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.