Over half of Americans listen to podcasts, so chances are you do too! Podcasts are popular for entertainment, news, or education. But, have you thought about having your students create their own podcasts? This may sound intimidating, but creating a podcast doesn’t have to require special skills or equipment beyond what you already use in the classroom or at home.
Podcasting is a great way for students to practice their research, writing, organization, and communication skills while considering their intended audience and impact of their recordings.
Preparation
Before recording an episode, think about the purpose and intended audience for your podcast. Do you want to create one class podcast to which students can post episodes for peers and families? Do you want your class podcast to feature school news and events? Is it an outlet for students to share creative writing? Can it serve as a platform for students to present findings from research projects? By bringing your students into this conversation, you will find authentic topics and audiences for a student-crafted podcasts.
Process
The podcasting process follows these basic steps:
- Students prepare for their podcast by storyboarding and scripting their episode.
- Students record their episodes, including interviews, narration, and sounds in the environment.
- Students edit clips and produce their podcast by adding music, transitions, and sound effects.
- Students publish their podcast publicly on the web or privately to a class platform.
Tools
If you have a phone, tablet, or computer, you can record a podcast!
At a very basic level, students can record audio clips (consider recording apps like Online Voice Recoder or Voice Memos app.)
These files can then be uploaded to a website (maybe a Google Site), a Google Drive folder, or your LMS. Anyone with access to the site can then listen to the files.
An excellent and FREE option for creating and housing podcasts, as well as publishing to podcast apps, is Anchor.fm. (This program is FREE, but users must be above age 13.)
Resources
NPR’s podcasting guide for students provides an excellent road map for getting started, including tips and examples.
Want to get started? We can help you remotely! Check out our online coaching and instructional technology support and cbdconsulting.com/virtualcoach.
Like these ideas? To learn classroom engagement strategies that make the most immediate impact, we recommend checking out our program, "Fostering Student Engagement."
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