Sunday, February 5, 2012
Podcasting for the Media Center
By definition, a podcast is a multimedia digital file made available for downloading to a portable media player or computer. This technology has many applications in school media settings as well. In any level school media center, the daily news can be made into a podcast that is made available on the school's website. Upper elementary grade students can create podcasts from reports they write, or research they have found. There is also a potential for schools across the country, or even the world, to buddy up and share podcasts of these reports to help each group of students learn more. Even as young as kindergarten and first grade, students can create podcasts while reading to help them understand and practice fluency. These podcasts could be stored on a safe, secure website where their parents could listen at home, to support the learning going on in school. One of my favorite possibilities for podcasts is for students to create book talks about their favorite book. These could be listened to by other students to help them decide if they want to read the book. The power in this is that a child does not need to be a proficient writer to create a strong book talk. As is often the case with the youngest students in school, they can not yet write a clear, understandable sentence, but they can articulate it. In middle and high schools, many of the same applications are possible, but they can be edited and sounds added as needed to enhance the podcast. The older students could create listening centers for elementary students out of picture books, complete with thrilling music and appropriate sound effects. The older students would learn and develop voice that could carry over to their own writing. The younger students would have another resource to help them become fluent readers. Media specialists could partner up and create a wonderful resource that could be accessed from the media center, classrooms and even from home. This could also be used for tutorials. Students could create a podcast intended to help struggling students understand how to do a math problem, for example. The student who created the tutorial is making their knowledge stronger by being able to explain it to someone else. The student that uses the tutorial to help learn a skill is able to listen to the explanation as many times as needed, without feeling like the tutor is getting frustrated. These are only some of the many, many ways to use podcasts for education. As media specialists we will make a much bigger impact on our students if we find ways to meet the students where they already are. Using podcasts is one way to do just that.
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Your suggestion about older students creating podcasts of books for younger students is great! I am the co-sponsor of FEA (Future Educators Assocation) at my school, and we are always looking for new and neat ideas for our members to encourage literacy at all ages. I'm going to take that idea back to them and see if they are intersted. I think that's a great way to use technolgy to encourage literacy even from a distance!
ReplyDeleteYour point that "a child does not need to be a proficient writer to create a strong book talk" is a very strong one. Where I see this being helpful in the middle school is serving our student population who struggle with writing fluency or even those who have learning disabilities related to writing. I have taught several students over the years who could articulate their ideas well but could not put those same ideas into writing. A really helpful intervention for those students would be to allow them to record their ideas for written response. When it is important or necessary to have them written, the student could listen to his or her own audio recording and type or write from that. This never would have occurred to me if you hadn't made the point about younger students not always being able to write their book talks.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that podcasting helps develop reading fluency which is another strong point. I found a link to a video with a teacher who is using podcasting to do just that: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/improving-speaking-skills-with-poetry-podcasting I think this could be easily incorporated into all of our ELA classrooms and it very much addresses reading and speaking fluency as well as tech standards.
Your blog post on podcasting, as well as the comments afterward, gave me food for thought. Since I'm an ELA teacher (Reading to 8th graders) I think podcasting would be easily integrated into several areas of my lessons. It's project-based and we have computers with the needed software, microphone, and even webcam, so it wouldn't require any funding to start-up. Your idea of linking the completed podcasts to a web page has given me an idea of how I can use podcasting soon in my own classroom. Thanks for your ideas!
ReplyDeleteI love your information on podcasting. As a high school teacher, I have always been aware of and worked with book talks for students; however, I loved hearing you suggestions for the younger students. They can often articulate what they are trying to say as opposed to writing it down. This same philosophy can be extended to students with disabilities. Of course, in high school, writing is important; however, sometimes we are simply looking for reading comprehension. Students may be able to put their thoughts into words but not be able to put them on to paper, so creating a podcast would be a great way to show understanding. I also think you could apply the student news podcast to high school. A lot of information needs to go out to high school kids and morning announcements can often be ignored or mundane. By creating a podcast, it could inform and entertain at the same time. This could be a function of the media center and the media specialist as opposed to utilizing class time. I appreciate your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteJulie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your podcast. I especially like the idea of using the Podcast to create booktalks. I think that is a wonderful way to engage young readers. I am also in agreeance with recording the schools daily or weekly news and uploading them to the schools website. I agree that those are excellent ways to incorporate the use of technology in the classroom.
Danica