SoundBible.com

When I taught history, my typical lesson was in the form of a PowerPoint or SMART Notebook lesson (that is following 15 years in which  my typical lesson was in the form of transparency notes from an overhead projector.)  Assuming that many of you still use such lessons to some extent, I'm sure you want to include more than just text in these presentations*.   You might add video clips, links to websites, animations,  and....sound effects.  The point of this post is to walk you through the use of  SoundBible.com to add sound effects to your presentations.  I'll speak specifically to using PowerPoint and Notebook, but, much of what I say could be applied to presentations made in sites such as  Prezi or Slideshare.com, or sites which host online classroom webpages ( I link to nine of them in my Binder of Teacher Tools.

So, here is a step by step guide.
First, go to a site such as SoundBible.com

By clicking here, you can go to a review of fifty-five sites from which you can download free sound effects--with more listed in the comments at the end of the review.

Second - find the sound you want to use.
For example, let's say you want the sound of a creaking door hinge.  I went to the search box in the upper right and typed in creaking door hinge--no luck, After several attempts--door, hinge, creak, etc. I finally found: "large metal rusty door",  "squeaking door 2", "Creaking Door Spooky", and "Door Squeak".  You can click on the "listen" icon preview (prelisten?) and select the one you want.

Third - Download the sound.
Click on the title of your selection in the "sound effect" column.  A page will come up which has icons for downloading the sound either as a .wav file or as an .mp3  Either of these works well in PowerPoint. In SMART Notebook I found that the mp3 worked better than the wav.  Click on one of those icons and make sure you know where the downloaded file is placed.  The location of the file may vary depending on which browser you use, and what you've done in the past (changing the default download location, etc.)

Last - put the sound in your presentation.
Go to the PowerPoint slide where you want to use this sound.  Once there, click  on "insert".  Then, mouse over to the right and click on "audio",  From the drop down menu, select "audio from file" and navigate to the file you just downloaded.  Select it, and a little speaker will appear on the slide.  During the presentation just click on that speaker and the sound will play.

Alternately,  if you want it to play as part of the transition to that slide, click "transition" on the ribbon bar and then click on the pull down list (down arrow) next to the word "sound" (on the right).  I was surprised to see a selection of about fifteen sounds appear.  By clicking on "other sound" a directory structure appears from which you can navigate to your downloaded file.  You'll note that PowerPoint presents you with the option to adjust the duration of the sound and the option of applying it to all the slides.

If you want to use the sound on a SMART Notebook page, select the graphic or textbox you want to associate the sound with and then pull down the menu from the upper right hand corner.  Alternately, after selecting the object you could click on "insert" on the tool bar at the top of the page.  On either list you'll find "sound",  Click there  and browse to your file, Next you are given a choice "play by pressing: corner icon, [or] object" - I prefer the sound playing when I click on the object itself, but that's up to you.  Finally, click on "attach sound" and you are done.

This may sound complicated,but it's not....just follow the steps one at a time and you can literally add some "bells and whistles" to your lesson.   I'll insert a two minute video tutorial below which walks through these steps.  I note that in the video the sound of the bell is quiet enough that it is difficult to hear--trust me, it is there.  Thanks for taking the time to read this.  I hope you find it useful.

*Although I'd like to believe that as a division ACPS is moving away from PowerPoints and toward GoogleSlides, I have to admit that I have not found a way to add a sound effect to a GoogleSlides presentation from a .wav or .mp3 file.