. If it was, just click Ctrl+Z to undo the deletion and try again.
These steps are particularly useful when a student is far into a recording and stumbles a bit but finally gets the speaking correct. You (or the student actually) can simply edit the recording by deleting the bad segment!
Tip: If a recording is completely bad, and the student wants to delete it, then he needs to look for the little X in the upper-left of the recording bar. That takes away that track, and allows the student to start anew.