One challenge in completing a group podcast is the inability of multiple students to listen to the tracks while making adjustments, merging tracks, and incorporating music. When using groups, speakers are needed in addition to headphones and microphones. A second challenge is transitioning smoothly from one speaker to the next. The group has to be sure that there are no awkward silences between speakers and that the gain for each track is adjusted appropriately.
To make the process more efficient, teachers could make sure that students have had adequate time to prepare their scripts, discuss them with each other, and make any changes prior to recording. During the process, having the teacher walk around, monitor each group, and answer any questions could contribute to a smoother process. After recording, if the students are young, the teacher could do most of the editing in order to keep the process from lasting too long and taking up too much class time.
If doing a podcast in class is not an option, a teacher could give students the opportunity for experience by setting time aside, either before or after school, for students to come in and work on podcasting. If there is a lot of interest, a podcasting club could be created. With older students, the club could be run by the students with a teacher overseeing the activities.
Doing the podcast was pretty easy, but I think it was because I was working with someone who is almost always in step with me. It made the collaboration process so much easier because we tend to think the same things and want the projects that we do to have a certain look and feel to them. With students working in groups, however, I don’t think the process will be as flawless as it was with Shanae and me. Most people don’t like to compromise and this characteristic is even more pronounce in children, so I think it make it difficult during the beginning stages of the podcast since they will all probably have different (and conflicting) ideas about the topic, how to write their scripts, how to say their scripts, and what audio to incorporate into their podcasts. Working in groups is always difficult and frustrating and I think that since this project is so heavily collaborative base, it will be a big challenge to get students to work together patiently and positively on every aspect of the project. As a way for a teacher to combat some of these problems, I definitely think that this kind of project works best when done in pairs or in groups of three like we did it. It’s also important to let kids choose their partners for this kind of project since there is so much peer involvement. As this project is time-consuming, I can see why some teachers may be reluctant to use class time to script and record podcasts in class. If you had some kids who were interested in doing podcasts, I think that it would be a good idea to hold some after-school Podcasting 101 sessions where you could teach them how to create a podcast and take them from the script drafting stage all the way to the post-production stage. It would even be cool, if you noticed that there were a large number of interested students, to be the sponsor and start a podcasting club as an extracurricular activity.
Making a good podcast takes time and skill, but I thought the overall podcasting experience was positive and engaging. I like how podcasting incorporates many different skills, opinions, ideas, and subjects. It requires that students collaborate and work together. Also, it allows students to express themselves and be creative. I thought this was the most enjoyable part because Jimmy and I took two subjects that on their own may have been bland and unrelated and connected them in a unique, fun way. Writing a script certainly helps, but the collaboration process is essential. We each discussed our topics and found a way to connect them. Podcasting is an excellent way to build teamwork.
For students, I believe the preparation part is crucial. It can be daunting to put together a podcast from scratch, but if students work together and make an outline of their plan, then they will be much more successful. The process will be smoother. I had some problems reading my script and cutting together my podcast, but once I got my script down, the process was pretty easy. It was really fun deciding on which music to use and where to place our sound effects. Like I said earlier, podcasting should be creative, and I wanted to engage my listeners. Jimmy and I have a good mix of everything in our podcast, and our listeners will come away satisfied with new knowledge and an appetite for cookies and reading.
I think the greatest challenges of doing podcasts with young kids would be explaining the process to them and making sure each of them could do it. Other challenges include eliminating or at least minimizing the amount of background noise. This might require finding a separate space for recording and having students take turns vs. everyone recording all at once. Another challenge is finding the time to do all the extra stuff that’s involved, like editing the final podcast. Teachers already have more work than they can do in the shoolday, so this just adds to the work they stay late for or take home.
