Using Podcasting in an Elementary Classroom

Using Podcasting in an Elementary Classroom Patty Cribley And Shelly Althauser

Our Backgrounds • We teach in the Kenton City Schools. • Patty teaches fourth grade at Espy Elementary. • Shelly is a reading interventionist at Eastcrest Elementary.

How do Children Benefit from Making a Podcast? • It gives them a potential audience of millions for their work. • It's great for developing literacy skills (writing scripts, setting up interviews etc). • It allows children to develop and practice their speaking and listening skills. • Podcasts can be interactive, and the audience can be invited to send their comments, giving valuable feedback to the children about their work.

What is a Podcast? • “Podcasting" is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.

How Can I Create a Podcast? • 8 easy steps. • See the attached help-sheet in your packet • We do not currently publish our podcasts on the Internet with an RSS feed

Step #1 • Start up GarageBand and click on New Podcast Episode.

Step #2 • The media library may be open, close it by clicking on the media button.

Step #3 • You will record your audio into the Male or Female Voice track. Click on it to highlight it.

Step #4 • Click on the Rewind button and then Record. You can now start speaking and GarageBand will record your voice. To stop recording, click the Play button. Rewind Record Play

Step #5 • Add intro and conclusion music. • Click on the Eye button to see the different loops you can add to your song. • Click Jingles and you can see the different jingles sorted by genres. • Select the jingle that you want and drag it to the Jingles track.

Step #6 • Once you let up on the mouse button, the loop will be placed in the timeline. • You can now drag your recorded podcast (the purple) so that it will start playing at the end of your jingle.

Step #7 • To add notes for your listeners, click on Information. • On the right side of the screen the information window for the podcast will open. At the bottom of the screen you will see an area for description. • In this area, you can describe your podcast.

Step #8 • Once your podcast is finished, you’ll need export it out of Garageband. Go to Share->Export Podcast to Disk. • We have the students drag the podcast to our Shared folder.

Peer Teaching • Peer teaching/coaching with multi-age students • In our classes, older students record themselves reading a book. Later a younger student can follow along as the book is read to them.

Online Book Reviews • After reading a book, a student records a review or critique of the book. • This enables other students to listen to their classmates’ opinions of certain books before they read them.

Informational Reporting • After learning about a topic, students can create a recording of their learning to share with others in a radio broadcast format.

Reading and Comprehension Strategies • Students can record themselves performing retellings and summaries of a book they have read.

Current Events • Students can report their opinion on a current event and respond to other students’ opinions

Weekly Radio Show • Each show has its own host, theme, and unique segments which can include things like “Bad Joke, Good Joke,” “Holiday Spotlight,” “Poetry Corner” and much more.

Create a How-To-Report • Students can record themselves giving directions on how to complete an activity.

Other Ideas • School news - a great way of telling children and parents what is going on at your school. • Children's work - children love sharing their work. Ask them to record their own stories, or write reports about an activity they've tried at school • Interviews - with members of staff, children, members of the community, and visitors to school.

Helpful Tips for Podcasting • Have students listen to other podcast before beginning their own. • Have students create rough scripts for use during the Podcast.

More Information • To find more education podcasts, try Ipodcast (http://www.ipodcast.org.uk/) and the Education Podcast Network (http://epnweb.org/). For more general podcasts, take a look at Podcast Alley (http://www.podcastalley.com/) or Podfeed.net

PC Users • Other software available: • http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ • http://www.clickcaster.com/ • Audacity is a free, easy to use, software-based audio recorder and editor.

Questions? • If you have any questions, please email us at: • cribleyp@kentoncityschools.org • althausers@kentoncityschools.org

Using Podcasting in an Elementary Classroom