Oral History Workshops: July 2024

Mint Hill Historical Society

Welcome to our Mint Hill Historical Society workshop series on Family and Community Oral History, led by Charlotte teacher, Wes Fryer. Please use and share these resources!

Workshop Goals (Part 1 - July 13, 2024)

Inspire and motivate you to record family oral history stories.
Review best practices for planning and setting up oral history interviews
Highlight several tools and techniques for oral history recording.
Provide opportunities to practice oral history recording.

Workshop Goals (Part 2 - July 20, 2024)

"Show and Share" experiences recording family oral histories.
Highlight a variety of media, online platforms, and methods for preserving and sharing oral history recordings.
Provide opportunities to practice preserving and sharing audio recordings.

(Scroll down for the resources for Part 2!)

(PDF version)

Part 1: Capture While You Can!

Workshop Agenda - July 13

9:00am Introductions and Overview
9:15am Why Audio-only Digital Storytelling: Examples!
9:30am Planning and Preparation for an Interview
9:45am "Old School" Digital Recording: Pros and Cons
10:00am Smartphone Digital Recording
10:15am StoryCorps App
10:30 <end>

Becoming Your Family's Digital Witness

January 2013, TEDxOU, Norman, Oklahoma

Introductions and Overview

Wes Fryer & family in Dec 2021

"Hiking with our Dogs" (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

About Your Instructor

Wes Fryer teaches middle school STEM and media literacy courses at Providence Day School in Charlotte, and is starting his 29th year in education in fall 2024. He and his wife, Shelly, are "empty nesters" and proud parents of three young adults and two golden retrievers.

While living and working in Oklahoma for 16 years, Wes co-founded the statewide oral history project, "Celebrate Oklahoma Voices" and Storychasers, now a personal passion project.

Wes loves to cook and share recipes. His backyard BBQ speciality is "Texas style brisket!" He is both an author and avid YouTube creator. Wes also loves preserving family history with media, including family oral history.

Learn more about Wes on his bio page. More ways to learn and connect with Wes are available on wesfryer.com/after, including subscribing to his Substack newsletter, "Media Literacy with Wes."

A Christmas Audio Letter from 1972

26 minutes

"1972 Analog Reel-to-Reel Audio Letter Tape" (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Description

This is a 26 minute audio letter and recording, created by Tom Fryer’s mother, Lydia “Tiddle” Fryer of Powell, Wyoming, on December 25 and 26 of 1972. This audio was originally recorded on an analog “reel to reel” audio tape and converted to digital audio by “Create a Vdeo” of Mint Hill, North Carolina, in June 2024.

Additional people / voices included on this 21 minute recording include Marge Wilder, Dick Wilder, Rick Wilder, Wardi (Wilder) Reber, Rikki Wilder Pomajzl, Tom Wilder, Jeane Wilder, and Mari, sister of Tiddle Fryer.

Additional photos of and media related to Tiddle Fryer are also available.

"Tom Fryer and Marge Wilder (June 2024)" (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

More Examples of Audio-only Digital Storytelling

An "audio story" is a recorded audio interview, which may or may not be accompanied by a photo / image. Audio stories can be edited or unedited, and may be normalized.

More Examples of audio interviews / podcasts are available on:

Our Fryer Family Oral History page (on our family learning blog)
Our Fryer - Henley - Ward - Lovell Family History Oral History page
Wes' project, "Testimonies and Tales: audio interviews about Christian faith and mission work"
Wes' podcasts: The EdTech Situation Room - Wes and Shelly Share - Moving at the Speed of Creativity Podcast

Also check out:

The "Audio Interviews" page of Wes' website, "Show with Media: What do you want to CREATE Today?"
The "Audio Interviews" chapter of Wes' forthcoming book, "Pocket Share Jesus: Be a Digital Witness for Jesus Christ."

Planning and Preparation for an Interview

Tips for Family Oral History Interviews by wesfryer.com (July 2024)

The "Great Questions List" from StoryCorps can help you prepare good, open-ended questions to ask during your interview.

Webpage version
Better version for printing
These questions are also integrated into the StoryCorps app

"Old School" Digital Recording

Digital voice recorders are available for around $50 and offer advantages as well as disadvantages for audio interview recording.

Pros

No charging required, just bring extra batteries.
Often simple to operate, not complicated.
Offer hours of recording time.

Cons

Audio files must be transferred via USB to a computer.
Digital sharing is slower and requires more steps.
Tools for editing / trimming audio are tricky or not available.

"Sony UX-71 Digital Audio Recorder" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

TCTEC Digital Voice Recorder (an "old school" example digital recorder)

Instructional Video - TCTEC Digital Voice Recorder

(9 min)

Smartphone Digital Recording

Free iPhone apps for audio recording include:

Benefits of smartphone audio recording include:

FREE / No additional cost: If you already have a smartphone, you already have the hardware you need!
Best Camera / Recorder is the one you HAVE: Audio recorder is with you when you have your phone.
Faster Sharing: Digital sharing to a variety of locations easier.
Editing Options: Editing tools and options available in many apps.
Advanced Features: Can build a more complicated, multi-part audio podcast.

