Creating Podcasts

Our school runs a 6 day cycle, and each day we have a clinic period called BEAR time. During this time some students attend reading or math clinics, and other students work independently on different tasks. Every Day 6 the fourth graders have an opportunity to select an activity of his or her choice during our free BEAR activity period. The fun activities students can choose from include large group games in the gym, building with Legos, arts and crafts, playing Challenge 24, and karaoke.

During the last several cycles some of  students have been learning how to develop and create podcasts. The students were allowed to pick the topic of their podcasts based on their personal interests. Some students did a podcast on clouds that was inspired by their science class. Others did a podcast about the making of maple syrup that they did with their gifted teacher. Some did an all about me podcast to teach her audience all about herself, and still others have work on topics like recycling and Thomas Edison. Here are some images of the kids hard at work (and peeking at me taking pictures):

Beyond learning about their chosen topics we have learned about many different technology skills. These include:

• creating a podcast using Garageband (including speech, images and background jingles)
• finding free use images using Google's advanced search
• citing sources (just the basics)
• creating slides in Keynote and exporting them as an image
• exporting and uploading podcasts

It's been a crazy half hour every Day 6, but Mrs. Shank and I have had a wonderful time working with this group of students. I'm not having much luck uploading the podcasts to this site, but you can check the students' creative work by visiting my school launch page. More podcasts will be added next week so we hope you'll check back to hear even more of the students' work!