Innovation Newsletter Vol. 4

Spooked: Los Gatos and The Experience of a Teacher Using Podcasts

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Trying something new is a calculated risk.  With it comes the possibility of failure.  The fear of failure can be so strong that the willingness to try something new, even when we see the merit, is enough to prevent us from trying in the first place. I often find that teachers are such perfectionists, that they won't take the leap until they have thought through everything, worked out every little detail, and know for certain all will be good.  But remember:

The enemy of progress is perfection.

Don't let your fear of the unknown keep you from taking the leap and trying something.

With all that being said, it does help when you can see someone else doing the thing you're interested in trying yourself.  In the latest Innovation Newsletter, the focus has been on student-created podcasts.  In that newsletter, and partnering blog posts, I've been making the argument for why teachers should consider podcasts as a great way of engaging students and pushing them to go deeper with content they're learning.

Marcos Cortez is a Multimedia Journalism Teacher at Los Gatos High School. This fall he had his students create a podcast called Spooked: Los Gatos, inspired by Spooked Podcast.  He was gracious enough to write a little blurb about his project, provide links to student examples, and answer some of my questions.  Read below what he shared.  It's very insightful.

By Marcos Cortez:
Multimedia Journalism

Spooked: Los Gatos

Whether you are a believer or not, there is no doubt that ghost stories are a part of our
culture. In fact, ghost stories are a part of every culture. From every corner of the world,
there are stories of spirits, demons and the unexplained. For their third project, Multimedia
Journalism students used solely audio to explore our spooky world. Their goal was to find a
ghost story from someone whom they could meet and interview. After conducting the interview(s),
students then did any necessary research before turning the story into a podcast. Students
wrote scripts, added sound effects and edited the stories down to a reasonable time. All recording
was done with the students’ phones and/or inexpensive Lavalier microphones.  With a few
exceptions, most students used iMovie or GarageBand to edit. Almost all sound effects were
provided royalty free by SoundBible. Students either shared their work with me via Google Drive
or posted to Soundcloud and submitted a URL via Canvas. This project was assigned in
October and served as the students introduction to podcasting. Here are two examples of the
their spooky work.

The Demon of Alcatraz

10th graders Natalie Brooks, Bailey Stairs and 11th grader Emily Hagan recount the tale of an
impossible murder. Through research and an interview with former Alcatraz employee, John
Quint, these reporters try to determine if a demon stalked the inmates of The Rock. Note: this
group used Studio One3 audio editing software.

Knocks in the Night

9th graders Priya Correia, Kat Benison and Camille Wilson investigate one of the reportedly
most haunted houses in Los Gatos - the house Priya calls home. Did these reporters capture
the sounds of a restless spirit?

K.O.: Why did you choose do a podcast project with your students?

 M.C.: As with almost all of our multimedia projects, I want students to experience using their
phones for much more than texting and social media. Podcasting is a tremendously powerful
platform for student voice. Not to mention, it is one of the hottest commodities in journalism
 and multimedia right now. Students are very familiar with storytelling through visuals (photos,
 film, art, animation, etc) and traditional text, however, they are less familiar with exclusively
 using audio to get their message out to their audience. The skills they have developed by
 years of analyzing and creating more traditional forms of text certainly translate but do not
 substitute for the skills they need to develop via podcasting. This alone requires a refreshed
 level of focus and critical thinking.

K.O.: What benefit do your students gain from the experience?

M.C.: On a technical level, they are learning how to use new tools. However, the project
 is really about collaboratively editing stories down to their entertaining and engaging essence.
 Students need to perpetually ask themselves, “What do we need cut out? What must stay in?
 What voiceovers do we need to add?” in order to create a coherent, engaging and accurate
 story. Students always ask if they can go “just, like, ten seconds over the time limit”. The
 answer is no. Students need to make the critical and difficult editing decisions. For my money,
  that collaborative decision making process is what this project is about.

K.O.: Over what period of time did they work on the podcast project, and how much of class time vs. homework was devoted to it?

M.C.: From introduction to presentation, the project took three weeks. Students had the
option of finding their own ghost stories or choosing to work with one of two interviews I
had pre-recorded. Roughly 40% of the class used the pre-recorded interviews while the
remaining 60% went out and found their own people to interview. Those who chose the
pre-recorded interview had no work outside of class.

K.O.: What advice do you have for someone interested in podcasting?

M.C.:

1.DO NOT let technology intimidate you. You DO NOT need to be technically savvy to design and
 lead a podcast project. Some of the best teaching moments come when a teacher says, “I don’t
 know. We’ll figure out how to do it together.” Many of the students will have some sort of experience.
 Utilize these folks as a resource.

2. Keep the time limits tight and stick to them. Three to five minutes is actually quite a lot of air time.
 Beyond this, I find that students begin to try and fill up dead space with less than engaging material.
 A tight timeline also requires critical decision making.

