What are My Next Steps?

Steps to Podcasting

1. Plan and choose a topic: It’s important to spend time on this first step with your students as it will help guide their podcast. First, narrow down a topic that excites or interests you or your students. This could also be related to the topic of any subject you are currently teaching. Secondly, come up with subtopics and make sure the content you choose is able to be discussed or expanded upon.

   • Helpful Tip: brainstorm a list of 25 possible episodes to help yourself with the next step.

2. Pick a Title: This is one of the first thing listeners will see and defines the branding of your podcast, it is important to spend time coming up with different ideas for your title. Once you let students decide on a title, have them thinking of cover art.

3. Write a Description: This is simply a description paragraph to tell your audience what your podcast generally focuses. You can also let students come up with the description if you feel they are capable. You can put keywords or phrases that will appear in your podcast as well.

• Tip: Start with something that matters to your audience and it’s okay to talk about yourself in the description.

4. Decide on your Podcast Format: Will this be an interview show, partner show, or a show hosted individually? Either one works depending on what you want your students to talk about. You could have both if the topic needs an interview to add to the content and validity of the show. Also, setting a time length for your students’ podcast depends on the age and audience.

5. Create your Podcast Artwork: This is simply a square image that will serve as the cover for your podcast. You are encouraged to use student’s creative artwork and title names for this step as well.

• Watch This! How to Foster Creativity and Student Expression with Podcasting

• Branding/Cover Art: This is simply what people see when they click your podcast. Examples are below.

• Remember to be mindful of copyrighting an already existing popular title.

6. Equipment and Recording: Depending on how big you want podcasting to be a part of your classroom determines how much you want to spend on equipment. Although, to simply introduce podcasting to your classroom, a laptop with a microphone will do just fine! There are a few free websites that help you record your podcast. These are linked down below. Tutorials on how to use these websites are listed below as well.

• Note: If you wish to purchase a microphone for students the most cost-effective way is through Amazon. These websites below also give instructions on how to use a microphone with their recording systems.

• Other starter kits are available on Amazon as well and you are able to choose whichever one you'd like at your discretion.