Things that teachers could do in advance include: researching podcasting; getting tips from other teachers who have done them with their students; planning how they will instruct the kids in podcasting; and having examples ready. During the project, teachers could guide the students through the process by showing them first then letting them practice, at least until they’ve done a few. This would include showing them how to write a good script (showing them the difference between a paper and a script); how to do an intro and outro, etc. This would take time at first, but it actually saves time in the long run because kids will have fewer questions and need less help later. Teachers could also save time by checking their student’s topics to make sure they are appropriate before they start researching them. And after they make a podcast the teacher could give feedback and suggestions for how they can improve and be even more efficient in the future.
If for some reason you couldn’t do a real podcast, there are other ways of incorporating the essential steps in the process. For instance, you could have students research a topic and write a script and then read it to the class like they would on the radio. One kid could pretend to be a radio announcer (they say the intro/ outro) and another kid is the special guest who’s reporting on their topic. Or you could use the old-school approach: a tape recorder and some instruments to create the “sound effects.”
I think some of the challenges students might face when completing a podcast project in the classroom are teamwork and collaboration, and time-managment. One of the great benefits of podcasting is the chance for students to express their individuality, voice, and insight on a given topic. Through podcasting, students have a chance to showcase what they know in a way they feel is informative and entertaining. When working with a group, students will have a lot of ideas and opinions that they will need to organize and express in to one cohesive project. Compromising and learning how to work as a group could be a challenge for students but it is a necessary skill that podcasting can help develop. Another challenge that podcasting presents is time-management. I think podcasting can take a lot of time and an effective use of podcasting would include time constraints and deadlines. Students will need to prioritize how much time they spend on certain components and be sure to make proper use of all of their time.
To help this process run more smoothly, teachers can familiarize themselves with the podcast process from beginning to end by looking at examples such as Radio Willow. This will help them structure a podcast lesson in a way that allots adequate time for completing the project while not allowing it to become too time consuming. During the project, teachers should be actively involved in all parts of the process and constantly monitoring their students progress by establishing deadlines, reading over and editing drafts, and giving students quality feedback and direction. The project should be largely student-led but teachers should constantly and consistently be overseeing and directing students when needed. After the project, in addition to doing the majority of the editing, teachers should reflect on the strength and weaknesses of the experience and find areas that can be improved for next time (ie. did the topic work for podcasts? did students enjoy the experience? etc).
If there isn't access to podcasting technology, a simple mock radio broadcast read aloud to the class would work on the same skills. Students could work in small groups to write a script about a particular topic as if they were on the radio. Students would still be working on the writing and editing process, as well as team work and time management. Like podcasts, they would also be working on their presentation skills and their reading fluency as they give their radio broadcasts. Katie Gallivan
Podcasting presents many challenges, but I’d say the biggest is the time requirement. The many steps involved in creating a podcast (i.e., writing the script, editing the script, rehearsing, recording, editing the recording, adding music, etc.) can consume a great deal of instructional time. If teachers do not have a realistic expectation of the time requirement, their podcast projects may be rushed, or even worse, abandoned. This simply means that teachers need to plan podcasting into their schedule, and so long as this condition is met, the time spent on the project will be well worth it.
In order to make the most of the time, a teacher should start off by making sure the class is completely familiar with the technical aspects, as this one area can account for an enormous amount of time if students don’t know what they are doing. A teacher should also play examples of both good and bad podcasts before students begin working on their own. These simple steps provide students with the necessary foundation and structure for creating podcasts, and teaching them at the beginning to the entire class can save valuable time down the road.
Another timesaving option would be to outsource the editing, perhaps to an older student in the school. Removing this step from the process would free up a lot of the time, while still allowing the students to be involved in the majority of the project.
If your schedule does not allow any time in the day for podcasting, I think offering it before or after school or even during lunch would be a great alternative. This could also shift the project from being a requirement to being an option, which would subsequently improve the quality since the students involved would be working on it by their own choosing. I worry that incorporating too much podcasting in your normal classroom would alienate the shy students who do not like to be in the spotlight, so making it more of an extracurricular activity would eliminate this obstacle.