The StoryCorps App

My top recommendation for audio interview recording is to use the FREE StoryCorps app on your smartphone. (iPhone and Android versions available.)

The StoryCorps app offers multiple benefits for planning, recording and sharing your audio interview:

Build your planned questions right within the app.
Record up to 45 minutes of audio per episode.
Share directly (for free) to the StoryCorps website.
Choose to make your interview recording public, unlisted (but still sharable) or private.

Part 2: Preserve and Share Audio

Workshop Agenda - July 20

Introductions and Overview
Show and Share (What did we learn recording interviews or practice interviews?!)
Now What? The Sharing Workflow
Option 1: Sharing via the StoryCorps App
Option 2: Sharing to YouTube
Option 3: Sharing Other Places
10:30 <end>

The Sharing Workflow

Audio files can be shared online, over the Internet's World-Wide Web with others in multiple ways. There are several basic steps in this "workflow" which are common to any method, however. Those steps include:

Choose to share a "NO EDIT" recording or an EDITED version.
1. If EDITING, open the audio recording in editing software, make changes and SAVE a new (and final) version.
Select a WEB HOST to upload the final audio recording. Web hosts can include:
1. StoryCorps websites (free to use, but recordings must be <45 minutes each in length)
2. YouTube (free to use, but audio recordings must be converted to VIDEO files first before uploading)
3. Another free or commercial web host (Another free example is The Internet Archive. Commercial examples include LiquidWeb, BlueHost, and others.)
Transcription

Option 1: Sharing via the StoryCorps App

When you choose to share an audio interview published to the Storycorps archive it provides a link you can access with any connected Internet device, computer or smartphone.

For example, this is the link to the interview with my mom on StoryCorps. I can only VIEW that link on my computer, however, I have to be logged into the app on my smartphone to edit or change it, as far as I know.

This support article from Storycorps, "How do I share my StoryCorps interview with family and friends?" can provide more info and help.

Option 2: Share Mobile Recorded Audio on YouTube

So you have a recorded audio file, either on a battery operated mobile audio recorder or another device, and you're wondering, "What do I do now?"

These steps are for iPhone users, but this may also be doable on Android using Voice Record Pro on the Google Play store.

One option (demonstrated in this 45 minute tutorial video) is:

Connect the audio recorder to a computer. (USB cables required, possibly a USB-A to USB-C converter)
Find and transfer the audio file to your computer in a NEW FOLDER
Open the file in Audacity (free software)
Edit the audio as desired and EXPORT in an uncompressed format (WAV, AIFF, FLAC)
Normalize the audio with Auphonic (may cost $ for credits)
Download the optimized audio file to your computer.
Transfer the optimized audio file to your smartphone (iOS users: with AirDrop)
Send the audio file from the FILES app into Voice Record Pro (for iOS)
Add a desired photo to the imported project (this will be the background image for the video version on YouTube)
Choose "SAVE IN PHOTO ALBUM" in Voice Record Pro with the desired "template" (the last one is photo only, which is often good)
Either directly upload the video from your iPhone PHOTOS to YouTube (using the YouTube for iOS app) or TRANSFER the exported video (using AirDrop) to your computer and upload to YouTube using a web browser.

An example audio file shared with these techniques:

A 45 minute video tutorial demonstrating these steps:

Option 3: Sharing Other Places

The Internet Archive provides free hosting of audio files (and other media) for anyone.

You will need to sign up for a free account.
The tutorial webpage, "Uploading: A Basic Guide" includes step-by-step instructions as well as a video tutorial about this process.

Examples include:

"Storytelling and Cognitive Neuroscience" from 5 October 2005 (by Wes Fryer, my 11th podcast ever!)
100 different audio files (94) and video files (6) published by Wes Fryer on the Internet Archive are available.
Over 1 million audio podcasts are hosted now on the Internet Archive, covering a wide diversity of topics.

Importance of Redundancy / Hosting Multiple Places

Oral history audio recordings are precious and no one wants to lose them or lose access to them after they have been created and shared!

One way to "take an insurance policy out" to avoid losing an interview is to POST / SHARE the interview in mulitple places.

As an example, the interview I conducted in January 2016 with my mother, Angie Fryer, is hosted in 4 different places. All of those links, however, are provided on a single webpage on our family learning blog. The places this file are hosted include:

Of these four locations, only one (Amazon S3) is a web host I have to pay for. If I stop paying, that file will not be hosted any longer by Amazon.

The other three, however, are hosted free and should be hosted forever (hopefully) as long as those different companies / organizations continue to be in operation / in business and don't change their policies or the configuration (links) of their freely hosted files like this.

Consider using REDUNDANCY in your oral history sharing strategy!