How to Share a Private Audio Message with SoundCloud

A consistent message I share is to limit email to good news when communicating with parents about students. In email and text, it is very difficult to determine “tone.” With a phone call or face-to-face meeting, others are able to hear sincerity and concern as well as excitement and joy. 

Last Friday morning on the way to school, an idea hit me -- I wanted to add a voice message to our weekly staff newsletter (that gets emailed out on guess which day? Friday!). I have a small section in the newsletter where I share links to blog posts, technology tips, and images, but I wanted to send a word of encouragement to our teachers as we enter the last couple of weeks of the semester (we have semester exams next week, and our last day is December 19). I wanted it to be a voice message so that they could hear the encouragement and support in my voice.

So... first I had to figure out how to do it! Hmmmm.....

I LOVE using Voxer on my cell phone, and I knew that I could email a Voxer message to myself. The app will send a URL, and when I click on it at home, it looks like this….

In my car on the way to school, I recorded a message in Voxer in the "My Notes" section, then I emailed it to my school email account. I had never sent one to myself and tried to open it at school, but I figured it would work. 

As you can guess by now… it didn’t work. 

I emailed our AWESOME tech guys, Keith Fulmer and Jonathan Sandlin, who got back to me quickly.

Here’s how our email exchange went…

Me: I recorded a Voxer for the staff as part of the Friday memo, but when I tried to play it back, it said that the webpage wouldn't load. Is using Voxer this way possible on our network? 

Jonathan: We checked our ISP seems to be the problem for some reason even outside the web filter it will not direct to the site. Can you try another recording method? We don't really know where the break is but it is with our ISP or their backbone. May take some time to clear up.

I was determined to send a link to an audio message for our staff. How hard could it be, right?

I Googled and read and tried and tried.

I tried uploading to Google Drive, but I learned that you can’t share play an audio message in Google Drive to be played back (I can upload the file and play it back for myself, but it can’t be shared that way.)

Then I tried to read about Google Voice. I couldn't find a number in my area code that was available... and I just didn’t feel like I had time to learn how to use it, so I moved on. 

Podbean? Nope. I couldn’t send a private audio message… the messages would be saved publicly.

Then I came across SoundCloud. I knew it was a platform for sharing music... one of our students is a professional singer

@Jennifer_Hogan here is a cover off my Holiday EP let me know what you think. https://t.co/gDvII1bYFA

— ∞ G⃟I⃟G⃟I⃟ ∞ (@gianna_venters) November 28, 2014

I read about how to share private audio messages, and I realized that this may be how to do what I had been trying to do since my drive into school. 

So next I needed the message to upload into SoundCloud. 

I used the Voice Memos app on my iPhone to record a new message, then I emailed it to myself. I saved the recording on my computer in my office, then I uploaded it to SoundCloud. Finally, I copied the private sharing link and included it in the Friday memo. 

If you give this a try, let me know how it goes for you! I'm always looking for new ways to use technology to connect to others.