Podcasting by Committee

September 1 - Like Abbot's Costello and Laurel's Hardy (Heather and Chris, I know these names may not be familiar to you young'ins but you can now Youtube them!), when it comes to this enterprise, I often feel like the sidekick that everyone likes but secretly feels sorry for..."Chris, how do I find our blog again?" So when Chris asked me to teach our students how to create a podcast, I was naturally a little apprehensive. Yes, I knew what a podcast was and had actually listened to a few, but I didn't know the first thing about making one, much less helping my students do so. In any case, I've decided that the best way to approach this year is to embrace anything that puts me out of my comfort zone so I agreed.

September 2 - The very next day, Heather swung by my room to chat. She informed me that Kathleen Ferenz, a Apple Distinguished Educator, would be in school the following week and wanted to know if I wanted to work with Kathleen on a lesson. We decided that we would have my students create a podcast about the obscure capital city names that my computers have been christened with -- Ouagadougou, Ashgabat, Bandar Seri Begawan.... Furthermore, the podcast would reinforce the concepts of location and place that we had been working on in class. Heather offered to create a set of instructions for students to follow. We thought of using Camtasia, but decide a simple flowchart on a word document would be easier for students to refer as they could "jump in and out" depending on their previous knowledge set. I also created a script that students could plug their information into and set the following learner outcomes:

• Students will use the Internet to learn about an obscure capital city.
• Students will learn how to take a photo of them selves using Photo Booth.
• Students will learn how to store graphics/photos in their Drop Box.
• Students will learn how to create a podcast that includes both graphics and audio by following a set of instructions.

Finally, we decided that we would do the lesson on Thursday and then have Kathleen work with my Day 2 students on Friday after giving her our feedback from the previous day.

To be continued...