Completing a podcast with Chris was certainly fun but it did illuminate what some of the challenges would be in doing this sort of thing in a classroom. As others have mentioned, time is simply a huge obstacle. It took us a little while to complete just a five minute podcast, and we are graduate students of at least average intelligence. Larger groups of students trying to coordinate one coherent podcast could take forever. There are also the same issues that come with any type of group work. Students will butt heads about what to include or not include in a given segment and get into petty arguments over all sorts of random stuff (Chris and I managed to avoid this but I don’t see that happening with kids). And there are technical glitches and the issue of fitting this into your class schedule without taking away from other areas and a laundry list of other problems and considerations too long to get into right now.
If podcasting in the classroom is going to work there are several things a teacher must do. Before the podcasting even begins, I think the teacher should be the one that chooses the groups (he or she knows who can work together and who might need help). I think the teacher should also direct the content of the podcast at least somewhat. Students can be given some options within an area, but they can’t just be set loose like cage-free chickens or you’ll end up with a bunch of random, useless crap. During the recording and throughout the process I think feedback is essential, just like it is in the classroom at all other times. Students need to know what they are doing well and what they could work on. The teacher is the most capable of pointing out weaknesses in a project and guiding groups towards making better choices. After the podcasting sessions, I think the responsibility of editing and fine-tuning falls on the teacher, because as Chris and I found out, it’s kind of meticulous and awful. We are mature young men (kind of) and kept our composure (kind of). Children could get super-frustrated and things could get ugly.
You don’t need podcasting equipment to recreate the podcasting experience. The process of making a podcast is pretty similar to the process of making a TV script or a skit or a radio show. When doing all of those things students are still working together to present information they have learned in an entertaining way. Students could get in groups to create a PBS Special on a given unit and then present their segments to the class as a review (these could be recorded on a camcorder). For older students you could go in a completely different direction and have your class work to build a Google site that covers an entire unit. This would be a collaborative and “authentic” project that involves many of the same elements as podcasting (and it has the huge bonus of being something that will always be accessible once it’s created).
Podcasting is a time commitment. Not only do you, as a teacher, need to put in the time outside of the actual podcasting experience to educate yourself on the podcasting "dos and don'ts," but you also have to put in a great deal of time just tinkering around on it to become comfortable with the program and improve the speed at which you can edit. It also provides a great deal of challenges to the students as well in that, even if their actual participation is limited to just recording, there are a lot of ways that can go wrong as well. It just seems like an activity that would dominate the classroom, and demand a great deal of supervision on the part of the educator.
As mentioned above, there is a great deal of time that must be put in on the part of the educator. Outside preparation feeds into this: from educating yourself and improving your proficiency with the programs necessary to use podcasting, to actually putting in the outside time to edit/splice dialogue and create a coherent podcast that is enjoyable for the kids to listen to.
Some options to make use of the same objectives and activities involved in podcasting are, as many of my classmates have said, having kids do the group work to prepare the radio or TV show, and simply performing them in class. All of the benefits would be there. In addition, another option could potentially be doing an overhead announcement news show for the entire school. This was an option introduced to some of my schools and it seemed to be just as exciting for the kids to be involved in. Whether the school has a PA system or even TVs in every room (it's real, some places have this), it becomes a great experience for the kids and while it does take some preparation and work, it is not as extensive as podcasting.
There are a lot of pros to using podcasting in an educational setting: it’s flexible, affordable, approachable, and results in a tangible, authentic product. At the same time, the medium is not without its issues. Based on my own experiences working with technology, it seems like the more complex and sophisticated the project and the more specialized the software used to create it, the more likely it is you’ll to run into problems along the way. Launching a podcast isn’t quite on par with a launching a Mars Rover, but it’s definitely more complicated than using Word to write a paper. Think about all the issues that can come up when people try to incorporate sound and video into a PowerPoint – and that’s with software we’ve been using for years and years.
