Back in September, I wrote a bit about podcasting at ISM. In the months since, podcasting has really started to take off in the middle and high schools. During the last couple of months, a number of HS English classes, all the 8th graders and a number of 6th graders have started podcasting projects using www.podbean.com.
For an example, listen to this episode (from Dave Feren’s IB class podcast) featuring a fictional radio program called “Good Morning, Afghanistan”. The purpose of this podcast was to creatively show an awareness of some significant aspect of the historical context for the novel The Kite Runner.
Podbean offers free accounts (up to 100MB - at roughly 1MB per minute of audio for MP3 format, this means about 100 minutes of audio), which is very handy for a particular project, or for an ongoing class podcast with 30 or so 3-minute episodes over the course of the school year. One cool aspect is that Podbean is both a blog and a podcast at the same time, so you are in effect combining text, images and audio in one multimedia project. As more and more students learn how to use Podbean, the required time investment for subsequent projects is lowered and it’ll eventually become another alternative way for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding without requiring some massive teacher-directed project.
As one speaker said, the question should not be how to podcast but rather when and what to podcast.
If you’re curious about what podcasting can offer for your classes, rest assured that the technical aspects will not be difficult. The important thing is becoming clear about what you want the students to actually demonstrate or learn from the experience.
Image: http://flickr.com/photos/tamaleaver/217415575/ (Creative Common license)
