Don't get excited, I'm not a pro or anything. According to my Soundcloud account, I've made three others, but they were for school-school, not work-school. I can already tell I'm going to be addicted to making podcasts for work-school.
I teach sixth grade English. We worry that our students don't get enough poetry exposure. My department and I have discussed using a poetry resource that I found and purchased from Amazon called The Poetry Anthology for Middle School: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the TEKS. It features a poem to use in class with students each week and some suggested activities to go along with each poem. So, when thinking about possible topics for a podcast, I chose to do something with this resource that I might actually be able to use with my students.
I read the poem, read the suggested activities, and thought about points of poetry that are important for my kids to understand and how I would use this in my classroom. I decided to make a podcast to supplement this as a homework assignment for my students in preparation for an in-class discussion. Ideally, this homework assignment would be given on Monday and due Friday (when the discussion would take place). In the podcast, I would explain Poem of the Week homework assignment instructions, expectations, model a read aloud of the poem, point out a few specific features of the poem, and give a writing prompt related to the poem.
Using the sticky notes feature on my laptop, I banged out a basic script and recorded it. Fast n' loud. Re-recorded with what I believed was a quieter voice and slower pace. Still too loud. Adjust the mic volume to 75%, finally got it to sound decent. A couple of words sound funky, but I think I just have a weird accent or something. You can listen to it right now:
I felt so jazzed about this idea after recording it and listening to it all the way through. My department and are meeting in a couple of weeks to do some curriculum planning, and I am really excited about sharing this idea with them. Also, I'm looking forward to recording these each week for my classes. I hope the kids enjoy it and benefit from it as much as I think they will.
I also think I could record short little mini-lessons about things we cover in class that kids can refer back to at home or if they are absent. If students get permission from their parents, they could record their own readings of poetry (or prose), research presentations, special announcements, shout-outs to teachers or staff members for various "___ Appreciation Days". At home I have a Mac and Garage Band, and I really want to explore using that so that I can add music and images. I might also try the iPad version and if that is user-friendly enough, I'll have to see about getting it added to our iPad carts at school.
As far as podcast use in a library situation, I'm seeing a huge opportunity for student book reviews and book talks. These podcasts could be directly accessible via the "Links" section on OPAC and/or the library's website. I can also envision an "Experts" section and students who have extensively studied a particular subject via research can record a podcast their findings. For Book Club, members could read their favorite passage from a specific section of text and explain its significance. I also love the feature that Soundcloud has which allows users to share via direct connect to Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. I have found that many social media sights intertwine like this to prevent someone from having to update five thousand separate social networking sites.
I wish more of the links on the Podcasting in Education page would have worked, I made some of them work by playing with the URLs but others I didn't have the luck. I bookmarked some pages to share with my colleagues in other content areas and will continue to explore ways I can incorporate podcasting into my classroom and library.
This is so helpful. I am glad you are going to try to use Garage Band and to incorporate music, so you'll also be able to help kids create cool things, too.
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