Kids Can Talk Podcast Series

A World of DinosaursClick on image to link to my podcast
You can also go to my PodOmatic.com home page found at: http://www.podomatic.com/profile

Wow…podcasting…what a great opportunity to explore your own interests and areas of expertise and an amazing platform for creating your own show on virtually any topic under the sun. The story shared by Richardson of one of the first podcasts he heard by a 13-year-old Matthew Bischoff who started his own radio show from his bedroom was so motivating…it made me want to start my own radio show. What an amazing opportunity for all individuals to have their voice heard without having to sell their idea to a big radio station or television network. The only downfall of the widespread use of podcasting is just that. There is so much out there that it is difficult to sift through and find the best resource to suit your needs. I have to explore the medium much more to narrow down what is available and worthwhile to subscribe to. I have not as yet linked up with RSS feeds and podcasting, which I definitely will do very soon.

My Own Personal Learning

To create my very first podcast I took the advice of Richardson and created an account on PodOmatic.com, which was pretty easy. The only difficulty I had was when I started putting together my first episode it would never save my first page and I had to create the title and description portion about 3 times over. When I went back to it I could never find the “my podcasts” link. I realized that I had to create my own URL but I ended up doing this at the end of the process, after completing the uploading of my audio portion of the podcast and then it finally popped up on my home page with the option of creating episode 2.

I also had trouble uploading my podcast until I realized I had to convert the file into an MP3. Which I probably should have known because when I went back to the readings in Richardson, one of the 4 components in creating a podcast was an MP3 file! Can I also mention that I hate converting files…it’s probably the easiest thing to do but I always seem to forget how to do it when faced with the situation. Finally figured it out with a couple of questions to my tech adviser (aka: my husband) I did not like that PodOmatic.com did not make the problem clear to me, the prompt that came up was ‘server error’ when it should have been something like: ‘does not recognize format.’ That would have saved me some frustration.

I created my MP3 file using the program GarageBand that was not too bad to utilize being my first time using it. You can also edit within the program and I did some minor editing deleting long pauses and a section in which my guest (interviewed my daughter) would not answer because it upset her to think about the prospect of Spinosaurus getting hurt and possibly dying if it fell on it’s sail-like spine which is attached directly to it’s vertebrae.

I also added an image to the podcast from my own files which was easy to do through the option of uploading images and then adding it as media when publishing the podcast.

I am quite impressed with the final product although thinking about it more there is even more I could have done like add another background track with dinosaur sounds or possibly music. I would also like to figure out how to add video or change the images while the podcast is running. Time permitting I will go back and enhance the podcast and I would like to take the opportunity to continue interviewing kids on topics they would like to talk about and create more episodes of KidsCanTalk.

Teaching and Learning

In the school environment there are many opportunities to explore podcasting and the great thing about it is that there are so many other classroom teachers around the globe that are creating their own class podcasts, which opens up the door to sharing ideas and information with a larger audience; creating the ability to connect, communicate and corroborate with other students’ experiences and learning.

I browsed through the many podcasts available through PodOmatic.com and there were great resources within many subject areas such as Arts, Education, Government Organizations, News/Politics, Science/Medicine, Sports and Rec and Technology. Their most popular is of course music and the site promotes and highlights popular music genres from around the globe. I got to listen to some funky DJ’s while working through this latest blog, which was great. I’m sure students would be inspired by the possibilities here!

Ideas I had for use of podcasts within the classroom and school library would include:

· Sharing ideas, concepts and reading with each other as students progress through their assignments as mentioned within the article, “Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education” by Gardner Campbell. The students also created a movie-trailer style podcast on Nietzsche and Also Sprach Zarathustra (more commonly known as the 2001 Space Odyssey theme song originally written by Strauss) this would be neat to hear!

· Many forms of oral presentations, which may or may not include images, video or music. For example presentations on historical or fictional characters, political debates, radio style commercials, radio dramas, short subject documentaries.

· Sharing of original stories, poetry, letters, personal accounts, etc

· In science, lab results that could be accompanied by a live presentation of the experiment.

· Poetry readings

· Book talks

· Sharing a quote or excerpt from a book to generate discussion

· Music presentations

There are so many possibilities available which are limited only by your imagination. I find that this platform has the ability to enhance creativity while incorporating a lot of learning and personal expression.