Final Project-Podcasting

For my final project, I decided to work on podcasting with my 9th grade students.

There are four main things I like about podcasting discussions of literature:

1. It takes the focus of discussion off of me and onto the students. They don't stare at me and wait for me to ask a question. They have to come up with the questions and respond to each other.
2. Everyone has to be involved. When the group size is only 3-4, it is very obvious when someone is not contributing. The student who doesn't want to speak in front of the class, or is too nervous to speak in front of the class, or is just simply drowned out by the loud students in the class has a voice in the group.
3. I can listen to the discussions at my leisure, and go back to listen again if I want to.
4. Students can listen to other groups and comment on them, making it more of a classroom interaction rather than "I'm doing this for the teacher."

I started by connecting with Tina Christopherson, our head tech person at Wayzata. She and I figured out the best way to get the kids recording and the process they would go through. We decided that after they had exported as mp3 they would post it to my Moodle site so I could go get it and post it on my blog. She also came down and helped me show the kids how to use Audacity.

I decided to have a series of podcasts:

Practice Podcast-Old time radio show. I found a script of an old radio show online and they had to perform it and record it. This was really just so they could get used to the program and the steps they would have to go through. 5 min.

Podcast #1-Discussion of "The Most Dangerous Game." Everyone read this story individually and as they read they were to write five good, open-ended discussion questions for their group. Before they started recording, they could look through the questions and decide which ones would be best for discussion. 8-12 min.

Podcast #2-Discussion of chosen short story. Each group found a short story from outside the class and then went through the same process as for podcast #1. 8-12 min.

Podcast #3-Discussion of the play "Of Mice and Men." We read the book and watched the movie in class and then went to see the play at the Park Square Theater in St. Paul. Students again had to write discussion questions for their group. 10-15 min.


After they uploaded to my Moodle, I would go get the files and post them to my blog (http://wayspace.wayzata.k12.mn.us/blogs/jnelson/) so the students could go listen to other groups and post comments.

As my "Final Product" for this class, I sat down with two of my 9th grade students as well as the aforementioned Tina Christopherson and created this podcast:



I've really enjoyed listening to each group, and I plan on using this again in the future. Later this year, this same class will do podcasts on novels, which will be pretty lengthy but very interesting I think. Also, with my Sports Lit classes, before winter break they will do podcasts on E-ticket articles discussing themes and relating those themes to what we've seen in class. I'm hoping this will give them a good idea of how to write their final book paper, which is basically the same thing except individually.

Possible problems:
-Be prepared to be helping a lot on the first day they try to do it. How Audacity works, how the computers work, how to edit, etc. There's a lot of questions.
-It took me about a week to get iTunes to accept my podcast submission. It's not a quick process.
-Even though my podcast was accepted, iTunes has not been pulling episodes I've put up off my blog, and I can't figure out why.
-I had to have my upload capacity on my blog increased because the files I got were too big.

Even with these difficulties, once the students do it a time or two, it gets way easier and they have a lot of fun.