Lots to report on the podcasting front these days, most notably the introduction of the Education Podcasters Network which is the work of David Warlick. If you’re doing some K-12 podcasts of even thinking of it, head on over to EPN to find some podcasts to listen to or add your feed. Right now he’s got three elementary school feeds up, and one of them is…
…Room 208 which is the brainchild of Bob Sprankle, a third and fourth grade teacher at Wells Elementary in Wells, Maine. Aside from weekly shows that cover events at school, his students have done “sound-seeing tours” of the local Willowbrook Museum Village in Newfield that they visited on a field trip. Listeners are treated to the students’ reactions to what they see, the presentations by the tour guides, and all sorts of other vignettes of students talking and thinking about what they’re seeing, sometimes with teacher prompts. It’s a concept that’s easy to replicate, and it’s a great model for teachers to use, as is…
…Radio Willow Web from the Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska. As the Website says, these Willowcasts” are online radio shows for kids by kids. Each show has it’s own host, theme, and unique segments which can include things like “Bad Joke, Good Joke,” “Holiday Spotlight,” “Poetry Corner” and much more. And once again, the thing that really strikes me when I listen to these is the sense of audience the students have. The power of the Read/Write Web.
Through the EPN site I also found Englishcaster which is a site that supports teachers who are teaching the English language. There’s a whole list of podcasts that have been created by teachers for people who want to learn English. One concept that I thought was really cool (and that I’m going to suggest to my World Language teachers) was from the…
…Madrid Young Learners Podcasts where an English speaker tells a story via a podcast and the listener has to answer questions in English via comments. How hard would it be to make your own site like this, with teachers enlisting native speakers from around the world to tell stories that their own students respond to.
There are all sorts of great ideas popping up around this that go beyond the traditional (?) radio show meme, and as more and more educators wrap their brains around this, I’m sure even more creative uses will follow. Too. Much. Fun.
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