Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning

Anchor is an all-in-one platform where you can create, distribute, and monetize your podcast from any device, mobile or online. You can store your podcasts on Anchor for free. Anchor takes a cut of the revenue if you decide to monetize your work. 

Anchor is an open source tool and free for anyone to use.

Anchor is best for

• Beginners: those who aren't as technologically-savvy and want to try out Podcasting
• Hobbyists
• Podcast assignments

Limitations

• Limiting to what professional Podcasters may value:
  • Lacks advanced features such as video hosting and website integration
• More features on the mobile app version than the online version

Resources

Podomatic is a podcast recording and listening tool that provides you with a step-by-step process for recording and publishing your own podcast.

With a free account, users have access to:

• 500 MB of storage
• 15 GB Bandwith/month
• Basic stats for daily tracking

Podomatic is best for

• Podcast beginners:
  • Simple features that make getting started easy. 
• Audio blogs
• Audio reviews
• Travel blogging
• Podcast assignments

Limitations

• Limited storage space provided to users per month
• Bandwidth gets more flexible the more expensive the plan

Soundcloud allows you to host your podcast to reach your target audience, make new fans, interact with listeners, and keep the overheads low. You can reach new audiences for your podcast through distribution platforms like iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn through an RSS feed on SoundCloud.

With a free account, users have access to:

• Upload limit of 3 hours
• Lossless HD storage and download
• Real-time stats: Plays, likes, reposts, comments & downloads
• Embed player customization: Change style, color, and size

Soundcloud is best for

• Tracking real-time stats:
  • See which fans are listening to your podcasts the most, and where your top fans are, all in real-time.
• Instant feedback
  • Everyone on the platform has the chance to comment on, like, and share audio.

Limitations

• Soundcloud is known as an audio platform, and only a small percentage of this platform is dedicated to podcasting. With so few podcasts on the platform, Soundcloud has little incentive to implement or improve features that benefit podcasters.
• You cannot automatically import podcast episodes onto Soundcloud from an existing RSS feed.

Accessibility

• Not screen reader friendly
• The player is not marked with a landmark or region element to help screen reader users jump easily into the player section.
• Screen reader users should jump to the end of the document using ‘ctrl end’ and sequentially scroll back with the arrow keys to find the player.

Resources

Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. Internet Archive offers free hosting and bandwidth for podcasts and also creates an RSS feed for them. You can also view or upload audio to the community collection.

Internet Archive is an open source tool and free for anyone to use.

Internet Archive is best for

• Making your entire podcasting library available to users
• Accessing unlimited storage space and bandwidth

Limitations

• Does not provide any analytics for your podcast
• Takes users longer to download your podcast from the archive than it will other podcasts of comparable size on other platforms

Accessibility

Currently, archive.org does not fully support the use of screen readers, limiting access for people who have low vision, impaired mobility, or who are blind. Some additional considerations:

• The font sizes are smaller than ideal for low-vision users 
• The site is accessible to most people with learning differences
• All books can be read in a browser on the Online Book Reader. This online reader has both magnification and text-to-speech capabilities.
  • Public-domain books are immediately accessible in the Book Reader 
  • Modern books must be borrowed or accessed under special disability access before they are fully available in the Book Reader  

For more information, see Internet Archive's Disability Access - General Information page.

Resources