Articles

Home / Community /

How to Use Podcasts at Your School

Podcasting Inspiration from Will Richardson, as excerpted from Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

As with most of these other technologies, it's not hard to see how podcasts might make inroads in schools. One way to get into the flow of education related podcasting is to visit the Education Podcast Network (http://epnweb.org/) which was started in May of 2005. Not only is there a growing directory of educators who are doing personal podcasts, there are links to uses in the classroom broken down both by grade level and subject.

And remember that the underlying technology here is digital recording and the idea that it is now very easy to create and publish these recordings. You and your students may not have iPods or MP3 players, and the good news is you don’t need them to start using audio in this way. As long as you have a way to make the recording, and as long as your students have access to the Internet, you can make this work. More about that in a minute.

In general, radio broadcasting is now a reality for the vast majority of schools that can’t afford radio stations. About $100 and an Internet connection is all you need to start doing regular radio shows with your students. And once again, the motivating factor, to me at least, is that the content of these shows does not have to be limited to a school or community audience. Podcasting is yet another way for them to be creating and contributing ideas to a larger conversation, and it’s a way of archiving that contribution for future audiences to use.

Take George Mayo, for instance. He’s a first-year teacher in Virginia who last year started a Weblog magazine with his students called M&M Online Magazine (http://mrmayo.typepad.com/magazine/). When his students got the hang of that form of Web publishing, they decided to add an accompanying podcast that was written and produced by the class (http://mrmayo.typepad.com/podcasts/). They created their own intro music using Apple’s Garageband software, and in the podcast itself they discuss what’s new in the magazine, which is a collection of individually student run blogs.

Or Radio Willow Web from the Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska (http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/index.html). As the Website says, these Willowcasts” are online radio shows for kids by kids. Each show has its own host, theme, and unique segments which can include things like “Bad Joke, Good Joke,” “Holiday Spotlight,” “Poetry Corner” and much more. It’s a great example of what you can do with podcasts.

Or Bob Sprankle’s Room 208 podcast, a third and fourth grade teacher at Wells Elementary in Wells, Maine (http://bobsprankle.com/blog/). Aside from weekly shows that cover events at school, his students have done “sound-seeing tours” of the local Willowbrook Museum Village in Newfield that they visited on a field trip. Listeners are treated to the students’ reactions to what they see, the presentations by the tour guides, and all sorts of other vignettes of students talking and thinking about what they’re seeing, sometimes with teacher prompts. It’s a concept that’s easy to replicate.

Finally, there is the Lincoln (NE) Southwest High School podcasts that are hosted by teacher Dennis Hershberger and features reports by students on upcoming events, interviews, reviews and whatever else might be of interest (http://lsw.lps.org/dhersh/podcast.html). All of these shows are great examples of how teachers might easily integrate amateur radio into the classroom.

But podcasting doesn’t just have to be edu-radio. There are many other ways that teachers could bring the genre into the classroom. World language teachers could record and publish daily practice lessons that students could listen to at home, or, if they are fortunate enough, could download to their own MP3 players. Like the Madrid Young Learners Podcasts (http://mylcpodcasts.blogspot.com/) site where an English speaker tells a story via a podcast and non-English speaking listeners answer questions in English via comments. How hard would it be to make your own site like this (now that you know how to blog) with teachers enlisting native speakers from around the world to tell stories that their own students respond to?

Social studies teachers could have their students do oral histories or interviews or reenactments of historical events. Science teachers could have students narrate labs or dissections or experiments to record their processes. Music teachers record weekly recitals or special events as podcasts. All teachers could record important parts of what they do in the classroom that can then be archived to the class Weblog and used by students who may have missed the class or just want a refresher on what happened.

Steve Brooks over at EduGadget.com has some suggestions that schools and districts might want to think about, including guided “pod-tours” of the campus on back to school night (perhaps created by students), or tours of art displays narrated by the artists. You could record assemblies, do new teacher orientations, have supervisors record descriptions of their departments, and record board meetings for students, teachers and parents who are unable to attend. Principals could record weekly or monthly messages to community or teachers or even students. As with blogs, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. (Brooks, iPod)

Reprinted by permission of publisher, Corwin Press, from Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, copyright 2006.

TechSmith Connect