Granted, to a nine year old, PowerPoint is only slightly more familiar than Audacity. But it’s our job as teachers to know what to do when a student hits a snag. When we first start making podcasts, we’re not going to have the same comfort level we have when we try to put together a PowerPoint presentation or something similar. And trust me, as I learned last week, you will hit snags. Luckily, I’m an adult. As upset as I am about not being able to open my project file, I can put it into perspective and even think about all I’m learning from the process of trying to fix the error. But I can only imagine how disheartening it would be for a child to have the same thing happen to them after putting hours of work into their podcast. What do you do if you can’t get that week’s podcast to play? What do you tell the kids?
There are some ways we can work to avoid the frustration and disappointment of technical failures. First, we can become very familiar with all of the software and hardware we’ll be using. If we practice making podcasts ourselves, and try to work towards proficiency, we will inevitably run into common issues before our kids do. We’ll know how to address the problems that develop, or at least know what to avoid. Sometimes, catastrophic failure happens, and there’s no way to salvage a file. Other times, a small element doesn’t work as intended, and the entire project suffers as a result. In those cases, it might be helpful to have a back-up file. Perhaps a raw sound file recoded by another mic connected to an auxiliary computer, or even a small personal recorder. The point is just to have some evidence of the children’s work after they’re done, and maybe an opportunity to recreate the project. Lastly, when there’s really no hope of a usable podcast, we have to treat it as an opportunity to teach our kids about failure, how we cope, learn, and move on. That may be a hard lesson to teach to kids, but it’s one of the most important one’s they’ll learn, and if we treat it as such, it might end up being a positive experience.
If podcasting in the classroom is not a possibility because of either time or budget constraints, it might be possible to start a school-wide club. That way, the costs can be shared across the school, and the work can be done in the afternoon after school lets out. There may be less focus on grade-specific content, but students would still get the opportunity to work on composition and might even modify some of their content to make it more applicable to the other grades. 3rd and 4th graders might be ones most concerned with learning their multiplication facts, but 5th graders probably wouldn’t mind the review, and 2nd graders might benefit from the exposure.
One challenge in completing a group podcast is the inability of multiple students to listen to the tracks while making adjustments, merging tracks, and incorporating music. When using groups, speakers are needed in addition to headphones and microphones. A second challenge is transitioning smoothly from one speaker to the next. The group has to be sure that there are no awkward silences between speakers and that the gain for each track is adjusted appropriately.
ReplyDeleteTo make the process more efficient, teachers could make sure that students have had adequate time to prepare their scripts, discuss them with each other, and make any changes prior to recording. During the process, having the teacher walk around, monitor each group, and answer any questions could contribute to a smoother process. After recording, if the students are young, the teacher could do most of the editing in order to keep the process from lasting too long and taking up too much class time.
If doing a podcast in class is not an option, a teacher could give students the opportunity for experience by setting time aside, either before or after school, for students to come in and work on podcasting. If there is a lot of interest, a podcasting club could be created. With older students, the club could be run by the students with a teacher overseeing the activities.
Doing the podcast was pretty easy, but I think it was because I was working with someone who is almost always in step with me. It made the collaboration process so much easier because we tend to think the same things and want the projects that we do to have a certain look and feel to them. With students working in groups, however, I don’t think the process will be as flawless as it was with Shanae and me. Most people don’t like to compromise and this characteristic is even more pronounce in children, so I think it make it difficult during the beginning stages of the podcast since they will all probably have different (and conflicting) ideas about the topic, how to write their scripts, how to say their scripts, and what audio to incorporate into their podcasts. Working in groups is always difficult and frustrating and I think that since this project is so heavily collaborative base, it will be a big challenge to get students to work together patiently and positively on every aspect of the project. As a way for a teacher to combat some of these problems, I definitely think that this kind of project works best when done in pairs or in groups of three like we did it. It’s also important to let kids choose their partners for this kind of project since there is so much peer involvement. As this project is time-consuming, I can see why some teachers may be reluctant to use class time to script and record podcasts in class. If you had some kids who were interested in doing podcasts, I think that it would be a good idea to hold some after-school Podcasting 101 sessions where you could teach them how to create a podcast and take them from the script drafting stage all the way to the post-production stage. It would even be cool, if you noticed that there were a large number of interested students, to be the sponsor and start a podcasting club as an extracurricular activity.
