I promise...

Hi everyone,
Okay, so finally I figured out my whole podcast issue. You can listen to the podcast at:
http://teachermomof4.podomatic.com/entry/2010-11-08T18_35_51-08_00

As for this week's assignment, incorporating the use of podcasts in the classroom, I thought about this quite a bit. Here are some things that I thought would be good ways to use podcasting.

-For a few years I had the kids create a radio show complete with different segments (school news, weather, sports, commercial breaks, jokes, etc). I tied the preparation part of the radio show into researching different topics and writing different stories (focus on journalism and technical writing). The kids would rehearse and then record their shows and then we'd listen to the completed show as a class via a cassette tape. A lot of the kids would ask for copies to share with parents and the copying became so tedious that often times it just fell through the cracks of the piles of stuff that one must accomplish as a teacher. I see podcasting as a very easy way to eliminate the hassle of making multiple copies of the finished product because as a teacher I could just provide the link. Additionally I think this is great because the sharing doesn't have to stop at the classroom level. More parents can hear what we are doing as a class.

-Along with the radio show idea for sharing work completed in the class, I feel like this same mechanism could be used as an avenue by which students could really share any kind of writing. I think it is so great to hear students read their own work because it gives a voice to their work but it also allows the students to hear their work read out loud. The use of podcasting would be a way for students to read their work and, again, share it with others via a link. Parents, family members and other students could hen hear what students are accomplishing. I think this could be especially cool for poetry because reading poetry aloud is a skill that I believe helps students develop their fluency and I love hearing students read their own work, giving voice to their own words.

-One of the projects I used to do with my students was a Legacy project for which I had students interview a member of an older generation about how times have changed, what school used to be like, what their childhood activities were like, advice the older generation would give to younger kids, etc. The students would then take the interview and create a written story from it. I believe that the interviews could just as easily be done and used to create podcasts. Not all students have access to individuals with computers/Skype but for those that do, they could use Skype to record interviews or record directly into Garageband or Audacity.

-Each quarter I gave the students a list ofoptions that could be done as "Quarter Projects". All the project options required some use of language arts skills but varied from creating posters to performing skits. One of the options was to read a book, or a portion of a book and create an audio recording of the reading. I think it would be neat if students would use Audacity or Garage band to not only read aloud the text, but add multiple tracks/layers, adding sounds to enhance the story, or read with multiple people to create an engaging read aloud. Then the final projects could be posted for others to hear.

Now that I'm teaching at the college-level and don't always have an extended period of time during which I get to engage with my students, I struggle to come up with ways in which podcasts would be helpful. I supervise practicum students in their initial experiences in elementary school and then each week students turn in a weekly journal reflection. I can see how asking the students to complete their weekly reflections using a voice thread would be advantageous but because of the personal nature of some of the things which students take up in their reflections, sharing these journals wouldn't be something that I would suggest via podcast.