Have you ever wanted kids to make a speech? Maybe present a book report? What about getting a bit more daring, and making a sort of radio announcement, maybe a speech for running for student council?

Odds are, you have. Odds are also pretty good that there have been times when a few students didn’t want to do it because they were not comfortable in front of a group. While that is something we need to work through and build confidence for, we can still allow them the opportunity to present their material in a meaningful way.

Vocaroo.com is a website that allows you to record audio and share it in a BUNCH of different ways. It even houses the recordings for you, though not permanently. Think of the possibilities here!

The website is extremely simple to use. In fact, my 11 year old daughter was able to figure it out with absolutely no instruction whatsoever. It took her all of about  For those of you who prefer a visual representation of how to make Vocaroo work for you, here you go.

1. Steer your browser over to www.vocaroo.com  You should see this page.

2. Click that button/link that says Click to Record

3. When you are done recording, click where it says CLICK TO STOP.

4. The only remotely tricky part about using Vocaroo is how to share it. It’s not that it is difficult, but there are just so many different ways to go about it. If you click the little PLUS symbol you will see a bunch more ways to share it as well.

Personally, I am a fan of saving the file as an mpeg and storing it in my Google Drive. That way, when Vocaroo decides to purge old files, you still have that great rendition of Black Coffee by Lacy Dalton you sang. You can share it through Google drive as well.

Here is where it gets pretty cool. You can use a QR code generator, such as http://www.qr-code-generator.com/ or any you prefer. Get the sharable link from your Google Drive sharing option, paste the link into the QR code generator, and you have a printable, QR Codable (yeah, made that one up) link to your audio file.

This is where students running for office can make a statement… audibly. Slap that QR code on a poster, and it’s like sugar to ants… people want to see where it leads. Teachers can do the same thing. Put a link to a book summary or something, and kids will start scanning away, curious just for the sake of being curious.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. We know audio has power. We’ve used it for some time, but it just doesn’t get much easier than this.

If you do end up using audio (Vocaroo or any other app/site) please share with me, AND your colleagues. As our beloved purple dinosaur, Barney, says “Sharing is Caring” so share a lot.