ReplyDeleteMaking a good podcast takes time and skill, but I thought the overall podcasting experience was positive and engaging. I like how podcasting incorporates many different skills, opinions, ideas, and subjects. It requires that students collaborate and work together. Also, it allows students to express themselves and be creative. I thought this was the most enjoyable part because Jimmy and I took two subjects that on their own may have been bland and unrelated and connected them in a unique, fun way. Writing a script certainly helps, but the collaboration process is essential. We each discussed our topics and found a way to connect them. Podcasting is an excellent way to build teamwork.
ReplyDeleteFor students, I believe the preparation part is crucial. It can be daunting to put together a podcast from scratch, but if students work together and make an outline of their plan, then they will be much more successful. The process will be smoother. I had some problems reading my script and cutting together my podcast, but once I got my script down, the process was pretty easy. It was really fun deciding on which music to use and where to place our sound effects. Like I said earlier, podcasting should be creative, and I wanted to engage my listeners. Jimmy and I have a good mix of everything in our podcast, and our listeners will come away satisfied with new knowledge and an appetite for cookies and reading.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think the greatest challenges of doing podcasts with young kids would be explaining the process to them and making sure each of them could do it. Other challenges include eliminating or at least minimizing the amount of background noise. This might require finding a separate space for recording and having students take turns vs. everyone recording all at once. Another challenge is finding the time to do all the extra stuff that’s involved, like editing the final podcast. Teachers already have more work than they can do in the shoolday, so this just adds to the work they stay late for or take home.
ReplyDeleteThings that teachers could do in advance include: researching podcasting; getting tips from other teachers who have done them with their students; planning how they will instruct the kids in podcasting; and having examples ready. During the project, teachers could guide the students through the process by showing them first then letting them practice, at least until they’ve done a few. This would include showing them how to write a good script (showing them the difference between a paper and a script); how to do an intro and outro, etc. This would take time at first, but it actually saves time in the long run because kids will have fewer questions and need less help later. Teachers could also save time by checking their student’s topics to make sure they are appropriate before they start researching them. And after they make a podcast the teacher could give feedback and suggestions for how they can improve and be even more efficient in the future.
If for some reason you couldn’t do a real podcast, there are other ways of incorporating the essential steps in the process. For instance, you could have students research a topic and write a script and then read it to the class like they would on the radio. One kid could pretend to be a radio announcer (they say the intro/ outro) and another kid is the special guest who’s reporting on their topic. Or you could use the old-school approach: a tape recorder and some instruments to create the “sound effects.”
I think some of the challenges students might face when completing a podcast project in the classroom are teamwork and collaboration, and time-managment. One of the great benefits of podcasting is the chance for students to express their individuality, voice, and insight on a given topic. Through podcasting, students have a chance to showcase what they know in a way they feel is informative and entertaining. When working with a group, students will have a lot of ideas and opinions that they will need to organize and express in to one cohesive project. Compromising and learning how to work as a group could be a challenge for students but it is a necessary skill that podcasting can help develop. Another challenge that podcasting presents is time-management. I think podcasting can take a lot of time and an effective use of podcasting would include time constraints and deadlines. Students will need to prioritize how much time they spend on certain components and be sure to make proper use of all of their time.
ReplyDeleteTo help this process run more smoothly, teachers can familiarize themselves with the podcast process from beginning to end by looking at examples such as Radio Willow. This will help them structure a podcast lesson in a way that allots adequate time for completing the project while not allowing it to become too time consuming. During the project, teachers should be actively involved in all parts of the process and constantly monitoring their students progress by establishing deadlines, reading over and editing drafts, and giving students quality feedback and direction. The project should be largely student-led but teachers should constantly and consistently be overseeing and directing students when needed. After the project, in addition to doing the majority of the editing, teachers should reflect on the strength and weaknesses of the experience and find areas that can be improved for next time (ie. did the topic work for podcasts? did students enjoy the experience? etc).
