Image via WikipediaEagles’ Nest RadioWhat a wonderful way to combine learning and creativity. I ended up listening to several of the podcasts by this class. Not only are students working on learning history and technology, they are building communication and public speaking skills, as well as building confidence and self-esteem. I wonder how much time is allotted each week/month for these podcasts. Also, I wonder if the students must write their own scripts. I’m almost certain they do given some of them sound like book reports I remember doing in elementary school. However, the dialogue between the information makes me wonder how much help they receive from their teacher. It’s not that I don’t think students are capable of writing such professional sounding broadcasts, but they do look rather young to have achieved such accomplishments without help.
Judy Sharf’s “Podcast Collection”
This site really is a great collection of information on how to make, share and promote your podcasts as well as what one is and why you should use them. The most helpful thing I found was the lesson plan provided. I look forward to trying this out in my classroom. I watched this YouTube video. I wish I had watched it before we did our podcast. Although Audacity would not work correctly on my Windows 7 OS, I did not know about downloading the MP3 encoder, Lame, at all. I also did not know about the noise remover or the normalizer. It actually was chock full of great information: tags with pictures for your podcasts, several ways to upload your podcast and even ways to promote your podcast in search engines.
The Educational Podcast Network
This site is attempting to be a central location for educational podcasts. I found several links which were dead ends. However, the ones which I did find that worked were great. I listened to one by an 11th grade English class from Germany. Having taken German in college, this really interested me. Part of the courses’ goals was to teach us about the culture as well. The podcast I listened to talked mostly about the way German schools work. I found it extremely interesting and something that my German professors could have used in the class. Another great thing about this site is that it combines both students and professionals’ work, so it is kind of like one stop shopping for teachers.
I also think about how much time during the week it would take out of the class time to prepare and record the podcasts.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you learned so much about podcasting. I think that podcasting is a great way to get your students to use all their writing skills. Also, it will give them a head start on their speaking skills, which I think is very important.
Good post Lisianna,
Stephen Akins