Three years ago we did a podcast called "News To
You." For this the students worked in teams to interview teachers and staff members at Kalona Elementary to make a twice monthly podcast. They also told jokes, celebrated famous birthdays and had a run-down on the district sport teams.This is the white board that we used to plan the podcast - each student was on a team and played a role in the recording of these.
We had a great time and received some nice press due to our involvement - channel 2 news from CR came down and did a segment on us! :)
This is a closeup of our goals for these podcasts. I think the last one is the best...NOT BE BORING!!!
The kids worked really hard on that!
The next year we did podcasts on the 50 states - 1 per state. So I posted 50 of these on the class site. Students again worked in small groups. The podcasts focused on facts, places to visit and activities on the states. Groups also wrote test questions based on their podcast.
One of the major benefits I saw was the change in writing from the beginning to the end of hte project. As the students realized that there was a real audience - their writing improved. As did their speaking voices!
4-2 Class website - this is a link to the very outdated class website. There is a tab at the top that says USA PODCASTS - when you arrive at the page - click on archives and it will take you to the list of our podcasts. The NEWS TO YOU tab and the earlier podcasts no longer work...clearly this page has been ignored last year...oops!!
Last year - NO PODCASTS. I just didn't have the energy to continue as I worked through grad classes. These projects take a lot of teacher energy. The students are thrilled to be doing this - but it's all new. There were times I felt awful about that - I had an amazing class and they would have loved the process. But, I just couldn't seem to make it happen.
Next year - new schools, new jobs, new grade levels...Don't really know what will happen.
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