If there isn't access to podcasting technology, a simple mock radio broadcast read aloud to the class would work on the same skills. Students could work in small groups to write a script about a particular topic as if they were on the radio. Students would still be working on the writing and editing process, as well as team work and time management. Like podcasts, they would also be working on their presentation skills and their reading fluency as they give their radio broadcasts.
Katie Gallivan
Podcasting presents many challenges, but I’d say the biggest is the time requirement. The many steps involved in creating a podcast (i.e., writing the script, editing the script, rehearsing, recording, editing the recording, adding music, etc.) can consume a great deal of instructional time. If teachers do not have a realistic expectation of the time requirement, their podcast projects may be rushed, or even worse, abandoned. This simply means that teachers need to plan podcasting into their schedule, and so long as this condition is met, the time spent on the project will be well worth it.
ReplyDeleteIn order to make the most of the time, a teacher should start off by making sure the class is completely familiar with the technical aspects, as this one area can account for an enormous amount of time if students don’t know what they are doing. A teacher should also play examples of both good and bad podcasts before students begin working on their own. These simple steps provide students with the necessary foundation and structure for creating podcasts, and teaching them at the beginning to the entire class can save valuable time down the road.
Another timesaving option would be to outsource the editing, perhaps to an older student in the school. Removing this step from the process would free up a lot of the time, while still allowing the students to be involved in the majority of the project.
If your schedule does not allow any time in the day for podcasting, I think offering it before or after school or even during lunch would be a great alternative. This could also shift the project from being a requirement to being an option, which would subsequently improve the quality since the students involved would be working on it by their own choosing. I worry that incorporating too much podcasting in your normal classroom would alienate the shy students who do not like to be in the spotlight, so making it more of an extracurricular activity would eliminate this obstacle.
Katie Coan
Completing a podcast with Chris was certainly fun but it did illuminate what some of the challenges would be in doing this sort of thing in a classroom. As others have mentioned, time is simply a huge obstacle. It took us a little while to complete just a five minute podcast, and we are graduate students of at least average intelligence. Larger groups of students trying to coordinate one coherent podcast could take forever. There are also the same issues that come with any type of group work. Students will butt heads about what to include or not include in a given segment and get into petty arguments over all sorts of random stuff (Chris and I managed to avoid this but I don’t see that happening with kids). And there are technical glitches and the issue of fitting this into your class schedule without taking away from other areas and a laundry list of other problems and considerations too long to get into right now.
ReplyDeleteIf podcasting in the classroom is going to work there are several things a teacher must do. Before the podcasting even begins, I think the teacher should be the one that chooses the groups (he or she knows who can work together and who might need help). I think the teacher should also direct the content of the podcast at least somewhat. Students can be given some options within an area, but they can’t just be set loose like cage-free chickens or you’ll end up with a bunch of random, useless crap. During the recording and throughout the process I think feedback is essential, just like it is in the classroom at all other times. Students need to know what they are doing well and what they could work on. The teacher is the most capable of pointing out weaknesses in a project and guiding groups towards making better choices. After the podcasting sessions, I think the responsibility of editing and fine-tuning falls on the teacher, because as Chris and I found out, it’s kind of meticulous and awful. We are mature young men (kind of) and kept our composure (kind of). Children could get super-frustrated and things could get ugly.
You don’t need podcasting equipment to recreate the podcasting experience. The process of making a podcast is pretty similar to the process of making a TV script or a skit or a radio show. When doing all of those things students are still working together to present information they have learned in an entertaining way. Students could get in groups to create a PBS Special on a given unit and then present their segments to the class as a review (these could be recorded on a camcorder). For older students you could go in a completely different direction and have your class work to build a Google site that covers an entire unit. This would be a collaborative and “authentic” project that involves many of the same elements as podcasting (and it has the huge bonus of being something that will always be accessible once it’s created).
