The image to the right is one of the coolest things in my teaching cupboard at the moment…which I had to buy…and needs to be connected to a computer running a program, the output of which is uploaded to a website…blah, blah blah.
It’s a microphone, obviously. But using it my class has been able to start making podcasts.
Which is one of the coolest things we’ve done this year.
Oh, and one of the most educationally beneficial things we’ve done. Which is more important than being cool, but having both is awesome.
One of the biggest things in teaching is knowledge retention and reflection. The student retaining the knowledge you have just taught at the end of the lesson is great, at the end of the semester is awesome…next year when they haven’t been exposed to it in quite a long time is brilliant. Podcasting and blogging are new methods I’m testing to improve knowledge retention. Each week at a lunchtime I sit down with six students around a microphone, we list all the things they’d like to discuss about school so we have a checklist/script to work off. Then I hit record and watch the insanity unfurl.
Well, when I tried to do one with the whole class…it was insane. Six people was a nice step down so even though while only one person is talking the others can be listening and waiting to respond with a greater chance of doing so than when they are up against 26 others who want to speak.
The experience has been brilliant. Each student has brought their own ideas and experiences into the podcast and this week especially they have started to bounce ideas off each other. One would start speaking about a topic and then when their brain hits a wall another would step into help, prompting the student with an idea to continue. They’ve been discussing our writing topics, spelling and mathematics strategies. They’ve created contests of quizzes and questions about our current topics, inviting listeners to respond on our school forum. (Our first competition is to construct the largest number out of six random numerals they mentioned in the podcast, the second is to create a silly yet sensible sentence out of our spelling words).
All I’ve done is get the ball rolling and give them advice. The majority of the content is student directed. After a few more weeks I’m going to step back and allow the students to take over the podcast, from content creation to the technical side of exporting the file, adding music (and perhaps stepping up to extended podcasts with supporting images…as soon as I learn how to do it) and posting it on the schools website.
The point of all of this is to encourage the students to start communicating about their learning, not just the end result but the processes involved. The more they begin to understand how and why they learn the more they can extend themselves.
A final win of the day: two students who HATE public speaking (one due to special needs, the other due to a certain degree of shyness) were completely engaged in the podcast. They wanted to share all of their thoughts and ideas and had little to no hesitation doing so.
WIN!
Anyway, the technical side of how I do these podcasts.
I use a Logitech USB Mic which is readily available for under $50 from most online stores. I got mine from www.mwave.com.au for $40.40 plus around $5 for shipping. (all to be claimed on tax!). The reason behind the USB mic is that it has a much clearer pickup of sound, a greater reduction of background noise, and it’s cheaper than a lot of other equivalents. It’s also tough and can stand up to most roughhousing by children.
The program I use for recording the podcast is called “Audacity” (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
Reason number 1: It’s FREE!
Reason B: It works on both Mac and PC.
Reason III: It’s fairly user friendly so kids can use it with only a little instruction. Next week I’m going to try to use Garageband for the iPad connecting the mic through the USB adapter and see how that works. I think the encoding will be easier (and produce a smaller MP3 file, currently a 19 minute podcast makes a 17meg file), and the portability means we don’t need a computer to operate off. Well…except for uploading to our schools website.
To encode an MP3 in Audacity you need the LAME encoder, which actually works if you install it to a thumbdrive. This helps when your computer system is locked down so only admins can install files. Run the LAME installer at home and install it to your thumbdrive, then when Audacity asks for the LAME (yes, I’m just trying to type LAME as much as possible) file you can point it there.
Audacity also allows you to add in other MP3 or WAV files into your project and then export them as the one file like Garageband, so as time goes on we’ll be adding in theme music or other THINGS as the students think of them.
Once the MP3 is encoded I upload it to the public folder of my Dropbox. This is an awesome cloud storage website where you can keep 2gig worth of files for FREE! Until our glorious Department gets the media server online this is the only place to store files like this, as our Virtual Learning Environment doesn’t have much storage space per person (and if I tried to upload big files I’d probably kill it. It’s still really in Beta) There I just link the file in our class forum, throw in a description and DONE! I’m thinking about applying to iTunes U to get storage space and even an online presence though it, but that would put the podcasts into the public arena and I’d probably have to get…permission. Apparently the Department is getting an iTunes U site for each school. Lets wait and see if that works.
Anyway…WIN!