3. Clear your Saturday morning calendar, pour yourself a cup of coffee and Google, “How to make
 a podcast with my phone”. You will be inundated with information and resources.

4. Have very structured guidelines with items such as topic/theme, time range, number of interviews/
sources, number of sound effects, intro/outro and scripts.

5. The process is more important than the end product. Unless audio quality is the focus of the
 lesson, poor audio quality is absolutely okay. Case in point, check out the  Knocks in the Night
 example.

Classroomscreen.com

Below is a #1CoolThing Email I sent to both staff yesterday.

I love when people begin sharing their own 1CoolThing that they find or use.  That's what #1CoolThing is all about.  This was shared by Kate Magary at LG and I love it.  Thanks Kate!

It's a simple website that you project on your screen. You choose a nice looking picture, and then add various useful tools for the students to see and keep themselves on track such as a timer, written instructions, QR code to link to website (such as Flipgrid), symbols to remind of expectations and more.  It even has a random name generator!

Check it out: https://classroomscreen.com/

See attached image as an example of what it looks like.

Share your #1CoolThing here or here.  

Creating Through Podcasting

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/podcast-radio-mic-microphone-audio-3332163/

A topic that keeps coming up again and again, and one I find myself advocating for, is this idea of the student centered classroom, whereby the teacher serves more as the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.

Disclaimer: this is not an attack on teachers who are amazing lecturers and happen to be amazing Sages on the Stage.  There are some amazing teachers who have opened their students' minds to new ideas, engaged them in dramatic story telling, and inspired them deeply.

I worry though, about how many students WERE NOT reached. Who were not engaged. Who were uninspired.

The student-centered classroom is about pedagogy that focuses on what's best for students.  A student-centered classroom is 100% teacher created, and is about choosing activities that truly engage ALL students.  There are SO many great labs, projects, activities to achieve this goal.

I want to talk about one such activity that is probably not considered by many teachers as a possible option.  That option is podcasting.

Quick Background
What's a podcast?  A podcast is basically an audio file that can be downloaded online.  Typically they are part of a series with a particular focus or theme, and users subscribe to them.  According to Listenwise:

124 Million Americans have listened to a podcast,

73 Million Americans listen to podcasts monthly

48 million listen to podcasts weekly

7 podcasts per week for those who listen to podcasts.  

1 in 3 Americans ages 12-25 listen to podcasts monthly.  

Suffice to say the podcasting is a very popular form of learning today.

I think it's rather amazing how many podcasts there are.  Apple says there are now 500 thousand shows and 50 BILLION downloads. 

There are two main types of podcasts. Some podcasts are scripted; the host has a well thought out sequence of talking points, often fully scripted. Sometimes there are multiple hosts and they share in this responsibility.  Then there are Q&A podcasts where the host(s), asks a series of preprepared questions to their guest(s).

Why Podcast with Students?

1.  Deep Learning: To make either of these podcasts, one has do their research.  They will first have had to consider what their podcast is about, who will listen to them, and their purpose.  No matter the topic, to make a podcast, one must comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluate.  Sound familiar? That's Bloom's Taxonomy.  It's also level 3 and 4 of Depth of Knowledge.  These are all things we aspire to do in our classroom, but on a practical level, can be difficult.

Let me be clear here: I think we should let students make podcasts for our classes.  No matter the podcast format, how long it is, or the topic, there is some significant learning that will come from making the podcast.

2. Authentic Audience:  It's one thing doing an assignment for your teacher. It's another thing to know that ANYONE could listen/see your work.  When you know that anyone could be accessing your work, you tend to pay a bit more attention, do more research, and put in more effort.  I've seen this in action when I had students write blog posts.  Their writings showed far more consideration, thoroughness, and engagement than something that would be turned into just me.  Knowing that what you put out on the Internet stays on the Internet, and that anyone could be listening to the podcast is going to lead students to put a lot of thought into what they produce. The quality will be high.

3. Rethinking Assessments
Creating a podcast could be a great alternative to a traditional summative assessment.  Depending on the focus or the topic, what students produce could be an artifact of their learning; a performance assessment. 

4. Fun
As I illustrated above, podcasts are all the rage.  People love them.  Why not harness the relevant and highly successful medium that teenagers are interested in, within your own class?

5. Other? I don't know I felt there needed to be a 5 here. I'm sure there's 10 more great reasons....

How would I even go about doing this?

There are some fantastic resources available.  I have created a Wakelet collection full of resources for everything you would need to start podcasting with students. Check it out below:

While I'd love to get into the HOW to make a podcast, I'm going to defer to the great NPR and Listenwise resources in the above collection.  I've also already written a post on the tools to do the recording (hint: it's really easy).  This blog post is about WHY you should podcast, and possible applications.

