Thing 14

I've been podcasting for a while now. I began with poetry. Students had an assignment to write a number of poems for a unit and those that completed the assignment and received a passing grade were given the opportunity to podcast their work. At first there wasn't a lot of interest but after the teacher played the podcast to the rest of the class they became very excited. Students who hadn't been doing their work, completed the assignment so they could podcast. It was a good first experience for both the new teacher and myself.

The next year, I began working with three teachers on doing commercials. Students read books and then working in groups wrote a commercial to sell the book to the other students. This was a great project because everyone was able to participate and we saw students who normally didn't work well in groups, actually leading the groups.

I would really like to involve other teachers in the podcasting. I'd like to see our teen living teacher have students podcast their positive message assignment. These podcasts could then be played to the entire school at annoucement time.

In addition, I would really like to see teachers using the podcasting as a tool for their students to review for quizzes and tests. Students that are auditory learners would have the advantage of having both their notes and a verbal review to listen to before the test.