Podcasting Session

[This session is being moblogged, so there may be grammar and spelling errors]

The podcasting session will be face-to-face, so there should be no technical difficulties 😉 Now, with that said, they don’t seem to be able to get here computer to display through the projector. OK, the display is up, and she has changed her hard drive icon to the Starbucks emblem. My kind’a geek.

The presenter is Corey Rogers, and her URL is www.mrsrogers.net, and her students podcast is OLMSCast. Her online handouts for a session she did a MACUL last month are available at http://www.mrsrogers.net/MACUL/

This woman is geekier than I am. I’m loving this. Her students do a classroom podcast, and it is about instruction. Here are five reasons why a classroom should podcast.

• Communication with parents/community
• demonstrate learning
• student ownership of product
• authentic audience
• METS (Michigan Ed Tech Standards)

She just pulled up her iTunes Podcast play list. I know it’s just because I’m in the audience, but she is subscribed to Connect Learning. That number eight. I now have eight listeners. She says that one of the benefits is that students evaluate each others podcast programs. She now playing a little bit of TWIT, Leo LePort’s podcast. Too techie for me.

She has mentioned several times already that she and her students have conversations about issues of the podcast, and other podcasts that they listen to. This is important and all to common among blogging and podcasting classrooms — new conversations.

She makes the audience a specific issue for their podcast. Who is the audience they want to address. At first, the audience was the community, but the kids hated it. Then they expanded the audience to students, parents, and community.

Focus is also an issue, and she suggests that students determine the focus. The name and logo of the podcast is great fun for the kids. They love to see their logo graphic on iTunes. Cool!

They do some interviewing. Here are some of her pointers:

• 5 W’s and H’s
• Avoid Yes/No Questions
• Listen
• Follow-up Questions

Tony Vincent has a guide for teachers who want to podcast, but she was not able to get connected to the Net and couldn’t show it. This is probably worth investigating.

She distinguishes between sequenced recording and individual. Sequence is when they do the podcast at once, in sequence for the entire program. She simply gives the recorder to students as they are ready, and then they edit the program together.

They have a lot of conversations about the content and their goals. She told a wonderful story about how they discussed how they would do an interview in order to make it succinct. Lots of conversations tied to content and goal.

She’s teaching me some stuff about Audacity that I didn’t know. Very cool.

After each podcast, they do a blogging assignment called “Success & Suggest”. Students critique the program with suggestions.