NOW Classrooms, Grades 6-8. Meg Ormiston

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      Learning goal:

      I can create and publish a podcast.

       Wow: Creating and Publishing a Podcast

      For students who have mastered recording and mashing up multiple audio sources, podcasts give them a wonderful way to create products that take full advantage of their learning and allow them to publish their knowledge for a wider audience. Think of a podcast as your own radio show that people don’t necessarily listen to live. It’s really just an audio file or clip students publish for others to download and listen to or stream. A traditional podcast has a mix of spoken audio and music or sound effects. Podcasts allow students to share their voices with a wider audience and practice their speaking skills.

      Podcasting, unfortunately, is typically not a free enterprise, but many podcasting platforms do allow users to try out podcasting for free. Most podcasting platforms also allow students to create links to their content that they can post to an LMS or class social media account. For this lesson, we suggest exposing students to multiple podcast platforms and letting them choose the one that works best for them. We recommend three: Podbean (www.podbean.com), SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com), and Spreaker (www.spreaker.com). Each of these platforms requires students to create an account using a school G Suite email address or another school email address. Be sure to check each website for age restrictions. If there are restrictions, instead try creating a class account page that you manage.

       Process: Creating a Podcast

      Use the following seven steps to have student groups record a podcast.

       TECH TIPS

       Listenwise (https://listenwise.com) offers some great podcasts for your students to listen to that provide them with examples that may inspire their own work.

       Students who want to spread access to their podcast to a wider audience should consider signing their show up with podcast distributors (not hosting sites), like iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes). These sites make it easier for listeners to find and subscribe to podcasts.

      1. Let student groups choose a platform for their podcast from the options you provide.

      2. A lot of planning goes into podcasts, so make sure student groups have a solid outline or script before they begin recording. Student groups should also practice their show before they record it.

      3. Have students locate and acquire background music that they can use for free. They can use background music to go along with their discussion or use it as intro or outro music or for segues between topics.

      4. Tell students to record an episode. Depending on the platform they selected, they either use the platform’s tools to record it or use a separate audio app. Spreaker, for example, provides both recording and publishing tools. On the other hand, SoundCloud requires users to upload audio they’ve already recorded.

      5. During the recording, students will no doubt make mistakes that force them to restate their dialogue, go off on tangents, or end up in general mayhem. When they finish recording, have students review and edit their content to remove and smooth over any mistakes, add background music, and trim any excess audio at the beginning or end of the show.

      6. Using the podcasting platform’s tools, have students select or upload their audio recording and add a title and description for their episode.

      7. Have students publish their podcast and share a link to the classroom LMS or social media account.

       Connections

      You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.

      • English language arts: Ask students to create and publish a discussion podcast in which they discuss with one another the themes of the books they read.

      • Mathematics: Have students create and publish a podcast that explains how they solve a real-world geometry problem (for example, solving for surface area). They should share their podcasts with one another and look at the different ways in which their peers went about solving the problem.