There's a podcast for everything these days which is what makes them perfect for using in the classroom.
Ideas for getting started:
Select a topic for students to explore.
Provide students a few specific episodes to listen to.
Pick a series and turn it into a listening unit.
There are few problems that keep us from just jumping right in with podcasts in the classroom. For starters, if you use the native apps on your phones it is a bit difficult to search out topics unless you know what you are looking for. Secondly, the varying lengths of podcasts makes it difficult to use in class if everybody is listening to different podcasts. Lastly, you have to decide what you want to do with the podcast... how do you structure discussions and questions to get the most out of this medium?
PodCircles aren't about the podcasts themselves, but more importantly, how to structure the unit around it to make it work.
Listen Notes serves two purposes. Students can use it for discovery because it is one of the only places on the internet that allows students to search for podcasts by subject and then find curated results from multiple users.
Secondly, they can create playlists and clips for others to follow and listen to. It is super simple:
find the episode on Listen Notes,
click the scissor icon to enter the segment you want to clip,
use the share function to give you and classmates the link to that clip.
Schoology's discussion board features are the unsung heroes of the LMS. You can easily bring in rich content like links, pictures, and videos. On top of that, when it comes time to grade a student or reply to another classmate, you can use the highlight user feature to find a specific post more efficiently.
Copy of Podcast Week 2 Intro AssignmentCopy of PODCircle #3 Copy of PodCircle #5 Assignment Sheet
Depending on how long you are in the project, rotating groups might be really helpful. It will help students hear multiple perspectives over the course of the project.
PodCircles can be completely self-contained on Schoology. This is helpful if you want to use it for supplemental learning outside of what is going on in the classroom. Students can still rotate groups and use the discussion board to respond to their group members.
Depending on the task, the length of the clip from Listen Notes will vary. Don't be afraid to try out requiring longer, shorter, or multiple clips for a PodCircle week.
Whether you want to replace the in person talks or the schoology portion, you can use FlipGrid. Students can leave their response and even put the link to their clip from Listen Notes into FlipGrid.