Potential Ideas:
I'm a BIG proponent of student choice, and I think it's important for students to have as much autonomy as possible when deciding the what's and how's of making their podcast.  With that being said, you have to make some teacher decisions about the depth, scale, and time you would want to commit to.

When I'm talking about making a podcast, this could be as simple as a 2-5min audio recording submitted on a learning management system or it could be as complex as a year long podcast where students produce episodes every couple weeks.  It all depends on what you're going for. Podcasting can be a one-off assignment, or a core component to what you do.

All Subjects-
Unit Reflections
I've had great success with students writing unit reflections at the end of their units. Students would recap concepts they learned, and also discuss their growth as a student over that time.  The very act of doing was a great synthesis and preparation for their test.  One could easily do the same thing as a podcast.  Working individually, or in small groups, students do a recap of major concepts they learned, what they struggled with, and how they grew. 

Discussions- Ever have your students participate in discussions?  Record it and have them make it a podcast.  The very act of knowing it's recorded, will likely make them focus a little harder.

Science:
One idea for example is to look at the NGSS standards.  Here's one:

"Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of human activities can include urbanization, building dams, and dissemination of invasive species.]"

You could do a class podcast on climate solutions.  Let students collaborate in groups on possible solutions and then each group creates a podcast about their possible solutions. 

There are more standards you could do this with too.  See here.

Social Studies
Current Events and it's applications to what we learn.  How many teachers do some sort of current event activity or focus? Why not have students do it as a podcast?  They could be prompted to relate to content of your course.

Want more ideas? A History Teacher's Guide to Podcasting in the Classroom

Math
First of all, check out all these great math podcasts!

I think building off the unit reflection idea could be really great for math.  Have students reflect on a major concept from the unit. Describing the concept, how it works, how they struggled, and how they understood it.  Common Core expects students to rationalize and explain their reasoning so much more, and this could be a good way to foster that.

I also found this post with more ideas.

English
Book Reports: Create a podcast about a book students have read
Character Analysis: Create a podcast analyzing a character, or better yet have them engage in a discussion as if they were the character(s)!
See also: The Value of Using Podcasts in the Classroom: Ironically they encourage students to read more.

Electives:
I think here you can start making it much more open ended and let them create a podcast of their own.

Foreign Languages:
Let them pick any topic they want, but do it in the language they're learning! 


Try it out!

I hope I've written enough to at least make you stop and consider it.  Student-generated podcasts are highly student-centered, and rigorous.  Not only that, they are relevant and engaging for our students. 

Rather than simply dismissing this as too much, take a look at the things you already do in your class. I have a feeling that it wouldn't be a giant leap to tweak what you do ever so slightly to make a podcast out of it.

Recording for Podcasts

It doesn't take much to record audio for a podcast.  If you have a phone, you likely have the ability to record audio. For iPhone, you have a preinstalled app for recording, and it's called Voice Memos.  One step further, and you can download a free app called Anchor. Don't want students using a phone in class? Use online voice recorder.  The bottom line, it's incredibly easy to record audio for a podcast. Below is a quick overview of the three methods of recording.

1. Voice Memos:

Originally designed for what the name implies, you it's essentially a voice recording app.  Open the app, and hit the record button.  Once done, you have the ability to trim the audio, duplicate it, and then export it.  I did a quick screen recording on my phone to show this in action: 

2.  Anchor

Anchor is great free app you can download that is specifically designed for podcasts, and plays on iOS and Android.  You can record audio, and import audio (eg from voice memos), and then splice it together to make your podcast. The app gives you the ability to distribute your app to various platforms, such as Apple Podcasts.  Below are some screen shots of the app itself

 3. Online Voice Recorder
Use a free website and the built in microphone of a computer or chromebook to record your audio.  Once you record it, you can save to your computer to do with it as you please. It also allows you to trim your audio.  You can use the free audio joiner to splice different recordings together.  See the screenshot below

There are obviously other methods for recording podcasts. Garage Band gets an honorable mention as a long standing tool for recording.  I like these three because they are basically device agnostic (at least the last two).

Sound Quality

What's a teacher's favorite price? Free.  All of these tools are completely free.  The next obvious question is, do I need a microphone? 

For a beginner podcaster, or a low key podcast for a class, the sound quality on a phone or computer is just fine.  Can it be better? Of course. Does it need to be? Maybe. Maybe not.  

Based on your needs, you may decide you need/want a microphone. That will cost money, and potentially a lot if you want one for each of several groups.

I'm not an expert on podcast microphones. For that, I'll defer to this review of various microphones and this review for iPhones. 

My advice, try a short simple podcast with your students using just the free tools. If you are horribly disappointed with audio quality, do what you can do get microphones for future podcasts.