Podcasting is a time commitment. Not only do you, as a teacher, need to put in the time outside of the actual podcasting experience to educate yourself on the podcasting "dos and don'ts," but you also have to put in a great deal of time just tinkering around on it to become comfortable with the program and improve the speed at which you can edit. It also provides a great deal of challenges to the students as well in that, even if their actual participation is limited to just recording, there are a lot of ways that can go wrong as well. It just seems like an activity that would dominate the classroom, and demand a great deal of supervision on the part of the educator.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned above, there is a great deal of time that must be put in on the part of the educator. Outside preparation feeds into this: from educating yourself and improving your proficiency with the programs necessary to use podcasting, to actually putting in the outside time to edit/splice dialogue and create a coherent podcast that is enjoyable for the kids to listen to.
Some options to make use of the same objectives and activities involved in podcasting are, as many of my classmates have said, having kids do the group work to prepare the radio or TV show, and simply performing them in class. All of the benefits would be there. In addition, another option could potentially be doing an overhead announcement news show for the entire school. This was an option introduced to some of my schools and it seemed to be just as exciting for the kids to be involved in. Whether the school has a PA system or even TVs in every room (it's real, some places have this), it becomes a great experience for the kids and while it does take some preparation and work, it is not as extensive as podcasting.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of pros to using podcasting in an educational setting: it’s flexible, affordable, approachable, and results in a tangible, authentic product. At the same time, the medium is not without its issues. Based on my own experiences working with technology, it seems like the more complex and sophisticated the project and the more specialized the software used to create it, the more likely it is you’ll to run into problems along the way. Launching a podcast isn’t quite on par with a launching a Mars Rover, but it’s definitely more complicated than using Word to write a paper. Think about all the issues that can come up when people try to incorporate sound and video into a PowerPoint – and that’s with software we’ve been using for years and years.
ReplyDeleteGranted, to a nine year old, PowerPoint is only slightly more familiar than Audacity. But it’s our job as teachers to know what to do when a student hits a snag. When we first start making podcasts, we’re not going to have the same comfort level we have when we try to put together a PowerPoint presentation or something similar. And trust me, as I learned last week, you will hit snags. Luckily, I’m an adult. As upset as I am about not being able to open my project file, I can put it into perspective and even think about all I’m learning from the process of trying to fix the error. But I can only imagine how disheartening it would be for a child to have the same thing happen to them after putting hours of work into their podcast. What do you do if you can’t get that week’s podcast to play? What do you tell the kids?
There are some ways we can work to avoid the frustration and disappointment of technical failures. First, we can become very familiar with all of the software and hardware we’ll be using. If we practice making podcasts ourselves, and try to work towards proficiency, we will inevitably run into common issues before our kids do. We’ll know how to address the problems that develop, or at least know what to avoid. Sometimes, catastrophic failure happens, and there’s no way to salvage a file. Other times, a small element doesn’t work as intended, and the entire project suffers as a result. In those cases, it might be helpful to have a back-up file. Perhaps a raw sound file recoded by another mic connected to an auxiliary computer, or even a small personal recorder. The point is just to have some evidence of the children’s work after they’re done, and maybe an opportunity to recreate the project. Lastly, when there’s really no hope of a usable podcast, we have to treat it as an opportunity to teach our kids about failure, how we cope, learn, and move on. That may be a hard lesson to teach to kids, but it’s one of the most important one’s they’ll learn, and if we treat it as such, it might end up being a positive experience.
If podcasting in the classroom is not a possibility because of either time or budget constraints, it might be possible to start a school-wide club. That way, the costs can be shared across the school, and the work can be done in the afternoon after school lets out. There may be less focus on grade-specific content, but students would still get the opportunity to work on composition and might even modify some of their content to make it more applicable to the other grades. 3rd and 4th graders might be ones most concerned with learning their multiplication facts, but 5th graders probably wouldn’t mind the review, and 2nd graders might benefit from the exposure.