Podcasting

Last year, the year of 2020-2021 (yes, the Pandemic year),  I was fortunate enough to be able to dedicate all my attention to an entire BCA class. I did not need to navigate back and forth between in person and online learners. For one period a day, my BCA students had my undivided attention. What I learned was these young adults were some of the most talented, compassionate students I had ever taught-and I had never met them face to face. It really goes to show the power of writing as that was the primary way we communicated. After one particular class period where I was moved by one student's courage to sing her poem to the class (camera off, of course), I said,  "We need to do a podcast." 

Five minutes later there was a brainstorming document with every class member contributing ideas for topics, committees, formats. What had I gotten into? I don't know how to create a podcast? 

I did not know, but our district's technology integration specialist Shannon Oliver did, so I invited her to our next class where she instructed these learners to record, edit, and create a podcast. Here's a link to her RESOURCES page. Shannon helped co-teach our lesson where we listened to some podcast examples first (noting the importance of a hook and a consistent theme), but I relied on her to help our learners execute the podcast. I assigned some student "leaders" who created Google Forms and delegated tasks. I also allowed for class time to work and brainstorm segments. I learned a lot that year from my students: Click HERE to see what they created. Their success and passion gave me the fuel to dig deeper into the podcast medium myself. I share this to say, you do not need to know anything about podcasting to get started. Teachers, like students, learn by doing. It's what constructivism is based upon. When I take a step back and analyze what reignites my love of teaching--and my students' love of learning-- it comes back to constructivism. Michelle Thompson speaks about this theory in her TedTalk.

Since 2020-2021, I've done more research on podcasting and found The New York Times has compiled numerous resources for educators interested in leveraging this type of writing in their classrooms. 

Start exploring the NYT resources below:

Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts

Making a Podcast That Matters: A Guide with Examples From 23 Students

Here are the Slides to the Enrichment Podcasting Class I taught this summer. 

Here are the published student podcasts from the Enrichment class (a one week summer course) using Google Slides. 

Below you will find the student created website where the students in my BCA class published their podcasts.