classroom podcast help--file conversion

I’m sorry if I’m asking basic things that can be found elsewhere.

My journalism/comm tech class will be using their phones to record interviews for the podcast. However, when I was giving it a test run (on my iPhone 8+) it was recording in m4a, and audacity requires us to change our file type. Is there a better way of either a) getting our audio with our phones (we need to be mobile so we can interview kids wherever they are in the school) or b) converting our file types?

What is the best/quickest way to convert our m4a interviews to something compatible with audacity?

Thanks for any help you can be.

You should be able to open an M4A file if you install FFMpeg.

Pick your Audacity version and then scroll down to the add-ons.

(we need to be mobile so we can interview kids wherever they are in the school)

I think I’m missing the interview technique. You’re walking up to a person in real life and interviewing them, right?

Koz