Thing 14: Learn About Podcasting

I skimmed through many of the podcasts and was most interested in the student generated ones. I think that creating a podcast would be such a wonderful motivator for students and a cool end product that could be shared with others. Some were good, and as I expected, many of the high school ones were drier just because of the level of information, but hands down, the one that I thought was just exceptional was the radio Willow one from Nebraska. I'm glad that in the video, the woman from RESA explained that they have been doing podcasts for a long time. It really shows. I can't believe how professional-sounding the kids are, even at the first grade level! First of all, I can easily see using their podcasts in my classroom. They have all elementary grade levels represented and a huge variety of topics, both core subjects and beyond such as health and artists. I can only imagine the amount of work that goes into creating such a high quality podcast with such young children. I really enjoyed one about famous artists by first graders. They had to have spent a couple of weeks exploring various media, then researching famous artist, writing a script, rehearsing, and then recording the final product. The final podcast is very good and I'll bet that the students are really excited and can't wait for mom and dad and their freinds to hear it. What a super motivator for a unit that makes the students work really hard. I'll bet that they don't even realize all of the hard work because they are having so much fun creating their own "radio program." The episodes also contain a large amount of information, so they are really useful to other teachers to use in their classrooms. I would love to use the Willow podcasts to not only teach my students further information about various topics, but also to inspire them to want to create a podcast in our own classroom.